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General Discussion

Brad Woods
Brad Woods
13,772 Points

Php or Rails?

I want to start one of these courses but not sure which one to select. Can anyone shed some light on the differences between these two languages? From what I have read they fulfill the same purpose (server side programming) and are more competitors than anything else.

8 Answers

Start both and see which you like more.

If there are other applications, content management systems or plugins that you already know you are interesting in learning more about, you could use that to help make the decision. For instance, if you know you want to learn more about or work with WordPress then I suspect you would want to learn php.

Brad Woods
Brad Woods
13,772 Points

I'm a primary teacher with the goal of creating teaching apps and websites based around a game approach. I have completed the front-end course and comfortable with html, css and javascript. At the moment I'm not sure what I will need other than storing/ retrieving data from a database.

In that case I definitely agree with Eric, that you should give both a shot.

Also, if you have not already, you may want to look into AJAX, so you can dynamically make calls to the database much more seamlessly.

Jerry Jernej Kelih
Jerry Jernej Kelih
2,698 Points

what about JavaScript frameworks like Angular JS?

Brad Woods
Brad Woods
13,772 Points

Angular JS looks like a good option, do you know of any good tutorial sites?

Florian Goussin
Florian Goussin
8,925 Points

angularJS: there is a tutorial on the official website. There is a free tutorial on codeschool and a nice paid one on udemy/infinite skills. And I guess a lot on youtube. But angular is for the front end not for the back so you still need to choose between rails and php.

rails is framworks, but not php. So with rails you are forced to make good practice and organize. But there are also frameworks with php like laravel, symphony, codegniter, phalcom..., etc. Laravel is the mostly used.

Florian Goussin
Florian Goussin
8,925 Points

I have the impression firebase is just a database and hosting service. So in that case angular is still in client side. And you need something else like node.js, ruby or php for the server side. Anyways it sounds promising.

Florian Goussin
Florian Goussin
8,925 Points

No actually you don't have to any backend service with firebase. Nice!

Firebase provides three key services that enable you to build rich, full-featured applications using just client-side code:

  • A (realtime) data API. Our API replaces the need for most backend databases and server code by handling the heavy lifting of data storage and synchronization.

  • User management and authentication. Our Simple Login service handles your user management and authentication needs out-of-the-box. Or, if you prefer to manage users yourself, you can maintain complete control using Custom Login.

  • Hosting. With hosting, you can deploy your static website to the internet with a single command.

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