Newbie?

[Amorphous Ice]

I couldn't really think of a better, more catchy subject, but it is fairly descriptive about the general contents of this post. This is also kind of a long post, since its one of my first, and I think I ought to explain myself to keep people from giving me answers that I will not be able to use.

There really are no valuable classes available nearby where I live that cover topics in web design beyond the very basics. That said, I am forced to turn my attention to you, the internet, for advice and guidance.

I'm very interested in learning about web programming and design. In the past, I've always been able to acomplish what I wanted with basic HTML and freebie pre-written tools, but I have finally acknowledged the fact that its time to move onward.

I have a good understanding of HTML/XHTML/CSS, and am just beginning to learn to deal with Flash and DHTML. Scripting, on the other hand, is entirely foreign to me -- I've never worked with anything other than JavaScript, and only it was ever done with pre-written templates.

I also know enough of the basics surrounding Java to be able to produce some very simple (if useless) applets and applications (calculators, wee). I am fairly decent at C++, but I don't believe I've ever even heard of that being integrated into a website.

Database knowledge? Zip. (Except for Access, but that's never struck me as useful)


Soooo.. the questions:

What would you suggest that I concentrate on learning first, for the sake of ease and future understanding? (Don't run before you walk)

Has C++ ever been used in conjunction with a website, and if so, what are some example uses?

MySQL turned out to be a major *****... is there a way to learn to use it from Windows, and some better teaching material out there besides straight-cut 'tutorials'?

What were/are some of your learning experiences? Obstacles to beware? Short-cuts? (More for the folks who started when they were older from nothing, rather than those that 'picked it up' when they 8 or 12 or what have you.)

 

[Tastypoo]

What would you suggest that I concentrate on learning first, for the sake of ease and future understanding?

Well, maybe PHP, because that's a pretty common web programming language.

Has C++ ever been used in conjunction with a website, and if so, what are some example uses?

No, not really... unless you're offereing downloads on your site of C__ programs you've made.

MySQL turned out to be a major *****... is there a way to learn to use it from Windows, and some better teaching material out there besides straight-cut 'tutorials'?

I have no clue, sorry. Maybe buy a book about it.

What were/are some of your learning experiences? Obstacles to beware? Short-cuts?

If you don't know how to do something that you see somewhere on the internet that you want on your site, don't be afraid to look at the source - it's not really considered stealing unless they have a copyright or something on it, but it's probably one of the best ways to learn because you get to check out the code in action on a site, not just on a tutorial or in a book.

 

[Amorphous Ice]

Well, maybe PHP, because that's a pretty common web programming language.

I have been considering PHP. In one of my Flash classes earlier this week, a (much more knowledgeable) fellow student showed me one of his websites and talked about some of the tools he wrote for it in PHP. Needless to say, it got me interested in that path.

No, not really... unless you're offereing downloads on your site of C__ programs you've made.

I thought so... suppose I was hoping something happened with that language while I had my head in the ground.



Thanks for the advice; I've never really liked "peeking" at source code, it just felt so dirty.

 

[Tastypoo]

Thanks for the advice; I've never really liked "peeking" at source code, it just felt so dirty.

Yeah, it's not really highly praised in the web developing community, but when you're new and you're first starting out, you pretty much always have to in order to learn stuff. That's how I got started. I'd just copy the source of a page, and then chnage things and find out what happens when I changed a certain thing, and then that's basically how I learned HTML.

 

[Woolie]

Hi Amorphous Ice,

What would you suggest that I concentrate on learning first, for the sake of ease and future understanding?)

As with all of the other suggestions, I would say PHP is a great web language to learn as you are already familiar with the syntax of C++, and they are "reasonably" similar. As you've been using C++, I would assume you are quite familiar with desktop applications and the way you can access variables from edit boxes, etc. Basically, for web programming, the only large things that change is the way you get variables from the user, and the way you output information to the screen. The basic programming is the same, after all, all programming languages do is play around with numbers and strings. All of that will be relativly similar to C++ except the fact that PHP is a far less strict language.)

Has C++ ever been used in conjunction with a website, and if so, what are some example uses?

When PHP started,it wasn't a programming language at all, and it wasn't called PHP either, it was a "set of tools" for webmasters. What these tools did was call peices of C code embedded in the web server when certain tags in the HTML page were found. There are quite a few web programs tried to be written in C, but the problem is the amount of effort and learning needed to be able to do so. I personally wouldn't recommend using C++ for web programing. If you want to give yourself a hard time though, give it a shot, or perhaps use PERL (hate it).

MySQL turned out to be a major *****... is there a way to learn to use it from Windows, and some better teaching material out there besides straight-cut 'tutorials'?

Not quite sure what your problem with MySQL is. Probably because you've only used C++. If you plan on using PHP, using MySQL databases is as easy as anything. You'll find that out if you persist. There are many MySQL tutorials out there, and this one is quite a good one if you have absoulutly no idea where to start (although I'm not too sure about the methods used to get the results). Click here.

What were/are some of your learning experiences? Obstacles to beware? Short-cuts?

Although I understood how to do it, I could never really find the need to use Object Orientated Programming until I started writing code that was getting beyond 1000+ lines. Then I realised it's usefullness and now I couldn't live without it. Thats about it