My first was PHP, I was able to get useful things off the ground, mostly by trial and error, from what was initially very simple examples.
PHP's strength is it's so damn easy to write useful, simple scripts. And it's so fast to provide feedback, and it works with an existing metaphor many people understand (upload file to FTP, hit it in your web browser, bob's your uncle).
I found it very, very difficult to learn OO as the stdlib at the time was full of nothing but functions. I think you learn a hell of a lot from working with well designed APIs, and let us be brutally honest, PHP's stdlib is about as well designed as a shit-moulded santa claus.
I tried learning Java well enough to get some kind of commercial project off the ground but was befuddled, book after book why it took so damn much code to do _anything_. Though I did learn a lot about OO from reading these books, I never got an opportunity to get stuck into any Java to learn how to do things, at the time I perceived as the 'right way'.
But unlike PHP to get anything off the ground in Java, you had to install Tomcat, write about 20 lines of something and set up a web container and god knows what else. Compare this to plonking <?= $_GET['test'] ?> in a text file, call it 'blah.php' and hit it. Instant feedback.
Since then I've been working with Ruby for about 3 years, and I've finally got my head around how to write decent code, and it's mostly been because of exposure and experience with nice APIs, and being able to work with the higher level patterns that you are just simply not exposed to with rudimentary PHP.
Sure, today you have CakePHP, the Zend Framework but they only popped up in the last couple of years, and mostly in response to Rails' influence.
In between Rails and PHP I had toted with Perl and Python and enjoyed them thoroughly. I would suggest writing as much damn code as you can in a bunch of popular, and different languages, and you'll be fine :) I'm still yet to play with LISP and OCaml, though I'm keen to have a crack at Lua...
I've often wondered if the PHP community in general is more reactive than enterprising. Had it not been for Rails would we see the crop of well engineered PHP frameworks? (when I say well engineered I mean these frameworks work hard to put lipstick on a pig sort of way).
PHP's strength is it's so damn easy to write useful, simple scripts. And it's so fast to provide feedback, and it works with an existing metaphor many people understand (upload file to FTP, hit it in your web browser, bob's your uncle).
I found it very, very difficult to learn OO as the stdlib at the time was full of nothing but functions. I think you learn a hell of a lot from working with well designed APIs, and let us be brutally honest, PHP's stdlib is about as well designed as a shit-moulded santa claus.
I tried learning Java well enough to get some kind of commercial project off the ground but was befuddled, book after book why it took so damn much code to do _anything_. Though I did learn a lot about OO from reading these books, I never got an opportunity to get stuck into any Java to learn how to do things, at the time I perceived as the 'right way'.
But unlike PHP to get anything off the ground in Java, you had to install Tomcat, write about 20 lines of something and set up a web container and god knows what else. Compare this to plonking <?= $_GET['test'] ?> in a text file, call it 'blah.php' and hit it. Instant feedback.
Since then I've been working with Ruby for about 3 years, and I've finally got my head around how to write decent code, and it's mostly been because of exposure and experience with nice APIs, and being able to work with the higher level patterns that you are just simply not exposed to with rudimentary PHP.
Sure, today you have CakePHP, the Zend Framework but they only popped up in the last couple of years, and mostly in response to Rails' influence.
In between Rails and PHP I had toted with Perl and Python and enjoyed them thoroughly. I would suggest writing as much damn code as you can in a bunch of popular, and different languages, and you'll be fine :) I'm still yet to play with LISP and OCaml, though I'm keen to have a crack at Lua...