I am an ex-programmer wishing to get back into programming. In the long term I hope to learn a popular programming tool/language off by heart but for the short term I just need create a very simple website/webpage. The problem being- I have no idea how to go about it! As I stated I used to be a computer programmer many moons back so I am not a complete beginner but I have not done any programming for a very long time so I am out of touch with which programming tools/languages are being used nowadays! I have absolutely no experience in creating websites/webpages so any programming tool/language i will be using will have to be learnt from scratch. - I suppose my first question would be- will I be able to learn one tool/language for both general programming and web development? Or will I have to learn 2 separate tools/languages? When I used to be a programmer the language I used was called MUMPS (or M technology) but this just dealt with data handling and did not allow you to design a nice front end or user interface. The most recent programming experience I have had was about 5 years back when I attended beginner’s courses for both Visual Basic 6 (I think it was 6) and Delphi 5 but these courses were very basic and only really dealt with creating forms, adding buttons, etc. The way I understand it (please correct me if I’m wrong) is MUMPS is a programming language where as Delphi and Visual Basic are programming tools that front end a programming language? (I think Delphi uses the Pascal language and Visual Basic uses Basic if I remember correctly) Questions: - Is my above understanding of programming tools/languages correct? And if it is- which programming tool/language would it be best for me to learn based on all factors (ie. how good/popular the tool/language is, how long it would take to learn, etc.) - Will I have to learn another tool/language for web development? If yes- which one? Thanks in advance BigJeff

lets see here... i would suggest that you start with html (yep, sounds obvious). since you no nothing about making websites you will need to learn html. the developement tool i would suggest is AceHTML. that's what i use to make my websites. macromedia dreamweaver is supposed to be the number one choice but i dont like it because it has all kinds of other stuff that i dont ever use because i know how to write everything in html. for a beginner it could be a very good tool, just dont get to used to the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor. but after you learn all of that stuff learn CSS (cascading style sheets), then i would suggest PHP as the web programming language. it's really easy to learn and get some functionality from your site. what you really need to make sure to understand when you're learning html to be used for PHP is all of the "Form" uses and "table" uses. i used tables and forms in EVERY single web-application that i use PHP with. anyway, i think that's what you wanted. i also read your other post and i would suggest not wasting money on a domain name or anything right now. just host and test off of your computer. good luck ;) FBI Agent AIM: EliteAssassin187

FBI Agent has some great advice! Like he said I would definitely start off learning HTML which isn't difficult to learn. But there are many other programming languages out there for web development. Each one has different uses and capabilities so as you start getting deeper into web development you will quickly learn what is easier for you. PHP seems to be the most used language as it provides you with the functionality you need to do interesting Web applications with the least amount of unnecessary overhead. Macromedia is a great WYSIWYG editor but it is also very expensive. There are alot of WYSIWYG editors out there: Frontpage, AceHTML, TopStyle, etc... But in time as you learn the different languages you can code them yourself.

well guys jeffs question is - I suppose my first question would be- will I be able to learn one tool/language for both general programming and web development? Or will I have to learn 2 separate tools/languages? answer : well you can lern dot net asp.net . you recent exeperience in visaul basica 6 will help a lot for that . and offcourse for general development you can use vb.net . so i will suggest you dot net more relevent to your experience though you should know the html well , but you dont have to as asp.net you can do most of the things in wysiwg jim partner experts in reseller hosting http://www.cpwebhosting.net