What languages should I learn, and in what order, to best do web services and design?

Question

I'm got HTML / XHTML / CSS down as the foundation, but I know of things like Flash, PERL, SOAP, ASP, JAVA, XML, XML-RPC, UDDI, and WSDL that seem to be pretty important as well. How should I go about tackling all of these languages? In what order? Guarantee yourself a best answer by recommending some books as well. I want to do things like create online stores, message boards, user registration, databases, etc. Thanks!

Answer 1

Web services and web design are 2 very different things. You can learn both, but typically people learn towards one direction or the other when becoming an expert in. Web services is all about low level programming and web design is all about client side design and layout. I would suggest focusing on one direction first and then move on to the other. Doing web design first would be easier than web services.



(The list of languages I list below is the order I suggest learning.)



For web design, HTML/XHTML, CSS, DOM, Javascript goes without saying. To be good in it, though, you need to learn not only the technology and languages, but good user interface design principles like accessibility, navigation, user behavior, etc. That part is too often overlooked but is essential in designing user-friendly web sites. These are the essentials.



Other technologies for web design: graphic design, Flash, PHP, Perl can be helpful and enrich your web designing skills, but are not essential for *good* web design. I would consider these secondary skills if you are going to pursue web design. Also, if you learn PHP, it's often used with MySQL (or some other database), so be sure to learn that too.



For web services, you're talking about having to learn 2 different parts to it: the web service itself, and the programming environment or platform the web service will be built in.



Since you have to know your programming platform before you can construct a working web service, I will talk about that first. And when talking about web application programming environments, there are 2 main ways you can go: the Microsoft way or the Java way.

The Microsoft way includes: ASP, .NET, C#.

The Java way includes: Java. You will also eventually need J2EE and maybe several other Java frameworks, but that can come later.



For the actual web services: XML, SOAP, WSDL, UDDI, HTTP.



As you can see there are TONS of things you can learn. Unless you can afford buying books for all these, there are TONS more very good resources online. Start there.

Answer 2

Indeed web design and web services both are different but i think as you wanted to learn web design and development so you should start from HTML,CSS, JavaScript,JQuery,AJAX then choose between PHP or .NET.

Answer 3

It kind of depends on what clients you have.



But i would say skip just about everthing on your list



and do Java script and or PHP first, if you do PHP learn some basic SQL while your at it.



Then I'd say move on to ASP and .NET languages.

Otherwise get really comfortable with some of the open source CMS programs like Joomla and Durpal.



AS far as books, I personally think thier a waste of time. Maybe go to your local book store for a day and read the intro to a couple books on the language you're learning.





From there use websites and google. I learned html, css and php from htmlgoodies.com and just working through projects with the help of Google.

Answer 4

People -- the person made a specific request for Web Services! This is SOAP, WSDL, UDDI, JAX-RPC, etc, --- *not* web pages.



The leaders in Web Services technology, language wise, is C#, C++, and Java. Microsoft, Sun, and IBM have really been pushing these languages as the implementation leaders for Web Services. For Web Services, though, I've discovered that Java is probably the easiest.



When it comes to Java and C++, the gold standard Web Services library is Axis and Axis2:



http://ws.apache.org/axis/

http://ws.apache.org/axis2/



Axis and Axis2 are both open source and free to use. They are also very standards-compliant. You can read about how to use them at:



http://ws.apache.org/axis/java/developers-guide.html

http://ws.apache.org/axis2/1_4_1/quickstartguide.html



However, now that I've said all this, I should say that Web Services is not exactly the right technology for message boards, user registration, etc. Web Services are more commonly used for application-to-application interaction and interoperability. If you want to pursue Web Services, you should be sure that you understand what exactly Web Services are and what they are for:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_service

http://www.w3schools.com/webservices/ws_intro.asp

Answer 5

I think the obvious next step for you is PHP.

And learn how to interact with MySQL databases.



I've flicked through many books on the topic and never found anything which I think would help me in any way.



So again the best way to learn is to teach yourself from online tutorials and by building up understanding slowly through trial-and-error. Set up a WAMP or LAMP stack on your computer to act as a development environment / sandbox and have a play around with some basic scripts.

Answer 6

You should learn php also.

Answer 7

(X)HTML

CSS

JavaScript

DHTML

PHP

SQL / MySQL

XML

XSL-T

AJAX



There is also

WML (which is XHTML for micro-browsers, like cell phones)

Java

Flash

SSI

learn to write robot files and .htaccess files

Answer 8

php

html

css

javascript

mysql

flash

Answer 9

HTML

XHTML

CSS

JAVASCRIPT

PHP

MYSQL

ACTIONSCRIPT/FLASH/etc