Thread

CI is brilliant and I do like PHP, but I’d like to learn another language or framework just for the heck of it, and just to add something else to my armoury, as it were.

What are the broad choices, and what would you recommend: for example another framework like Zend or Symfony, or Django, Rails, etc.? I.e. what languages/frameworks are in demand, and has ‘a future’?

It depends on how much time you want to put in it. Php frameworks are just a layer on top of php which means if you don’t know it but you are good with php you can learn it in a short amount of time.
If you looking to learn another language it can be possible you have to break out the php way of programming to tap into the potential of the other language.

From my experience you have to do a project in another language that is not a hobby project to really learn the language. Practically learning i call it. Then you hit walls fast and learn the pitfalls of the language.

If php is you first language you are going to curse the other languages as they are not build specially for the internet. Instead of rails or django pick a micro webframework. It is faster to learn and you have to do more yourself which helps you learn the language.

Well I went from ASP (!) to ‘pure’ PHP, and then discovered CI, so my PHP is fairly good.

I gather Zend is very complex to get into, and I’m not sure about the benefits, so not sure whether to dedicate any time to that. I think it would be an interesting exercise to do something completely new and I do have a project in mind for it. Suspect Rails or Django might be the way to go…?

Django or Rails would be a good place to go. I use Python to run background process on my server. When ever I want to do any data processing at a set time, I write a python script and run it with cron. Its a powerful language and it can run as a continuous process as where PHP can not (standard config), so if I need something to sit there an listen on a port or anything I choose Python.

For example, here in the near future for a project Im working on, Im going to be writing a python script to run on a set interval to do some calculations about how fast I should be publishing some content to a website. As its doing these calculations it will also publish the content as it sees fit based on how fast new content is coming in and how much is currently in the queue (via the calculations)

Ah interesting - thanks.

I would definitely go with Python - like SpooF, I’ve found the combination of PHP/Python to be powerful and useful.

Python is definitely a good choice.  I don’t personally like it for “direct” web stuff, even with Django, but it’s great for all kinds of scripting needs.  If you haven’t learned Java, you could consider that, especially if you want to get into Android development.  Many people also overlook the benefit of really knowing JavaScript, so that along with jQuery is worth thinking about too.

I don’t really like Zend Framework, to be honest.  It feels “overdeveloped” to me.  Symfony is pretty cool, but it’s huge and a bit slow.  Plus it has a fairly steep learning curve.  CakePHP is good, but I’m not sure if it’s worth learning just for the heck of it.  I think learning another language would be more beneficial.

im actually going to start learning python soon (i hope) because at work we do alot of data processing and im sure for the import of that data from other servers (xml feeds at such) python will execute much faster. any good resources / frameworks for python that you know of? ill prob buy a book on it at one point or another so if you have any suggestions there that would help too…

thanks

As Gordaen said, “real” Javascript is a must. People think that by using jQuery they can work with any form of Javascript, which is not the case. It’s the same with CodeIgniter, don’t start using it if you can’t work with regular PHP.

So in short, Javascript and Python 😊