Hey all,

Maybe seems like an odd question to ask but the reason I ask is because I am learning JavaScript which I find fairly hard to pick up and I am going to start learning PHP soon and so I wondered if I am going to find it easier or harder than JavaScript?

Hello,

I'm In the middle of a Computer Science postgrad and the course deals with php, javascript and others, For me I found that javascript was slightly harder than php, I might change my opinion of this in a few days when I hand in my php assignments but If you approach each situation logicaly then it will be easier.

I think it sort of depends. If all that you know is HTML, both are going to be hard. And I should point out that they have very different purposes and constructs. Javascript is a client side scripting language, meaning that it loads in the browser along with the web page. Javascript also has far fewer capabilities than does other languages. PHP, on the other hand, is a client side language that is used to generate web content,and it runs on the server. It is much more powerful than javascript, and as such, has a larger library. On the balance, both are scripting languages, and they share some similarities. I think javascript tends to be a bit more cryptic, at least until one gets a feel for the language and understands the Document Object Model. Using php for dynamic web page generation is also a bit hard to get one's head around at first. I think both are equally challenging in their own way, which makes it hard to say that one is more difficult to learn than the other.

@puablo: I think you should learn both of them. In trends of web 2.0 you must combine both of them to build a "flexible, attractive, fast" website. AJAX is an example, it's a combination of ASP + JavaScript.

No, it is not. AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, and has nothing to do with ASP at all.

You are right. Because I made AJAX + ASP therefore I write so. Sorry, this is my mistake.

Well I just finished my assignments, and I believe php is harder than javascript.

I don't think either one is 'harder', there both fairly easy to pick up. All you need is a good book and take time to read the books and when there are exercises at the ends, make sure you do them, as they make you think. I would suggest you learn both of them as then you have more tools at your disposal when deciding which language to use when creating a dynamic site, Etc.

Dan