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Development Tools

thomas howard
thomas howard
17,572 Points

What stack should I use to develop

I've been learning coding for a couple of months. Android and iOS have SDKs to assist in development of their apps, but what stack should I use to develop websites?

I use a Mac. I realize that .Net says they are coming to Mac but lots of this stuff is still over my head. I'm already developing websites, well designing them. Then I have to wait for weeks or months until the actual coders fix something. I'd like to cut them out of the process over the next few years.

What stack would you, or do you, use to develop websites on your Mac?

thanks.

3 Answers

William Li
PLUS
William Li
Courses Plus Student 26,868 Points

If you wanna know the web stack for developing site. I suggest you to take Treehouse's "PHP" or "Ruby on Rails" Track, these are two of the most popular.

I am not sure why you mention about Microsoft's .Net here, because to the best of my knowledge, Treehouse doesn't teach .Net development here. Yeah it's another web stack for developing site, but this one is closed courses and owned 100% by Microsoft, as opposite to the Open Source stack PHP and Ruby on Rails embrace. There's nothing wrong in using .Net to develop site. If you have a Mac, The Mono platform brings .Net support for the Mac, but it's not nearly as robust as the Visual Studio on Windows.

thomas howard
thomas howard
17,572 Points

Thanks, William. I'll definitely take that after I am done with the front end track. I mentioned .Net because of when trying to pull my existing sites the I only designed, but know very little about editing or developing, and see how I can revise the websites and then run them before making them live, I ran into a problem. How do you develop a web application and test the changes you make to it, without actually having to put it live on your website?

I hope the php track will shed light on that. my current site is developed in php, but there are numerous things that must be changed to make it work better. here it is: www.newsmeme.org

If you checked it out, you can see that aspects of it must be changed to make what it offers easier to access. But without an editor to go through its code and tweak how it is presented, or how the user is taken onto the process of memeing internet content...well. It's frustrating.

It will take much time. But something about getting my news filtered through memes appeals to me.

Ian VanSchooten
Ian VanSchooten
3,549 Points

I think that picking a technology comes down to what you are most comfortable in and enjoy the most.

PHP and Ruby on Rails are excellent suggestions. If you don't want to jump in feet first, you can also look at using a content management system (CMS) like Drupal. Drupal is built with PHP, and I've found it a great way to get my feet wet in the PHP world. You can get as in-depth with it as you like, while still being able to build a site without a whole lot of coding if that's what you're after.

If you're more of a front-end developer/designer, perhaps JavaScript would be another good language to get familiar with if you're not already.