What do you think is the best language to learn for use on the web. I know they all have their different strengths, as a prog. language is simply a tool, but where is the best place to start with programming for the web?
Obviously PHP,Mysql,Its little bit easy, .NET is related with JAVA. So if u r good enough in JAVA then u can use .NET for web programming,if u good enough in C++,u can use php,mysql.
The benefit of Apache/PHP/MySQL/etc route is that server, database, language is essentially free and can be run on almost any platform (windows, linux, mac, unix, etc), it is also used on nearly 98% of all hosting providers, so much population of potential users. Also as the language/server can run on nearly any platform, there are plenty of editors that are available for multiple platforms. .Net while may be more powerful in some aspect has stricter requirements, you need to have a windows-based webserver, needs to be powerful enough to run windows plus the web application you created (perhaps more power than needed by PHP on a *nix server to do the same task), the licensing of windows server and the .net development tools are not free as a result also makes the monthly hosting fee more expensive than a linux based hosting. .Net web development in my opinion falls under special needs situations, such as enterprise needs, while PHP could accomplish much of the same, most of the IDEs are not designed to be used by teams of developers in a enterprise setup. I used to work with ASP and Visual C++ interacting with both Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle for a few years before I eventually switched to PHP/MySQL route.
What else is there besides Javascript for client-side web scripting without limiting yourself to one operating system or browser?
Ruby on rails is a great language to learn (pretty easy and structured, so you won't mess up) More and more hosts are supporting rails so it's only going to continue to grow. Ofcourse, PHP is a very good second option.
I think most likely the server side stuff. I heard that client side is pretty easy to pick up. It seems based on some of these responses that php is pretty easy to learn to. I already have some experience with java too.