Learning Curve

Alright well, I’ve been dabbling in web design & development, and am happy with where my design skills stand. So now I am going to be working on the developmental aspect of it. I already have a fairly solid understanding of HTML /CSS, and so I’m wondering where I should go from here. I have virtually zero knowledge in Javascript, MySQL, and PHP ; these are things that I would like to learn and become fluent at. Any other things that I should add to my list?

So what I would like to know is what would be the most efficient order to begin learning these in? Is it possible to learn Javascript by jumping straight into the jQuery library, and if so would that be a good idea? I don’t think I plan on using too much straight Javascript.

If you have any other information that is vital to what I want to do as well, please chime in. I’d like to get started running with a good idea of what I’m leaping into.

You can start with jQuery but it always good to have a solid background knowledge in JavaScript. It makes a lot of thing easier when developing with jQuery.

If you want to code some WordPress themes or other CMS systems than I would recommend you to learn PHP .

here’s a similar post I answered a couple of days ago… should help

http://themeforest.net/forums/thread/overwhelmed-with-tutorials/25401?page=2#234241

as for jQuery over Javascript… I would say find a quick tutorial on Javascript alone and go over it… you probably don’t need to go in depth with it right off the bat… however it probably helps speed up the jQuery learning curve to have a basic understanding of how JS works first…

good luck

www.cs50.tv << Huge huge help for me. Admittedly it starts with C.

JavaScript and jQuery are easy once you get a grasp on programming and are, in a roundabout sort of way just like PHP . I would suggest learning PHP first because most languages are basically the same aside from the syntax, you just have to learn the logic to create functions, constants, variables and so on.

For instance in jQuery:

//set variable foo based on id of this value
var foo = $("#this").val();
//check variable foo and if is equal to bar
if (foo == "bar") {
//show an alert with value of bar
 alert ("bar");
}

Same thing in PHP :

//set variable foo based on id of this value
$foo = "bar" 
//check variable foo and if is equal to bar
if ($foo == bar) {
//print value bar
 echo "bar";
}

JQuery is a javascript framework so it really makes no sense to learn jQuery without an understanding of the fundamentals of javascript. You do not need to know the complete ins and outs of every caveat of javascript, but you should understand the fundamentals. I have seen quite a few posts from people around the marketplace’s lately who have problems with jQuery, and most of the time it is boiling down to them not understanding javascript fundamentals. JQuery is meant to ease the pain of and enable the rapid development of javascript, it shouldn’t be thought of as a way to bypass learning javascript at all. IT IS JAVASCRIPT .

www.cs50.tv << Huge huge help for me. Admittedly it starts with C.

This is a great website!

First of all, you should have HTML and CSS completely nailed down. You have to be able to tackle any problems you may encounter, in your sleep. Once you have that down, you should start mastering what sells: Wordpress. Of course, you don’t exactly need to know PHP to learn Wordpress, but if you want to learn PHP first, that will really help later on.

From personal experience, I can tell you that Wordpress is very easy and fun to learn if you practice. And by practice I mean, try convertering an HTML theme into Wordpress.

Good luck!