Last Christmas, I got a Raspberry Pi b+ and installed apache2 LAMP web server on it. I decided I would make this huge project with MySQL and RSA cryptography. But after a while on stack overflow, I realized that the only thing to do is learn Backend. I’ve been bouncing off courses for awhile. I would like to learn PHP or node.js in a (free) course. Any thoughts?
PHP is long dead man, go for node.js, or even better go for python. Python is used in backend, ai, data science.
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The first tutorial I would go to is the this at MDN
Then I would follow the Mosh Hamedani course on node/express/mongo but that is not free.
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What do you mean by “learn backend” though, what are you trying to do? PHP imo is simplest for you to work with now, because you should be able to just turn on the extension on Apache (if it isn’t already enabled). ie you already have a server, and if you want to render out HTML based on requests to the server, that facility is there via PHP.
Hi @partlybakedideas, if you want to learn node, I’d suggest to look for the Hong Kong university on Coursera.
At the moment I’m auditing 4 of their courses and I really like them.
One of those is “server-side development with NodeJS, Express and MongoDB”.
You can enroll on the Coursera courses for free. You pay only if you want the certificate.
The university of Michigan instead has some courses of PHP (on Coursera still), but I don’t know how they are because I’ve never enrolled on those.
PHP is far from dead. The top leading CMS (WordPress) covers about 70% of public facing websites on the Internet. With WordPress continuing to grow, there is a consistent need for strong PHP developers that can implement original themes and plugins, as well as manage the existing site.