Oh yeah, I forgot to answer your questions, Heather:
heather29926 said:
..how many programming languages are there?!
There are quite a few, but right now the "big three" are ASP, ColdFusion, & PHP (and don't forget about Perl).
heather29926 said:
..and how in the world do you decide which one to use/learn?!
It really just boils down to what you feel most comfortable with and what is most accessible to you. About a year and a half ago I was trying to decide which path to take.
I chose not to use ASP because I didn't want to be bound to Windows servers & Microsoft. Additionally, while the base install of ASP may come with IIS, some of the extra functions that are included in other languages are add-on's for ASP which cost extra.
I chose not to use ColdFusion because it wasn't free. If I wanted to do development work on my computer, I wanted to be sure I could run the code on my computer to test it out with IIS or Apache. Without shelling out extra cash, this wouldn't be possible with CF.
This left Perl & PHP. Both are open source and free. Both will run on either Linux/Unix or IIS servers. I did some research (some of it here at Tek-Tips) and decided to go with PHP. I'm very happy with my decision and haven't looked back since.
Each of the above languages are very good. If you have any previous programming experience, then they should all be fairly easy for you to pick up. If you've had Basic or Visual Basic experience, then ASP would probably be easiest for you to learn. However, if you've had C++ or Java experience, then PHP/Perl would be easiest to learn. I've never used CF, so I don't know which programming language it is most similar to.
Hope that helps.
Ron
“If you are irritated by every rub, how will you be polished?”
~ Mevlana Rumi
murof siht edisni kcuts m'I - PLEH