Run BASIC - Zero Configuration Web Application Server

I found a blog post today that compared PHP with Ruby on Rails in terms of how much easier PHP is to install and configure than Ruby on Rails. Both of these systems are composed of at a minimum:

• A web server (usually Apache)
• A language interpreter for PHP or Ruby
• And usually a database server

And this is a simplification. The user needs to install and configure these things which requires knowing about a lot of esoteric stuff. If you've never done this before, you can lose some of your hair. Unless you like pain, why put yourself through this?

If you want to create your own web applications, Run BASIC will install everything ready to run in one shot. http://www.runbasic.com/

Why do people put up with complex programming systems? Because for more than a decade they had much harder tools, so now they think PHP and RoR are easy.

Moving Up From Web Design

Sometimes you will see people posting something like, "I've been creating web sites for years using HTML and FrontPage but I'd like to know how I can take the next step. How do I become a web developer?" Usually the answer provided is something like, "You should learn PHP."

Is PHP the answer? The answer is of course, it depends.

If you're just looking for a job skill you can put on your resume, then PHP may be exactly what the doctor ordered. But, if you are building your own sites or are doing custom work for a client, or want build something for use at the office, or if you just want to learn because programming interests you then you really should consider Run BASIC. You can get something going faster with Run BASIC than with more traditional web tools because Run BASIC is designed to be easy. It doesn't try to fit into the mainstream notion of a web tool. There are just too many of those.

Take a look at the site at http://www.runbasic.com/ for more information.

Learn Web Programming

What does it mean to learn web programming (or web development) anyways? Most of the time it means that you need to struggle learning a programming language, a web server, and a bunch of frameworks. When I tell people that they can learn web programming with Run BASIC their automatic response (unless they're complete newbies) is, why not learn one of the popular web programming systems? Why learn Run BASIC?

I'll tell you why. Because you don't need a thick book with Run BASIC. Because you don't need to install a whole bunch of stuff. Because you can create a program and put it on the Internet in the blink of an eye with Run BASIC. Because you can think about programming instead of about trying to satisfy all the requirements of Apache+Perl, or PHP, or Ruby, or whatever.

http://www.runbasic.com/