Which web development language / technology to focus on?

[beethoven]

I have always liked PHP for being open source. It also has a large number of people who want work, beyond ASP.NET. However, the jobs clearly pay less, and I believe ASP.NET pay has been getting better in recent years. The market, however doesn't seem quite as good, as there are less jobs, but the clients seem more corporate, which may or may not be a bad thing, since when one is starting out it would be hard to compete for such jobs -- on the other hand, one would eventually want to take on bigger, better paying jobs with more Microsoft-entrenched clients. (This is based on speculation on some quick research done at freelancer/contractor sites). So which one is better? Or should I just learn both? Which should I learn first?

[TheBearMay]

Might want to also look at JAVA/J2EE....

[Kuriyama]

Depends on what you want to do. Most companies out there are looking for .NET or J2EE developers.

At the end of the day it doesn't really matter what language you pick. Understand design patterns and web technology in general and you'll be fine. Make sure you pick up some basic system administrative skills as well as strong SQL knowledge.

[jason_zeng]

In fact, you do not learn from that language is the most important, the key is the kind of language you are most interested in, most would like to have. So that you can learn more and better deeper. You the opportunity to comment on more.

[textbox]

I would go with either C# or VB.net and SQL Server. We deal with recruiters and they all seem to recommend MS technologies.