I'm a college student (ME and just started CS minor/maybe double major) and I've been with an engineering firm for a few years now. Without getting into much detail, as of now we use excel spreadsheets for any data recording from tests, for client information, quotes, job numbers, etc. We are moving into automated equipment (built in-house) and it seems fitting to update our way of data-recording. I have a huge vision for creating a database and building a powerful web-app (to be accessible by any browser) that is both powerful and secure but very easy to use by lab technicians. I'm beginning with C right now (starting with the basics) and this summer I've bought a book on learning HTML from the ground up to get some basic web-design under my belt as well.
My question to those knowledgeable in the subject is this: To build said web-app, what foundations should I put in place in my education on specific platforms to build a powerful app that can be expandable in the future? Should I look into Ruby on Rails? PHP? Others? Again, I know almost next to nothing about these languages so if I could maybe get a road map on things to learn after HTML and C to get to the platform to build this, that'd be awesome.
I'm completely willing to learn, and I would have the available resources at the job to build this on a server (install a virtual machine LAMP, probably Ubuntu server). I'm the in-house IT person, we do have a company who handles the more complex things (VPN between three other offices, dealing with the windows server, those kinds of things), but I have quite a bit of say in the decisions that go on, so if I'm going to pitch the idea I'd like to make sure i can give an educated presentation and a timely goal.
Thanks in advance, and if I have anything wrong please correct me.
My question to those knowledgeable in the subject is this: To build said web-app, what foundations should I put in place in my education on specific platforms to build a powerful app that can be expandable in the future? Should I look into Ruby on Rails? PHP? Others? Again, I know almost next to nothing about these languages so if I could maybe get a road map on things to learn after HTML and C to get to the platform to build this, that'd be awesome.
I'm completely willing to learn, and I would have the available resources at the job to build this on a server (install a virtual machine LAMP, probably Ubuntu server). I'm the in-house IT person, we do have a company who handles the more complex things (VPN between three other offices, dealing with the windows server, those kinds of things), but I have quite a bit of say in the decisions that go on, so if I'm going to pitch the idea I'd like to make sure i can give an educated presentation and a timely goal.
Thanks in advance, and if I have anything wrong please correct me.