As I mentioned before, one of the books I’m reading this month is about PHP, MySQL, and Javascript. One minor annoyance when working on server-size scripting is, of course, the need for a server. True, if you’re a student it may not be that much of a hassle to ssh in to the lab computers, but it’s still one more step, plus you may end up making things publicly available without intending it.
Personally, I want to work on my own computer with the tools I have installed here; at the moment that’s a Windows 7 machine (although I’ll be booting up linux later to play with Google Go). Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to set up a WAMP (Windows Apache/MySQL/PHP) and do everything locally. Right now I’m using EasyPHP; it’s a simple install and makes it easy to start and stop Apache and MySQL as needed.
I’ve never tried EasyPHP. If I’ve ever needed a WAMP setup, I’ve always used XAMPP ( http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html ) which worked pretty well. Tho, I’m still a Linux guy. I’d rather setup a Linux VM to accomplish the required dev tasks.
I would say is that Wampp or Xampp are both excellent but depdens if you are windows bind or if you like to try differents S.O. and what are you doing. I have XP, Win7 and Linux.