What's a Good Resource for Learning Facebook Application/Game Development?

Question

I'm an expert software engineer and am interested in learning how to write a Facebook game. What languages are suitable for writing a Facebook game? PHP? AJAX? Flash? ASP.NET?

What's a good resource for learning Facebook development?

Answer 1

Languages you can use for Facebook app development:

• PHP - yes
• AJAX - maybe, not sure
• Flash - yes
• ASP.NET - I don't like Microsoft tech. Probably you can use it, but I wouldn't recommend it.

A good resource for learning Facebook development is their online documentation at wiki.developer.facebook.com, also the "getting started" tutorial.

Answer 2

You can develop facebook applications using .NET using the Facebook Developer Toolkit.

However, Facebook recently changed their platform, adding more integration points, and the toolkit has not yet been completely updated. As such, there are a few gaps in what facebook can do, and what is achievable using the toolkit. Also, many of the old tutorials are outdated due to the changes.

It's certainly possible, but it takes a fair bit of fiddling to get it to work as intended, you'll need to take a read of the project forum to find fixes.

So if you're happy using php, it may be better to go straight for the facebook provided php examples, which are linked to from the tutorial / anatomy page. That said, there's plenty to do if you fancy getting involved in an open source .NET project!

Generally though, it's a good starting point is to get your head around Facebook's integration points / api, resources you may find of use:

Tutorial / Anatomy
Wiki
New Design
FAQ
Dev Forums