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Thread: (ISF) Programming language
(ISF) Programming language
country flaguser name
United States		 2007-05-24 00:20:57 

  


  

    




  



    

            
Hi..Everyone!



I have already joined here for about one month, just want to say thank you for all your great information. Some are really usefull for me. A little information about my self is I've worked for non profit organization (refers to education in special needs) in Indonesia, I handle about 25 workstation today. And also worked as their design graphic for I have a little skills in that.




If I may have your opinion, because me & my team are trying to creating our own modified software. And nowadays programming language is good dan have lots of options. For further reason I want to ask you which proggramming language is better, consider their advantages dan disadvantages?



Thanks guys

 

Yours Faithfully,

 

Martha





    
  

    
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    (ISF) Re:  Programming language
  


  

     country flaguser name
United States		
     2007-05-24 17:10:53
  


  

    

  


  

    




  



    

            
Martha, there are a lot of choices in programming languages, but the decision, to a large extent, depends very much on who is doing the programming; what they're trying to create, and what the environment that the program will run in is like.  I don't believe that there's a broad "this is the best language" answer.  I also very much believe that, in staff and budget-constrained environments, programming is not the first resort.  If there is a pre-built application that meets the need, in most cases, you will do yourself and your organization a favor by using it instead of inventing something of your own.  A unique need should justify any development, and all parties in the organization should acknowledge the risks in developing  and relying on in-house solutions.



That said, it is important to set out with agreed upon standards for coding defaults and documentation; a development environment like subversion in place, and a team that includes users and management stakeholders determining what the functional requirements are.  Once that's all in place, and the goals and project are understood, then you can review the programming requirements.



Is this a desktop app or a Web-based app?  Does it need to integrate with other applications?  What is your environment - are you on a Windows, Mac or Open Source platform?  If you are interested in using an open source environment, is there initial expertise available to support it?  I highly recommend doing open source development - PHP, Python, Ruby on Rails, using a Linux or Mac platform, not a Windows platform.  If you standardize on .Net and an MS language like C# or Visual Basic, then you want to run it on IIS, not Apache.  Java is probably safe on either.



So, I can't answer your question.  I'm very, very interested in Ruby on Rails, because I see it as a fairly out of the box rapid application development environment for web 2.0 applications.  It has some powerful ways of simplifying DB management, instantly creating forms and default screens for you, and built in Ajax support that removes the need for intensive Javascript expertise.  If you invest in learning Ruby (which is no harder to learn than PHP or Visual Basic) and the Rails framework and assumptions, you can literally create functional web applications in minutes with it.  And the next release will give you a viable application programming interface (API) out of the box when you create that app.  I just got back from the annual Railsconf in Portland, Oregon, and I blogged a bit about it at http://techcafeteria.com/blog.



I'm also fond of PHP, which I've used for the last seven years or so, because it is very versatile, fairly easy to work with, and there are millions of places to go to see sample code and learn it.



If you need a Microsoft solution, .Net is a versatile platform and SQL Server is a very robust product, but you should plan on buying not only the hardware and software to support it, but Visual Studio and a Technet membership as well.  There are not as many free resources out there supporting Microsoft development as there are supporting open source languages.  During my last year at my former company, we did a serious investigation into porting a large PHP/MySQL app to .Net, and this was what we determined - others might disagree, and are welcome to.



-- 

Peter Campbell


http://techcafeteria.com



-----original message-----

>>If I may have your opinion, because me & my team are trying to creating our own modified software. And nowadays programming language is good dan have lots of options. For further reason I want to ask you which proggramming language is better, consider their advantages dan disadvantages?>>



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]






    
  

    
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    (ISF) Re:  Programming language
  


  

     country flaguser name
United States		
     2007-05-25 08:51:27
  


  

    

  


  

    




  



    

            
Most programming languages that survive for very long are reasonably useful, productive tools.  Some are more specialized than others, of course, so if you have very specific needs you might be tempted to go with a specialized tool than a more general-purpose one.  Perl for example is wonderful for text parsing, but would be a poor tool for general programming -- you can make Perl do a wide range of tasks, but some of them take really exotic efforts.




If you are setting up programming environment for a team or organization, however, one of the generalist languages would be better.  The organizational goal is to pick a single tool  (or integrated set of tools) that will meet most (if not all) of your needs.  If you are just getting started in programming, it should also be easy to learn and should have a large user community so you can find online help, sample scripts, etc.



Another organizational concern is whether or not you can find new staff already competent in the language to support and extend what the initial team puts into place.  I have seen several situations where a business-critical application was frozen because no one knew how to use the language it was written in.



Working in Indonesia (or anywhere outside the English language sphere), you should have an additional consideration.  Can you find documentation and training materials in languages other than English?  You don't want to create additional barriers for staff who want to attempt performing the programming function.



Good luck!




Michael D. Walls




-----original message-----

>>>If I may have your opinion, because me & my team are trying to creating our own modified software. And nowadays programming language is good dan have lots of options. For further reason I want to ask you which proggramming language is better, consider their advantages dan disadvantages?>>



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]






    
  

    
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    (ISF) Re:  Programming language
  


  

     country flaguser name
United States		
     2007-05-25 08:27:37
  


  

    
-----original message-----
>>If I may have your opinion, because me & my team
are trying to creating our own modified software. And
nowadays programming language is good dan have lots of
options. For further reason I want to ask you which
proggramming language is better, consider their advantages
dan disadvantages?>>


Oh, my, what a can of worms you have opened. Religious
ones.

It all depends on what you want to create, really. For
example: are you creating desktop software, or web-based
software? For desktop software, I think that the standard
probably is C++, although there are other options for sure.

If you're talking about web software - yaiii, that's a huge
can of worms - but what it is you are doing might sometimes
determine the language. Do you want to build on particular
frameworks or libraries that already exist? Are there
particular special things you want to do?

Here are the options (not exhaustive) with some of my own
ideas about them:

Perl: old standard, the original cgi-bin, where every
executable web application used to live. It's a very, very
mature language, used for just about everything. Some very
solid open source software has been written in perl.
However, it has fallen out of favor of late, because of ...

php: php was designed from the get go to be a web
application language, so it excels at that, and has really
gotten good. Generally considered the "P" in LAMP
(Linux, Apache, MySQL, php) - although perl and python also
count. Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress, and many, many open source
web applications are written in php. It's probably the one I
would choose, but some people, especially in the following
camps, don't think it's fully up to snuff.

python: this is where it really gets religious. Those who
develop in python swear by it's robustness and readability,
it's from-the-ground object oriented nature (both perl and
php did not start as object oriented languages, they became
object-oriented later - and some consider the OO-ness of
both to basically be a hack) and think it's the best. It's
used in Zope/Plone CMS.

Ruby: the new kid on the block. Core of "Ruby on
Rails" the new web application framework that's taking
the web by storm.

Java: derived from C++, but designed mostly for rich web
applications. Used for both rich GUIs over the web, as well
as server-side applications. Mostly used in big
enterprises.

Anyway, that's my summary. I'm sure others have other ideas.
And, truthfully, for the most part, in my opinion, starting
out asking "what programming language to use?" is
not a great place to start a project.

Peace,
Michelle

-- 
Michelle Murrain
http://www.metacentric.org

Blog: http://www.zenofnptech.org




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    (ISF) Re:  Language wars
  


  

     country flaguser name
United States		
     2007-05-25 10:37:25
  


  

    
-----original message-----
>> Perl: ... it has fallen out of favor of late,
because of ...>>




Too much perl code was "write once". It is far too
easy to write code that will never be understood a week from
now, much less a year from now. Of all the choices, this is
one you may want to avoid, but again, as other people have
noted, entirely subject to your specific needs and
resources. (If you have a working library of perl programs,
and someone who understands how to maintain them, by all
means, do so!)

ari




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    (ISF) Re: Language wars
  


  

     country flaguser name
United States		
     2007-05-25 11:45:30
  


  

    
-----original message-----
>>Too much perl code was "write once". It is
far too easy to write code that will never be understood a
week from now, much less a year from now. Of all the
choices, this is one you may want to avoid, but again, as
other people have noted, entirely subject to your specific
needs and resources. (If you have a working library of perl
programs, and someone who understands how to maintain them,
by all means, do so!)>>




Well, I think that certainly perl lends it self to that
better than a lot of better structured languages (like
python.) But, IMHO, that is the programmer's fault, not the
language's fault. It is utterly possible to make readable,
good, solid perl code. And one can make obfuscated php, for
sure (I've sen plenty!)

There is a great working perl library called CPAN (http://www.cpan.org). It is
amazingly rich.

Really, the readability and usefulness of code is a lot more
about the programmer, than it is about the language.

Peace,
Michelle

-- 
Michelle Murrain
http://www.metacentric.org

Blog: http://www.zenofnptech.org



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