Which programming language is the best for my needs?

Question

I'm interested in building a site that has several interactive features for the users, yet want the site to be relatively light and avoid using Java or Flash. The site will start small but will hopefully be scalable. I realize developers tend to prefer a specific language and/or CMS and am wondering if you think a particular language would be best for creating a site with these features:

Short user profiles, photo upload, automatically generated thumbnails, a simple rating system, photo galleries, a blog section, ability to serve ads, user verification, polls, forms to enter contests, a taggable, searchable how-to library, a video library (using videos hosted on other sites)

Answer 1

I would recommend using Django framework which is based on Python language.

Answer 2

If you want cost effective solutions then I will suggest you to go with LAMP. You will get almost all your required features in free open source scripts. Again the development of LAMP is comparatively cheap then ASP.Net.

By LAMP I mean Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP.

The hosting expenses of LAMP are also comparatively cheap.

Answer 3

I'd recommend you checkout Drupal CMS. Drupal covers almost all of your needs by means of drupal modules and/or drupal core itself.

Using drupal is easy, you don't have to be a programmer. Eventually you can hire a drupal programmer to take care of certain things that may not come with drupal or may not have any modules available. The other plus of a drupal programmer is that they are already familiar with the technology and can help you much more faster.

Answer 4

I would go for a python or ruby web application framework, say Django or ruby on rails, if this is going to be a single developer project it would probably make sense to leave it open on what framework to use - familiarize yourself with the frameworks and interview a wide variety of candidates.

Hire the best applicant and go for the framework of his/her choice - if he's any good, he can definitely tell why his choice is better than the other ones, not just claim that "it is" (or worse, it is the only one I'm familiar with)

wikipedia list of the frameworks

Answer 5

Any language will do the trick (although Prolog could be too tricky). Use what you know best unless you want a tradeoff for self-education in which case use the language you want to learn next.

Answer 6

It's a tradeoff. "First with the worst" is a time-honored recipe for success. That would be PHP, huge first-place presence, cheap hosting, lots of existing frameworks, lots and lots of bad code. More sophisticated, in second place, would be Python. Yet more sophisticated, in third place, is Ruby. I'm not exactly sure where perl ranks in web development.

Note that you will tend to attract a slightly different kind of partner/developer/employee with each choice.

If it were me, I would go with Ruby plus a framework, perhaps RoR, unless one of the PHP CMS packages was really close to what I needed.

So much for opinions, here is a language and platform agnostic thing to consider: with the recent availability of cheap VPS hosting, you really can have any kind of site you want, yet you don't need to run your own machine room. It makes Java and the other JVM languages more attractive, I think.

Answer 7

There is no absolute answer; You will have as many answers than users.

Do not re-invent the wheel!

First of all you will need to define your wishes - almost done.

Then choose a product regarding to the price.

Finally, find a specific employee.

For your needs, you can look at:

• joomla
• sharepoint
• eroom
• openText
• blog platform
• framasoft, chapter CMS

Answer 8

Some thoughts:

I highly recommend against Drupal. My experience is that it is entirely too bloated to be considered less than obese (let alone light).

I've heard NOTHING good about wordpress.

Joomla has a good reputation, but it also has the reputation of having a higher learning curve (I've never spent real time with it). If you're hiring someone, however, this should be irrelevant.

Personally, my favorite systems in PHP are from EllisLab Inc. -- Expression Engine and Codeigniter. Both of these are very well written and generally lay a groundwork for reliable and maintainable code.

Ruby generally has the reputation of being simple enough to build in.

I would use caution with Python, because it is in the midst of a transition between incompatible versions and that could be hell.

Answer 9

The best setup would be COBOL, with a UNIVAC on the back-end for storage and a vintage Enigma machine in between.

Or, alternatively, find the person you want to hire and let them decide. From the tone of your question, it would appear that you don't trust your technical abilities. What makes you think that you're going to get good advice from a bunch of random people on the internet?

Find a good consultant that has done work similar to what you're trying to do and let them decide on the tools. In the long run that will be the cheapest because paying someone to learn a new set of tools will be much more expensive than any other costs that might be associated wit ha particular set of software.

Answer 10

I'd go for ASP.NET.. it's trivial to build the things you mention with WebForms, although I would go for MVC in a larger project.. just my 2 cents..

as far as hosting expences goes Windows and Linux is nowadays pretty much the same...