What language would you choose for a greenfield project?

Question

What is the greenfield language of business choice today, assuming:

• no legacy applications to integrate with
• time to market is high priority
• reusability is high priority
• Size and maturity of developer pool is very relevant

Would outsourcing be relevant in the choice? Is hardware platform (and associated cost) relevant?

Answer 1

Java scores moderate/high on all of the points you listed. It's not the fastest language to develop in, but there's a really huge pool of talent to choose from.

Answer 2

Depends a lot on the industry.

Answer 3

Java or C#/.Net seem to be the most obvious choises, but of course that depends on what you are going to create. If it's something web related, php, python or ruby are also options with many skilled people available.

Answer 4

Depends of the project.

• If you're developing for enterprise - Java (EE)
• For the web - Ruby on Rails, Python with Django or PHP with a Rails-inspired framework
• Embedded - I guess C is still the king.
• MS shop - C#