JSP or RUBY/PHP?

Question

At my technologies crossroads and would like to hear some words of wisdom or tales of caution. I am on the verge of assembling a development team and all things are set save my controller layer - which way should I proceed..? I personally am an experienced Java programmer and would certainly never even consider ASP (ever) but, would certainly consider Apache with PHP or Ruby.

Considerations:

• Development timeline of 6 month (so speed is key)
• Heavy data processes (VERY HEAVY)
• Heavy media experience
• Potential parallel usage by thousands users

Your thoughts on the pros and cons of server scripting vs interpreted coding would be very much appreciated.

Thanks!!

Answer 1

If you've got java experience, have you considered Lift?

http://liftweb.net/

Other than that, ruby is a good choice, you don't need to worry about speed of processing. Contrary to what you might have heard, Ruby and Rails can scale quite well.

Answer 2

Will, you may hit all your goals with any of listed technologies, and JSP looks good, if you are ready to continue with heavy app servers e.t.c :-)

If your app does not require complex transactions and multithreaded syncronization, overcomplicated interfaces, you might be good with php or ruby. They both are good and have positive results in huge applications.

Personally, I think PHP have easier learning curve for JAVA developer (comparing to Ruby), and gives you first results faster. And it is much easier to find decent hosting for PHP .

Other than that Python(&Django) is also great and suitable. You may play around with Google AppEngine if you have some fun time.