What's the best technology for a medium complexity web application?

Question

I'm planning to work on a web application of reasonable complexity and am wondering what technology to go with. It will probably start with one person, but there will be 2 or 3 more eventually. My first requirement is to be able to do this as quickly as possible - preferably with as less code as possible. Secondly requirement is that it should be able to scale easily.

I have worked with .NET and PHP. So, I am thinking about ASP .NET MVC or CakePHP. It appears to me that CakePHP might be quicker. I did look at Ruby on Rails, but the learning curve is a little steep (which is not an issue if I can be convinced that this is the best tool for the task), I'm not too crazy about the huge number of files generated and I have heard about scalability issues as well as it's applicability to complex situations.

I look forward to your opinions on your favorite technology and why.

Answer 1

I started with PHP and moved to ASP.NET webforms and now am working with ASP.NET MVC. I can say that I love MVC, and will not go back to webforms.

I have built applications faster with MVC than any other.

The only thing to mention is that PHP has a lot of tools/plugins that can make development faster, but MVC will catch up.

Answer 2

Despite the fact that many might disagree with me on this, I think the simple answer is your application will be written the quickest with whatever platform you are most comfortable/experienced in. Both ASP.Net and PHP can be written in quickly and will both scale extremely well if you have the experience to do so. Also either have a good market for future developers if you need to hire more. It is a question of what makes you comfortable.

Answer 3

ASP .NET MVC is the better choice as long as you have the host resources for an ASP.Net website.

Answer 4

CakePHP is very robust and keeps things structured. Of course most any framework will provide the same. CakePHP handles some popular sites (like the mozilla firefox addon site). It is very simple to get running quickly. It is also very extensible. It has a vendors directory where you can integrate existing classes for use within the MVC architecture. Documentation is very well done and can be found online at cakephp.org. I have had great success with CakePHP. It takes all of the headaches our of the code and allows you to focus on YOUR code. It allows you to develop functionality instead of all of the necessary rudimentary issues of getting a website setup.

Answer 5

+1 for ASP.NET MVC