Which language to use for writing an admin console à la webmin ?

Question

Hi,

We have an in house developed web-based admin console that uses a combination of C CGI and Perl scripts to administer our mail server stack. Of late we have been thinking of cleaning up the code (well, replacing most of it), making the implementation more secure, and improving the overall behavior.

I don't have much programming knowledge, but I use Ruby on and off (mainly for writing erb templates), and hence was thinking of using ruby/rails for developing such an app (off-duty for now, I also need to learn stuff !).

Before blindly picking up a language though, what would you folks suggest ? Please let me know if this is too vague a question, I'll try to supply more information, if needed.

Answer 1

Without knowing much about your existing application I'd say that this effectively boils down to "which language do you like to work with?".

Python and Ruby are both mature languages with ample library infrastructure. They also boast popular, similar web application frameworks namely Django and Ruby-on-Rails respectively.

Since you are porting an existing Perl app(lets) it may be worthwhile to note that Ruby is relatively more similar to Perl. Not surprising given that Ruby was influenced "primarily by Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel and Lisp".

Answer 2

If you already know a bit of ruby, then there's no reason not to use that.

If you're interested specifically in learning another language, then what you're trying to do could be done in pretty much any language/framework, it's just a matter of which one you want to learn.

Answer 3

Have you considered writing your applications as Webmin modules?

You get a lot of stuff for free when you do so (users and groups, tons of security features, a pretty big variety of helper functions related to config files, and tons of existing code for most aspects of a UNIX/Linux system). You also get a lot of stuff for nearly free, like action logging, packages and updates via wbm or apt or yum, an online help system, etc.

There are some cons, as well. It's an old codebase, so it has some clunky bits in the API among other places. A lot of the old modules can be a bit hard to grok if you're not an old-school Perl programmer. But, it's a well-maintained codebase, and it's been banged on by millions of users for over a dozen years. It's pretty robust. The UI isn't beautiful, but it is relatively theme-able, and if you're distributing a minimized version it becomes easier to customize the UI.

I suspect you can be up and running a lot faster than starting from scratch or using most existing frameworks that aren't targeted specifically to building systems management interfaces the way Webmin is.

Also, it's BSD licensed, so you can do whatever you want with it, including building a custom commercial app with it (hundreds of companies have done so over the years).

Answer 4

django has a nice admin interface