What's The Best Language For creating a Social network?

Question

I'm a newbie programmer looking to start a niche social network. I'm looking for opinions on what you guys believe is the best language to create it in.

It's a mixed media site with all the usual functions including:

• profiles
• user to user messaging
• new feeds
• individual user blogs
• user video/picture galleries

I am not willing to use a white label solution like kickapps/ning and the site needs far more customization than they can offer. The site will be a hub of information for males aged 18-30 and a place for them to learn, connect and contribute in a specific field.

Any thoughts or help would be greatly appreciated. At the moment I'm leaning towards Ruby.

Answer 1

Given that you're a self-confessed 'newbie', I don't think the language choice is as important as the technology you will use. Assuming you don't know any languages well, you can't leverage that knowledge when building your application.

I think you should be looking at your requirements, such as:

• Do I need fast turnaround?
• Do I want very high scalability?
• Is 24/7 accessability important?

Even questions like:

• Can I find any programmers with the skills required?

could make the difference between success and failure of a commercial venture.

Answer 2

If I am not mistaken (I don't use it or much else in terms of social networking) Facebook is done with PHP. MySpace I think is ASP.NET based.

This is supposed to be an example of two of the most commercially successful social networks out there. Maybe picking PHP or ASP/ASP.NET isn't going to be the most ideal, but I don't see how providing a few real-world examples is going to be worse than being told "just pick whatever you are familiar with".

Answer 3

I'd lean towards Django/Python. That would allow me to easily integrate with Google App Engine when the project gets large enough that I need lots of servers and storage space.

Answer 4

I don't believe there's anything special about a social networking app that makes it different from any other database-backed web app.

The accepted wisdom is that web apps be written in a framework - Rails, Spring, whatever. Go with whichever one of those you're most comfortable with.

Work on the overall architecture first. You might end up doing things in more than one language. For example you might write a RESTful API in one framework, then write a user-oriented Web interface that backends onto that.

Answer 5

I think you should go with the language you are most familiar with. Almost any mainstream programming language these days have decent web development frameworks, but you could save a lot of time and brains if you were familiar with the language.

Answer 6

Based on the requirements

• Fast turnaround
• Learnability (since you're a newbie)
• Scaling till up to 1 million!

You can use ASP.Net Webforms in VB (easier to learn than anything else). For database you'll need something fast, either get MS SQL pro, or get MYSQL/PostGres (don't go for the Express Edition of MS Sql, it's hobbled and will not give you juice for a million members).

That or ANY language that you can work well in is suitable.

Answer 7

I think you can go with any language you want. PHP, Python, Ruby or Java, just to name a few. The language is not the bottleneck of such applications, but you should use a fast and scalable database like Postgresql, cache as much content as possible in memory (memcached etc.).

Answer 8

Just pick one and go for it.

It's more important to get things done than bumble about thinking about the best way to do it.

Answer 9

There is no 'best' language.

Nothing inherent about PHP/Ruby/.NET/J2EE/Whatever means it will be better or worse - it will depend entirely on the architecture of your solution.

Do what works for you to get something prototyped pretty quickly. Ruby (on Rails) is certainly not a bad choice.

Then optimise later if you need to (which in social networks is a nice problem to have)

Answer 10

Look at Erlang. It is work which this language is designed for.

Answer 11

If you're looking to teach yourself programming, then the advice is already here: pick a language you like the look of, and go for it.

If you're looking for some technology that will help you with an existing problem, then I would not advise starting from scratch - you will not be able to keep up with demand (bugs, features, etc) from your network users.

I would take a serious look at an existing platform to build your network upon. Ning is the one that springs to mind; I think they let you program in PHP.

I would also consider some of the Google tools, including OpenSocial, AppEngine; these will be programmed with Javascript and Python respectively. Ning and AppEngine will host the server side code for you.

Good luck

Answer 12

The best language to write a social network is a social network language, something like a DSL specifically designed for this. Unfortunately such a language does not exist (you could write it in LISP).

Other alternatives are php (facebook is written in php) or ruby or python or even java (Hi5) or ASP (myspace).

You can see some arhitecture choice made by large social newtorks

Facebook (php) Friendster (php) Plenty of fish (asp.net) Myspace (asp.net 2.0) Twitter (ruby) or Hi5 (java)

Answer 13

Er, whatever your users speak, surely? ;)

Answer 14

look at elgg, this is a social network written in php.

It might help.

Answer 15

Broken english.

Oh, you mean Programming language.

Answer 16

I understand what you meant by your question, but, in reality, most of the main web languages (PHP, Ruby, Python, ASP.net, heck even Perl) will get you where you want without too much of a difference.

The more important questions are:

• Which language do you feel most comfortable with and have relevant experience with?

• Which framework would be best for creating a social network? (Symfony, Zend, Rails, Django, etc)

I recommend having a look at http://elgg.org/. It's a PHP-based social networking project, so most of the code will be there for you already.

Answer 17

the site will be a hub of information for males aged 18-30 and a place for them to learn, connect and contribute in a specific field.

Stackoverflow.com matches this definition quite well. ;)

If you like Ruby, use Ruby. Whatever language which has a usable web framework is a fine choice.

Answer 18

It is Microsoft FoxPro 9. I tried it and it proved like very good RAD. For web deploy use PHP & Dreamweaver. Apache like web server. Forget rest.

Answer 19

Just a tip, don't reinvent the wheel. Start from an easily customisable and flexible CMS like Drupal. There is a guide on how to set up a social network with Drupal on drupalfun.

Answer 20

Why, assembly, of course.