Best Language for an AJAX-driven "Reputation Index"

Question

I'd like to produce a fun AJAX-driven "Reputation Index" taking from Cory Doctorow's book "Down an Out in the Magic Kingdom" where "Whuffie" is a measurement of reputation/currency.

I'd like to allow people to create accounts, login, see other people and assign positive or negative amounts of "whuffie" to them. There would then be an "overview" of sorts, or the actual "index" (like a stock market) that would list the whuffie scores sorted by whatever means.

Obviously I'll need a database, and I have easy access to mySQL (as I lease a dedicated server used for webhosting).

I'm curious as to what everyone thinks would be a better language for this. It's web-based, therefore I'm thinking either PHP or Rails (since I've got books on Rails). Any suggestions?

Answer 1

It's six of one, half a dozen of another. PHP and/or Rails will certainly handle this just fine, as would ASP.NET, JSP, etc., along with any other major web paradigm/platform/language.

My personal choice (in your shoes) would be PHP however, for market reasons. Rails is still coming of age whereas PHP is everywhere, and so long as you're doing MySQL anyway you might as well go full-on LAMP.

Answer 2

I think you've pretty much summed up my thoughts. I don't think I'll be seeing any other suggestions, and I'm pretty comfortable with your answer, CodingTheWheel. Accepted!