application and web app technologies
January, 2006. I do not intend to start any kind of flame war, but only to seek advice about different technologies concerning which I am mostly ignorant. I am the database manager for a unit of a major state university. A part of my job includes building database access and web enabled applications for student services, faculty, and staff. These include both information gathering applications and dynamic updates from our big database to other applications. About 90 percent of our current programming is in Perl. Of the rest, some is in ColdFusion, some is in VB6, and we may have snippets in other languages. I might add that our WWW pages are all in ColdFusion, which we like very much and have no interest in changing. I have been tasked by me IT department with investigating different technologies for what will be a total rewrite and major update of our applications. The problem with Perl is that it seems dowdy and old fashioned, and that we never really investigate alternatives. We just fell into Perl because that's what people knew. Also, we have had some staff changes, and updating Perl code, some of which is years old, has proved to be a real nightmare. Perl works great! ... but trying to read and modify someone else's code, or even your own, is pretty darn tough. A real important part of this is database connectivity. We use a number of different databases, Access, SQL Server, Datatel (the big University DB), PostgreSQL (my favorite), MySQL, and a couple of others. Here is where we currently are: * Java/JSP -- We have already made the decision to go with Java, but we haven't started with it, and have not committed to Java. * Python -- Some of us have had limited experience with Python. * Ruby -- We have a Ruby advocate here, but no one knows anything about it. * .NET/ASP -- We have a MS shop, I think that we have two UNIX servers out of several dozen, and we are pretty firmly committed to Windows, but no one is real excited about .NET, and the chances that we will choose .NET seem real remote. Are there any advantages to using .NET? * OO Perl/Perl6 -- Perl has worked real well for us, but we have doubts that it is the best technology, and we want to make a serious attempt to look at other things. * C/C++ -- I mention this only because this is what IT uses. We have no interest in C/C++, unless it really is the best. We want something that we can use across the board, from web apps to sys admin (which is why ColdFusion is not a candidate). I'm not interested in advocacy, but if anyone has experience in and compare these technologies, we would be grateful for your experiences. My apologies for cross posting, I don't do it often, but I'd like to reach as wide an audience as possible. CC -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: application and web app technologies
> It might help if you elaborated on what these "doubts" are. It doesn't sound > like you know any of the languages you've listed and are hoping that somehow > you'll find one magical beast by cross-posting to a bunch of groups. I don't > expect you're going to have much luck. No, we don't know any of these languages. I'm reasonably competent in Perl, and I have used some Java and Python (and taught C++ a lng time ago but have never actually written any C++). The problem is that none of us can compare apples to apples, even though we more or less can do what needs to be done with the tools we know. I don't expect the 'magical beast.' What I do expect is several posts along the following lines: 'We faced a similar situation, and used X, Y, and Z. X proved the best choice because of reasons A, B, and C. The problem with Y was D and the problem with Z was E.' > That said, Perl is still one of the best choices for both Web and admin > scripting, and I don't see that you'd gain anything by rewriting all of your > existing code to Ruby or Python just for the sake of saying you now use Ruby > or Python (not that there's anything wrong with either, but why rewrite code > for the sake of rewriting it?). I agree with you about Perl, and CPAN is a fab resource, but the reason we need to rewrite the code is because (1) it doesn't work (due to external changes) and (2) it takes us less time to write new routines that it does to decypher the old ones and modify them. Besides, I work in an academic setting, and when people ask you what you use, I have learned to cringe when I reply, 'Perl.' CC -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Computer Language Popularity Trend
I, too, attempt to track the popularity of computer languages, but I like to look at the job boards. My theory is that the number of employers looking for particular skills indicates the relative popularity of the language. This is a somewhat crude measure, particularly with Microsoft technologies (VB, VB6, VB.NET, VS, etc). I think it's much more reliable with open source languages, such as Java, Perl, PHP, and so on. 'Popularity' is a slippery concept as well. C isn't real popular in terms of jobs, but it is in terms of compensation. In system administration (which I also follow), Windows has large numbers of jobs, but a low level of compensation. OSes like AIX on the other hand have lower numbers of available jobs, but those tend to be more highly compensated. One could argue that compensation is a function of popularity, with the more unpoular technologies having carrying a bigger price to attract more people -- an example of supply and demand -- but then one would have to argue that garbade collectors should be more highly compensated that physicians. You can also get a rough measure ot the popularity of web scripting languages from an analysis of the URLs. The last time I did this was in 2003, and as I recall, these were the results: PHP 30% and increasing Perl 28% and falling ASP 25% and falling fast ColdFusion 6% and steady Java and JSP 5% and increasing others, Python, Ruby, ... Again, this is a very rough measure. Java, for instance, is used by big companies (like auto manufacturers, aerospace industries, defense contractors, big retailers, etc.) One site/one vote isn't representative necessarily, plus the bigger companies employ more people than the smaller companies that tend to use FOSS. Finally, in my area, we have a lot of banking and insurance jobs. These companies internally are exclusively Microsoft shops. It's virtually impossible to work there unless you know Visual Studio and SQL Server. Misrosoft people tend not to prowl the newsgroups, and I would suspect that any measurement based on numbers of newsgroup postings would be skewed for this reason. CC -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Computer Language Popularity Trend
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > At the site I'm working on, you'd see a URL like > http://www.whatever.com/login or http://www.whatever.com/boards?id=131 > -- how would you count them? Such (extensionless) URLs are far more > common in the Python, Ruby, and Java world in my experience than the > PHP, Perl, and ASP world, so my first instinct looking at your numbers > is to believe they're just biased toward languages that more often put > the extension in the URL. Yeah. CGI is more than Perl, CGI also includes TCL and Python, and perhaps some others. In my limited JSP developments, we didn't use file extensions. I don't think you can use any measure as an accurate yardstick, but rather as an impressionistic canvas. Just because there are five times as many .cgi extensions as .jsp extensions doesn't mean that Perl is five times more popular that Java. Also, web apps tend to stick around, and we don't have a sure way to gauge the age of these pages, so it could be that, in the last year, the ration of JSP to CGI pages is five to one in favor of JSP. To some extent, the popularity of technologies is driven by the available resources. If there are many more Java programmers than Perl programmers, then Java wil appear to be more popular, and vice versa. I know that colleges and universities teach Java in their CS and IS courses, and they don't teach Perl. CC -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: proliferation of computer languages
On Jul 18, 1:17 pm, "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Today, i took sometime to list some major or talked-about langs that > arose in recent years. You missed PowerShell and ActionScript. Languages are just tools. It may have escaped your notice, but it's a remarkable fact that no two languages are alike! It's not the language that we should focus on, but the task at hand. Personally, I feel that we can gain a lot more by studying the different kinds of problems we can solve by computing and relate the language to the job, rather than learning a language and then trying to find a fit with a particular class of problems. If you look at TIOBE and the like, you will note that the top four language categories (Java/JavaScript, C/C++, Basic, and Perl/Python/ Ruby) account for around eighty percent of the language usage (not counting PHP), and all the other languages quickly fall off. No. 13 on the TIOBE rating was PL/SQL at 0.073 percent. If you read the employment ads (Dice, etc.) the percentage is even greater for the big languages. To me, this indicates that we have several mainstream languages that account for the vast majority of work and a vast number of task specific languages for special purposes. CC -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
