Debating web development toolsets

[Zbigniew Koziol]

In general, my feelings about various languages for web are similar to
these of others around.

Have in mind one factor yet when deciding what to use: how the
language is usefull for other tasks as well, for, let say,
administrative work, or other kinds of programming.

I used perl for a decade. Am not very good in it but not a freshmen
either. Now, I do not see much need to use it anymore. PHP can mostly
do the same by using a code which is easier readable. But I do like
perl for a lot of other tasks on the server, largely replacing other
scripting languages.

PHP is, in fact, an ugly languge, but most easy to learn and most
popular. Security, an important factor, depends more on programmer,
not on the language used.

I wish I could know better Python, and may be I will learn it more.
The reason is that it is pretty popular. Google for instance uses it,
and that makes me wonder should I not spend more time on it. Thats
another factor for considering.

I did not hear yet strong, convincining evidence that Rubby, Java or
.NET is worth of deep learning, and my first contacts with them were
not pleasent. In particular, in case of Java for instance, it rejects
me to learn how to work with new libraries. I would prefer rather to
write libraries myself, but in case of Java there is no much choice in
practice - we are exposed to learning again and again.

In general, it is also very usefull to have a reasonable command of
several programming languages. My experience with postgres, aquired
last years, was very helpfull: that database can work with Perl, Java,
Python, and many other languages, and that indeed gaved me a freedom
to decide what I want to use, and when. Some things can be done, for
instance, in Perl, some in Python, but each of them has certain
limitations, - and you are free to choose.

zb.
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