Jun 8, 2010

.NET , Ruby, ColdFusion, PHP or Java

If you had a brand new project to work on that was web based ( or Flex front end based ). What server side technology would you go with. I've been thinking about this alot recently and I'd like to hear your opinions. Things to consider might be:

Cost of Devlopment
Speed of Development
Availability of developers
Existing library's that may be leveraged
Your own fluency in a language
Size of project
Cost of server equipment
etc

Just to throw out an idea http://www.tweettrail.com is written in CFML originally running on CF8 and MSSQL but now running on my own VPS ( linux ), MYSQL and Railo all free and opensource. ACF and .NET just can't compete with that due to licensing costs yet if I had have used java or php it would have taken me alot longer to develop. Where as our larger app runs ACF we use cfreport heavily, we use the ajax controls and flex remoting that being said we feel we are not locked into CF and do discuss the idea of changing languages.
Posted by Paul Kukiel at 8:09 PM

7 comments:

  1. it depends on the project and team but if it was up to me, the whole world would run on a lamp stack. fast, lightweight, free, and tons of resources.

    if there are video streaming requirements i would go with red5 over fms. unless the client didn't mind paying the cost, then why not go all out(fms).

    for just remoting/service calls, i'd throw amfphp on a server and get the backend done in a couple hours, for free. ;)
    ReplyDelete
  2. flex? ColdFusion + BlazeDS seems like an awesome combo.
    ReplyDelete
  3. @Henry sure it does there are lots of great reasons to use CF + Blaze and Flex. I know your from Canada how is the CF market over there?
    ReplyDelete
  4. Paul,

    I Second Henry and my preference goes Railo CF(Free) + Flex will be the rocking combo ever.
    ReplyDelete
  5. Hmm ... the word 'cost' comes up three times in your post, the word 'free' at least once, and the phrase 'open source' at least once. Yet you are using the proprietary and expensive Cold Fusion?

    You can eliminate CF and .NET on licensing cost grounds. Java is an excellent choice, but it might take longer (at least if you don't know it already) and typically hosting is more expensive too. So, for the sake of argument, we'll eliminate it.

    I'd say that Ruby and PHP (with a decent framework, like Zend) are tied technically. (Ruby is probably the better language, but PHP is much more mature & supported).

    So, Ruby or PHP? Deciding factor: PHP hosting is widely available and is typically less expensive, so that's the tie-breaker.

    =================
    No, I'm not a PHP fanboy--just the opposite, in fact. If a client or employer were paying, I'd pick Java every time. If it was my own project (read: I don't have any money and I prefer open source server stacks), I'd experiment with NODE.js (+ an app server framework). YMMV!
    ReplyDelete
  6. Ahh of course I have to mention cost. However cost upfront for say ColdFusion can be really minimal. $1500 for CF9 standard is pretty cheap if you have a team of Devs that cost can be written off in less then a day of time saved. I guess one point I shoudl have added was cost of developers and time ( cost ) of development.

    That being said java is nice and well CF and java are friends so we get to leverage that aswell.

    At the same time is someone wants a simple blog I might just use one of the installers in one of my cheaper hosting packages to deploy wordpress.

    It's all relative.
    ReplyDelete
  7. @Anonymous just FYI: ColdFusion isn't proprietary (hasn't been for a very long time) and there are two 100% free and open source CFML engines to be found in Railo and OpenBD. He even specifically mentions this in his (RTFA) post! Ironically you even mention Zend, who's PHP server I believe costs just as much as the Adobe Coldfusion license.

    The added bonus with ColdFusion (and Railo) is that they are Java-based, on many levels just facades for Java development, which means you can really leverage a ton of Java resources too.

    With frameworks like FW/1 and ColdBox, and tools like ColdSpring, Reactor, and ORM, CF is a very viable (and, again, optionally 100% OS/free) choice. Obviously Flex integrates very well with ColFusion too, so that's another feather. Cheap hosting (HosTek, HostMySite.com), awesome CMS (Mura), tons of resources ... sounds pretty good to me.

    The Ruby and PHP guys will say pretty much the same about their languages, so really it's down to what best works for you.
    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)