Posted by Dikkie Dik on 09/15/05 22:13

Mike Novecento wrote:
> Hi everybody,
> I am going to start a new company in a little while. The company will
> be founded when the first project will be in the alpha version. Several
> other projects will be done in future. My problem is determing what
> platform I should use.
>
> I know how to program in several languages but ignore this for the
> moment.
> I am going to start a big project like blogger.com, flickr.com,
> cragilists or something like that. The fact that the project will be
> (hopefully) popular implies security issues and application
> stress/scaling issues as well.
> For these reasons, I need to be very careful on the choise of the web
> development platform. I have 3 candidates:
>
> - PHP
> - Ruby on Rails
> - ASP.NET
>
> My aim is SPEED OF DEVELOPMENT, LOW TIME TO LEARN THE TECHNOLOGY and
> APPLICATION STRENGHT (to security and to scalability issues).
>
> Could you tell me what do you think of these 3 technologies for my
> needs. I am tempted by Ruby, but lots of people says it is not mature
> enough. Php, they say is not so secure and robust. ASP.NET I need 2
> years of study and 4000 pages, for doing an hello world (ok I am
> overestimating :-)).
>
> Can you help me? Tell me your comments?
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Mike
>
> PS: THANK-YOU, it is very important for my future the choise of
> platform for my company.
>
It is nice to see that your objectives each lead to another platform.
- Speed of development will probably lead to Ruby on Rails, especially
when your projects gets bigger. Be sure to take the unit tests seriously
if you really want speed of development.
- Low time to learn suggests ASP .NET. You can "drag" a webpage together
fairly easily. However, if you *really* want things done, it is at least
as difficult as any other platform.
- As PHP gives you very much control over what exactly is sent to a
browser, it may be a good option for strength. But the strength can only
come from the programmer. It can be weakened by the platform, not made
stronger.

Best regards

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