Date: 07/14/06 (Web Development)    Keywords: technology, web, hosting

Hi people,

General question here. Say, I am about to create a huge web application, with potentially many accounts, different ways to communicate for account owners, different ajax implementations, and moreover, lots of smart algorithms, which will operate on the back-end and do different magical crap. Think okCupid sort of thing, with better design. (No, I'm not making online dating, but okCupid is the closest I've seen).

five important thingies:
1) Expandability (different features/modules should be addable without much pain)
2) Complete control over design (no pre-made stuff unless absolutely customizable)
3) Clear separation between designer and programmer. (well, as much as it's possible)
4) Quick development/good community
5) Fast-working result

five unimportant thingies (really, I don't care about them):
1) the difficulty of deploying the product to hostings
2) high price of hosting to support the technologies
3) lack of hostings that support technology
4) learning curve
5) that's it

Seems like my lists lean towards Ruby on Rails, but I'm afraid about its customizability (the designes of sites I saw made on Ruby sorta sucked). Also, the okCupid is made on C++. When I found that out, I thought "whoa". Then I thought, maybe it's a good thing, when you have to program lots of algorithms. Some say that J2EE is good for these things. People also argue about OO vs. view-centric approach. Help with your ideas please.

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/webdev/334983.html