[Klug-general] Web Scripting Languages

[J D Freeman]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Sat, Jan 06, 2007 at 04:56:52PM +0000, Matthew Macdonald-Wallace wrote:
> Following on from my emails about securing an apache server, and the
> comments recieved about PHP not necessarily being the most secure or
> system efficient web-application development platform, what do people
> think of the following languages?

You do realise that asking this here is bound to get a loverly flame war
going right :p

> 1) Python - my very limited understanding of this language leads me to
> believe that this is very powerful, very quick and fairly easy to use.

Pretty much. It has some querks, and unlike PHP which encourages poor
design and practice, python tries to enforce a version of good practice
upon you.

> 2) PHP - The language I know best.  Very powerful, however it's not
> without security risks.  I have been led to believe that the majority of
> these have been patched in the more recent versions, however it is
> resource intensive.

My views on PHP are not really suitable for public announcement, lets
just say it should never be used, IMHO :p

> 3) CGI - as I understand it, this is mainly done in Perl. It seems to be
> incredibly powerful and does everything that PHP does but in a more
> efficient way, provided that you can program the code accordingly.

CGI isn't a language, its an interface, with CGI you can write a program
in any language you want, be it perl, C, java, even PHP, or for the
sick, assembler. It just defines an interface for calling the program
and receiving bits of the http request etc...

> 4) SSI - easy to use and learn, doesn't need external programs as it is
> integreated into Apache.

I am so going to get flamed for this one but:

5) Java.

I actually like java, it has many flaws I know, but, it allows for you
to follow some good software engineering practices and scales very well.
Some of the libraries are brain damaged to hell and back tho.

6) C#.

Sorry don't know enough to comment fairly, but it shouldn't be rulled
out.

> Is it a case of "Use what you know", "Use the right tool for the right
> job", or "Use this language because it's just the best damn language on
> the net right now!!!"?

Define Best?

Personally I am an elitest bitch who lives in a small utopia of
engineering perfection, so I say use the right tool for the job. Others
disagree.

> Matt (Determined to get more involved with F/OSS)

Come to the pub meet next friday then. Its a good start.

Do not forget when looking at programming, there is more to it than just
choosing the right language and writing some code. You need to design
what you are going to write. They call it software engineering, most
people ignore it. Consider getting a few books on the subject, I
recommend as a simple background read:

Code Complete - Steve McConnell (published by MS press, but a good book)
The Mythical Man Month - F Brooks (if only to see how not to do it)

HTH

J
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFFn9eX42M0lILkmGIRApm0AJ4qN9K0moU2pl3HZShHS0MJUR3qSQCeM5K7
RITi1WqQpPGc+1rLennjzqA=
=blnV
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----