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The e-commerce site would include a booking system also and other variables other than just selling and buying goods.
Sadly, there is no simple answer, but, that also means more variety of languages to choose from, you can do anything with almost every programming language, but, each one has its strong points and weak points; In my opinion, heading for the most popular is the best choice to opt to, given a few reasons:
It is easier to find tutorials and answers to your questions, as they will most likely have big communities.
They're popular for a reason, as they are most likely best suited for web development.
Some of these languages are Javascript, Python & PHP — for quite a few reasons, but, as to my personal opinion, I think JS dominates the web development market.
First, to start-off, JS or Javascript is a high-level, medium difficulty language, a scripting language(it is also, OOP(Object-Oriented-Programming) language, but, it is really not, as it is just an illusion.); Javascript is the dynamic life of the web, Javascript does anything from animations, events and et cetera to HTTP requests, fetching, I/O intensive work and it is the most used language in the web!
Javascript has some sugary syntax, so, it is not hard to read and also, it can do absolutely anything from OOP to Dynamic programming and on top of that, it has the 2nd largest community as of now.
But, there is one flaw with it, it is a single-threaded language, so, it only works as one bartender in a whole bar with thousands of people, but, that bartender works at the speed of light, it doesn't wait until the drink becomes ready, but, rather queue up orders and hand them out in the same order, but, it will only take orders and not execute them until the first one does and the second one, the third one and so on, so forth; therefore, it is prone to be blocked and if that happens, your whole site becomes unresponsive, but, that could be fixed pretty easily and with a few good practices, you will be safe; so, don't get discouraged by this, JS is really powerful and one con against all of these pros isn't really significant, but rather, negligible.
Python or PY is more suited for process-intensive stuff (i.e. calculations), so, if your site has some math in it, then, Python would be the choice to go for; also, python is rather good in managing data, analyzing it and et cetera, that is why it is being used in almost any data-science infrastructure; also, Python is very user-friendly, very easy to learn and read, also, it has the biggest community that you can find. (Also, Python has the shortest syntax that you can find.)
This was both languages in a nutshell, but, you have to know that Python isn't really good at optimizing hardware, so, it will drain the hardware, but, JS (and its back-end framework — Node.js) are very good at RAM optimization and ALSO, JS is said to be 75 times faster than Python, so, there is that.
Both languages have their back-end frameworks like Node.js and Django(for PY), but, Python can't be used in the front-end, which is a down-side, but, not really a big deal.
Also, you have to know that you can now, code with any programming language on the web, using something called Web Assembly, it changes any programming language into JS, so, it could be understood by the browser, but, that is a very broad topic and I don't suggest using Web Assembly, as you have to learn new things and it is only good for a couple of small things and E-commerce ain't one of them.
So, to end this off, JS & PY are the pretty strong and best choices to make when it comes to E-commerce, but, you'll probably need a few more things like query languages for databases(like SQL) and an actual database like MongoDB or Firebase, but, that choice is up to you.
ALSO NOTE: JS has front-end frameworks & Libraries like React.js(A view library) and Angular.js(A framework) and Vue.js which is best suited for light-weight projects.
Hopefully, I helped you to make a choice about your site, and please, don't use CMS as you'll be supporting the CMS community which is trying to kill the programming community (which will never happen), and also, you can't call yourself a developer if you use them only and don't code at all. (Yes, they are easier and save time, but, not the best nor optimal solution as they restrict you.)
"Programming isn't about what you know; it's about what you can figure out.” - Chris Pine.
It really depends on "how" you want to make it and "when" you want it, and as a programming language just pick the one you're familiar with and can do the stuff for you. Don't choose a low-level language like C because it will be really painful to make a website using it.
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I've been writing software in Java for many years now, but it was always for internal applications that would be deployed to a server. I'd like to get into writing desktop applications now but I don't know where to start. I've written a few Java/Swing applications but again they were for internal use.
My understanding is that Java and other semi-compiled and interpreted languages are too easy to reverse engineer, making them unsuitable for commercial software. I am aware that there are compilers for Java and some other interpreted language, but I've also heard that they are pricey and/or unreliable.
Assuming I start a microISV and wish to develop and sell applications to a broad audience, what's my best bet? I would prefer something that can be written close to once, and compiled for different operating systems but I am not opposed to .NET and a Windows-only audience if other languages would compromise the experience (installation ease & user experience) in Windows. My only issue there is that I don't have a large starting budget and paying out the wazoo for the required development tools is not really in the cards.
Why would people want to reverse engineer your software? They might pirate it, but you can't prevent pirating no matter what language you use. I doubt you have a top-secret algorithm that you're trying to hide either, in which case reverse-engineering might be an issue.
You should go with whatever you know best, and Java can work just fine.
If you are intent on switching to another language, I recommend taking a look at Qt. Qt is a free and open-source cross-platform toolkit for C++ that allows you to write applications in that will compile and run on Windows, Mac, and Linux with minimal effort. You CAN write commercial software for free with Qt with its LGPL license.
Edit: GCJ compiles Java to native code, but only supports Java 1.4.
Well, if you're trying to be an Independent Service Vendor -- and not a Software Vendor -- then in a sense it doesn't matter if you use a language like Java which can be decompiled. Because you'd be selling yourself as the best person to integrate and customize the software for your clients. The software is the delivery mechanism for the thing that will actually make you the money: you and your skills. Plenty of companies make a profit by giving away their software for free and contracting their services to set it up for their clients. You can mitigate the Java decompiling issue somewhat by using an obfuscator, but it's kind of fighting the wrong battle.
If you intent to make your money selling software and not service, then Java would be a relatively risky route to take.
It all depends on your business plan.
If you are starting a one-man company, then you are selling your personal expertise. So the language you use must be the one (or maybe two) that you are most familiar with and expert in. I'm surprised you felt it necessary to ask this.
Any code can be decompiled to some degree. I think you can obfuscate Java to a degree that will deter the casual user... but I think the other people hit the nail on the head. Of all the reasons not to use Java, the ease of decompiling should be very very low on your list. If that is all that is stopping you, go for it! Google Java obfuscater and you will find something.
I'm skeptical about the risk of reverse engineering a complex piece of software written in Java, but for purposes of your question I'm willing to stipulate it. I assume the same issues rule out any other language that is implemented only on the JVM.
The most salient aspects of Java are
Static type system
Class-based object system
Automatic memory management
No freestanding functions or modules outside the class/interface system
Generics
This combination could be replicated in a language like C#, but I assume the same objections you have about distributing JVM bytecode also apply to MSIL bytecodes.
I'm having a hard time coming up with a language that has all these features. Here are some nearby languages:
C++ has everything except automatic memory management, plus it allows freestanding functions. However the C++ generic mechanism (templates) is not for the faint of heart, and it doesn't (yet) support modular typechecking. Lots more flexibility than Java but also lots more ways to shoot your foot off. Use with caution.
Modula-3 has all of the above but it's essentially a dead language, plus like C++ there's no modular type checking for the generics.
I'm not familiar enough with Eiffel to be able to make good comparisons, but I think it's worth looking into.
Delphi may also be worth looking into. It seems to have everything above except generics. It's primarily a proprietary Windows environment (formerly known as Object Pascal), but there seems to exist an open-source 'Free Pascal' compiler that supports Delphi.
There are many object-oriented languages with automatic memory management and dynamic typing, among which one might highlight ruby, Python, and Smalltalk. None of these really compiles well and reliably to standalone native machine code, although all push toward some form of experimental compilation. And they are all dynamically typed, which is quite different from what you're used to.
If I were in your position I would probably go ahead an use Java and accept some risk of reverse engineering. Decompilers aren't as wonderful as you might think, and they don't produce wildly maintainable code, either. But if you really want to be able to produce native machine code, I would investigate Delphi and Eiffel. (I myself would use Modula-3, but that's because I once invested substantial effort in learning it. It's a very well designed language for its niche, but the user community is about gone and I think it's a dead letter. Pity.)
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During a normal work-day, tackling a variety of tasks, there's the potential for several programming languages to be used.
There's application work, with C#, VB.NET, C++, Java, Fortran, then there's database work with involves SQL, and then there's maintenance work involving languages like Python, Perl, PHP, or even bash scripts and similar.
Which programming languages do you use, for which task, and why?
Since this is a poll-type question, please state your main line of work, be it developing web applications or desktop applications, systems maintenance, systems administration, etc.
To make maintenance easier you want to keep the number of different programing languages to a minimum.
For me the answer is that I use 2-3 in an average project.
Currently I use three languages at work:
1. C++ for needed low level programing.
2. C# for application level programing.
3. VB.NET for some VB related functionality and code examples shipped with the application.
I've used C# and C++ in many projects and found that it covers most of the project's needs.
I am a web application developer, in the last week I've done the following:
Created Stored Procedures using T-SQL for SQL Server
Debugged Perl Script that created databases
Written C# Web-service code
Written JavaScript (Both with and without JQuery)
Debugged CSS and HTML issues in IE6 and IE7
On my personal time, I've also used the ASP.NET MVC platform and C# to write a customized Content Management System.
Our shop focuses almost exclusively on VB.NET, but you could also say that I have to work with VB and JavaScript since I do a lot of ASP.NET development.
SQL if you want to count that as a programming language as well.
For web development:
PHP-JS-SQL-{HTML}-{CSS}
Lets count this as... 3.5 languages?
Neverminding the other languages I deal with, the first number I thought of was 5, with the list having only one entry: "Javascript"... damn browsers. :)
I suppose "optimal" is measured by the fewest which allow you to create a solution which is reasonably maintainable down the line.
Probably 1/2 a day mainly switching between Ruby / plpgsql (if that counts?) and BASH.
Though sometimes I may have to debug some JavaScript.
It really depends what you are doing.
For a web developer, it would be very common to work with a client-side and a server-side language every day, such as javascript and Java.
Edit: you would use HTML and possibly XML, but these are markup languages. I'm honestly not sure what CSS would be considered, but yes, you use that also.
The fewer programming languages I'm dealing with at any given moment in time, the fewer times I find myself making really dumb syntax mistakes.
On a given day I try to limit it to 2 or 3, but in a given week it may be 5 or 6.
On a good day, one. On a bad day it's 6-7. I find myself looking up simple syntax a lot more when I'm using many at one time.
I work as a web developer so on any given day I will be writing/debugging HTML, CSS, Javascript and .Net apps. In my free time I enjoy c++ and c#. I have also been contracted to port a vb app to c# so its going to get interesting...
If I were learning a new language, I would definitely recommend C++ and C#, interesting, powerful and if you are good in c++ you can probably work in anything...
I work for a creative studio and do some freelance work. I am often switching between the following:
Actionscript 2 (mainly on old legacy projects)
Actionscript 3 (most of my day job projects)
javascript (personal projects/user scripts)
C# (getting a few projects now for WPF)
Processing (quick sketches of ideas/personal projects)
Also some markup and other "languages":
HTML/CSS
XAML
XML (didn't want to put this, but I use it a lot)
regex (does this count?)
Mostly C#, followed by XSLT/XPath, T-SQL, Javascript, VB.NET when it's forced on me, Power Shell, VBA, and HTML and CSS if you're counting those. So that's about 6-9.
I use 3 languages every days and 6 or so every weeks.
BUT I really know only 2, maybe 3 of them. When I code using the others, I'm googling every 5 minutes !
(Hey, but it works ! :)
Every day or so : VB.NET, C#, SQL/T-SQL.
Every week : HTML, XML, C,
JavaScript.
Every other weeks : Make files, batch
files.
Really known languages : C, C#,
VB.NET.
Cool question ^^
VB.NET and Javascript at work, with a healthy dose of CSS.
VB.NET, VB6, C++, Javascript, PHP, C#, 65816 ASM, and a bunch of smaller languages at home, for whatever little project I'm working on at the time.
I've been fortunate to be working with just one language for the past year: C++/CLI. And each day I'm surprised by how little of it I actually know.
A renowned PHP user once said: There will be a relaunch in 2 years, anyway.
Those times are gone. Web applications that are older than 5 years are common. With the original developer(s) gone.
The release cycles of the operation system, programming language, and framework are getting in the way of doing real work, if you don't have a big staff.
Is there any way to develop something that doesn't need constant porting to the next level, without the fear of losing support and backing in a community? For people who want to stay in programming instead of climbing the corporate ladder and leaving the problems to the next "generation"?
My company codes almost exclusively in C#, however we have ColdFusion 5 apps still humming along written back in 2001 or so. Theres no need to port them.
If it ain't broke, dont fix it.
Other than security flaws (which are usually handled by an OS/Server Patch, so they dont need code changes), theres no need to change an app just because a new version of the language has come out.
If I'm not mistaken, ColdFusion has had at least 2 new releases since we stopped using it for new code. but that hasn't affected our ColdFusion sites one bit.
Write CGI programs in FORTRAN 77. Should be pretty stable.
Firstly, it is possible to overstate the difficulty in maintaining web applications. In many cases, the changes to a language or platform are expansionary in nature rather than destructive. .NET, python, etc code from several years ago will still run, but new options are being added to make these these tools more powerful for future applications. The case where massive changes occur tends to be on the first or second iteration of a language, e.g. Rails 1 to Rails 2.
Secondly, the still active development of web programming is something to be thankful for.It means that this is a part of the industry that will remain productive and exciting for years to come.
Traditional CGI is stable. It's not sexy, but if your OS continues to be able to run the same binaries or scripts, it's still going to work.
The only programming frameworks that stay stable are those that have been abandoned. A framework that stood still long enough would have no support for, say, AJAX or JSON or even XML.
You're not going to find what you're asking for. The best you can hope for is a mature framework with good support like ASP.net or JSP. And, as #Neil N said, don't keep upgrading unless there's a compelling business need.
The first web programming I ever did was writing Apache modules in C which communicated with a dBase database. I'm fairly sure that code would still run today (if the company I wrote it for still existed).
I do most of my current web-related programming in Perl, which is very stable and has an excellent track record for backwards compatibility. Most, if not all, code written for Perl 4 (released 21 March, 1991) should still run on the latest stable Perl (5.10) - although you might want to update it anyhow to take advantage of the last 18 years of improvements in both software development techniques and language features.
Consider the shearing layers. I've previously worked in large aerospace companies where the same Fortran back-end code and databases have had their front-ends evolve from the paper tape era through mainframe, client server and onto Intranet web sites.
On the outside, you have will typically have CSS and XHTML templates which can be changed to re-skin an application. These change quite rapidly, in large organisations as upper management seems to decide the bike shed should be a different colour every few weeks.
Typically you then have some logic to combine the templates with data from the back-end, and forward user actions to the back-end. This shouldn't change that rapidly, but translate the presentation to calls into the back-end. Expect to refresh this every few years, and rewrite it once a decade. We used Java for this, starting in the late 1990s. Some parts get changed faster than others, but it's not a big issue.
The back-end is usually stable ( some of the aerodynamics code dated from the 1970s; the laws of physics don't change that often ), and will outlast the web UI, as it has all the other UI paradigms. Fortran is forever.
Write your own web server in C then you don't have to worry about a web programming language.
(No, that's not a serious answer)
Have you seriously looked at what TDD, CI, pair-programming, and a solid, rapid development framework (basicaly Django or Rails) can offer to you as a developer vis-a-vis the way you write and design code? There are some really massive benefits that all of those pieces offer to the development process that make it almost a joy to be a programmer again. There are downsides, of course, but the upsides are all in support of the happiness and ease of development for the engineer, which leads to more productivity. In my book, that's a slam dunk win. And the result of my productivity and happiness, has been solid products and great engineering.
YMMV, but if you are having the serious thoughts that you are (and I take them very seriously), I think it's worth you investigating what those tools can offer. By taking the good and leaving the bad from the agile religion plus some of the things I listed above, I've returned to find the joy in programming again this last year, after a good 5 years of a downhill slide of my happiness with this career. It's about finding what works for you. I can only help and lead the way by showing you what worked for me. I'd be more than happy to discuss at length if you want to talk offline, I think this is a really important topic...it lead me to consider a career change many times.
Java Servlets and JSPs have been in use for a decade or so, and they still work the same way like they did in '99. But honestly, can you imagine something uglier than a '90s web application without any rework done since?
The Python web framework web2py promises backward compatibility:
Always backward compatible. We have
not broken backward compatibility
since version 1.0 in 2007, and we
pledge not to break it in the future.
And supports Python versions from 2.4 to 2.7
EDIT: Updated an important project 2 times and every time there was a problem. Well, …
EDIT 2: Needs Python 2.6 to 2.7 now. No support for Python 3.
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In a related question, I asked about Web Development. I came across something called OpenLaszlo yesterday and thought it looked interesting for doing some website development. The site has a bunch of good information on it and they've got some nice tutorials and such, but being a total novice (as far as web development goes), I'm wondering whether anyone here would recommend this. As I stated in my other question, this is a new world for me and there are a lot of directions I could go. Can you compare/contrast this and other web development you've done? Obviously, this is somewhat subjective, but I haven't heard much about it on SO and I'm hoping to get some opinions on this.
I worked on a website for about a year in which the entire UI was developed in Laszlo. I've also developed AJAX applications using JS frameworks such as JQuery, Prototype and Scriptaculous.
In my experience, the total effort required is considerably less when using Laszlo, and the class-based object model helps to keep your code better organised than when using JS frameworks. My only complaints about Laszlo were that:
It "breaks the browser" in terms of support for the back/forward/refresh buttons. This problem also exists with AJAX, but most JS libraries seem to have found a workaround.
No support for internationalization, though none of the JS libraries are any better in my experience
Relatively small user base/community compared to competitors such as GWT, JQuery, etc.
All in all, I thought OpenLaszlo was a pretty good solution for creating rich web-based user interfaces, and has a number of very novel features, e.g. ability to deploy on multiple runtimes (Flash, DHTML, etc.) without requiring any code changes.
Also, I should mention that I haven't used it for almost a year, so it's likely that some progress has been made in recent times on the issues I mentioned above.
Update
5 years since I posted this answer, things have changed considerably. In case anyone is in any doubt, don't use Laszlo, the project is completely moribund.
I used openLaszlo to develop a few blog widgets for some friends of mine (about a year ago) and it was easy enough to get something basic working and it looked OK. But if I had to do it again, I would probably use FLEX I think you can make a more polished looking application in a lot less time using Flex than with Laszlo
You definitely can write a flash app quickly with OpenLaszlo. There are a lot of similarities to developing for Silverlight.
One OpenLaszlo lameness is that it uses a lame variation of javascript similar to ActionScript. Takes a little getting used to, if you are used to the latest features.
Also, the final flash file that you end up with is very large (file size) compared to what you can do with other tools.
One benefit of OpenLaszlo is the possibility of DHTML output. But for me the mix of XML and JavaScript in the same source file was somewhat confusing.