A Brief Comparison of Server-side Scripting Langauges

November 2nd, 2008, 6:40 am

PHP is easily learnt online so there are a few resources online that may be helpful with a Google search. Moreover, the PHP.net's documentation is probably the first place to get if you're stuck on something. Their documentation is one of a kind.

[mk27]

June 13th, 2009, 7:16 pm

ozilion wrote:

So people don't do much in Perl anymore..

Wow! Kind of surprised by this! Pretty sure a lot of web programming still done in perl. You may want to take a few steps back and look at this list:

http://www.masonhq.com/?MasonPoweredSites

Notice "Amazon.com" there under "A" on the first screenful. I haven't bothered to read all of them myself.

I just started using "Mason", but AFAICT perl has been used embedded in html a la PHP & the rest of this list for a long time:

<% my %hash %>

There's also a framework (Catalyst) which predates RonR and Python's Django...

[Rabid Dog]

June 30th, 2009, 4:40 pm

Rabid Dog wrote:

Coldfusion was an attempt at processing jsp in a propretory engine

The framework is far more powerful though plus the AJAX extensions.

I still hate web though but I must say in terms of fast fancy development, ASP.NET is way ahead

After working with the Java Seam framework and the likes of JSF and RichFaces I am inclined to say that Java now has my corner on fancy interface development Another tool in the box thank you very much

[spork]

July 9th, 2009, 8:29 am

RD, I'm looking to pick up a new web application skill set over the next few months; would you recommend ASP.NET MVC or Java EE/Spring/JBoss, etc. (or something else?)

[Rabid Dog]

July 9th, 2009, 8:54 am

Java EE 5 + Seam, love them

[UPSGuy]

July 9th, 2009, 9:02 am

I've got some experience with Spring/Hibernate/JBoss. They're fun to learn, too. Definitely flexible.

[mk27]

July 22nd, 2009, 7:01 am

spork wrote:

Perl is more like the Swiss Army Knife of scripting languages. It's still widely used for a lot of things, but other languages are far more popular when it comes to web development.

Well, just so no one gets discouraged here, there are a couple of obvious reasons for that popularity:

1) those languages are easier to learn
2) perl is much more *nix based, hence MS users don't use it. Most servers are unix or linux servers; but most people who code at home use Windows. A lot of the "general scripting" that goes on on a server will be in perl, so in that sense it's probably "the most popular" scripting language on a server box.
3) mod_perl is something you have to ask for, hosts don't give it to you by default. Perl is a bit of a pig, memory wise, but very "fast", eg, lite on the processor, which that is causal relationship.

So it is not as if it is less "popular" because it is "not as useful", etc, since perl is almost certainly a much more "powerful" language than (eg) php. Which is the reason that it is much used for general scripting, etc. And php and ruby were both derived from perl.

Also, please don't forget that at least 75%+ (okay I'm guessing) of contemporary cgi is still done in perl. Which CGI is pretty much the original "server side scripting".