Development Languages

Open Source Gems. Perl, PHP, Python, and Ruby.

Every web server needs a scripting language, a database language, and a database. The web server for Linux is Apache. Three languages common to Apache/Linux are Perl, PHP, and Python. Notably, the history of these languages is tied to the history of the web, and they continue to grow in popularity.

There are many web tasks best suited for development in
Perl, PHP, Python, or a combination of the three. Also, Ruby, and Ruby on Rails (RoR), deserves a special note. Ruby has an evangelical following right now. But Ruby is slow, and does not scale. The official site quotes RoR as “only 50% slower” than simpler systems. Whew! Some large Ruby projects have been switched into other languages. 

Object-Oriented “Big Guns”. C++ and Java.

Java and C++ are “object oriented” languages, very hip and modern. We’ll include C++ with .NET and Windows, below. So let’s talk about Java. For years, it seemed every programming job posting in the daily newspaper was for Java, or J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition), now called Java EE. What happened? Microsoft .NET happened. First, Microsoft put all their languages on a common platform (.NET), and then Microsoft came out with a “Java-like” language, C#. Then, Java practically killed itself through imitation.

Java attempted to expand outward, to provide Windows development tools equivalent to Microsoft’s own extensive library. The language became complex. Then, Java attempted to expand downward,creating “applets” and “Java beans” to attract new programmers away from Microsoft’s fun Visual Basic .NET (VB.NET).

The hungry market was filled with new Java programmers who didn’t know what they were doing. The result was the worse heap of badly written, broken, un-readable code ever left in America’s corporate corridors as a bad investment write-off. Only Microsoft can recover from something like that.

Many Java applications have been re-written, many were thrown away. Java has survived its moment in the limelight, and remains a vital and viable platform, but there is no longer a premium placed on Java development over other languages. NSK does not currently deploy Java.

Microsoft .NET

Microsoft .NET is a healthy standard for corporate development. We keep a very strong, experienced VB.NET and C#.NET staff, and we have increasing C++ experience. Our primary development platform is currently Windows Server 2003 and MS-SQL 2005 with Visual Studio 2005, and we are also developing on Windows Server 2008 and MS-SQL 2005 with Visual Studio 2008. We enjoy the luxury of Virtual Machine testing environments. 

Written by Keith Mitchell, Senior Developer at NSK Inc