Darn, a day late and I miss all the action! Let's see if I can keep the debate hot. ;)
> Languages do make a difference. If languages were identical, there'd > be no incentive to write new ones, and everybody would be collude to > one. If it's just a matter of deployment, why are you not writing your > web applications with C CGI scripts? I agree. Languages do make a difference. The biggest difference they make is to the individual developer. That's why we have PHP, Ruby, Python, Tcl, etc. Some languages obviously lend themselves better to certain types of development (web, OS, networking, etc) than others. But the fact that there are so many languages shows that in the end it doesn't really matter. You can make just as good a web app with PHP as you can with Ruby, and one person might have more fun with CakePHP, or with Rails (to compare apples), or with Django, than another person. If languages really, truly, honestly, in-the-end mattered above developer preference, there would much fewer languages because why would *anyone* try and build web applications with PHP if Ruby was the obvious choice? Case in point, how many web apps are built in C? Obviously it does matter between some languages but not others. So, depending on if you're talking about mattering to the developer, or mattering to the final end product, you've got two different answers on the question "Does language matter?" I think Rails is the bomb. I also think CakePHP is awesome. But I totally agree, if I was choosing Rails over plain PHP without a framework, I'd totally go with Rails. Conversely, if it was a choice between plain Ruby, without rails, and CakePHP (or some other wicked PHP framework of which there are many), I would not even attempt the Ruby road. I think many would agree, or at least I hope they would. After all, time is money, and why would I waste time writing up security and redirects and everything that goes into a web application when it's all been done already in my language of choice (or the language I'm stuck with). Jacob _______________________________________________ UPHPU mailing list [email protected] http://uphpu.org/mailman/listinfo/uphpu IRC: #uphpu on irc.freenode.net
