As the title reads, what platform/language would you pick for the backend, and why? Taking into consideration development time, costs and maintainability. Given you/your team were/are equally experienced with all languages/platforms. Thanks!
Ask HN: Building a large webapp today - what language for the backend, and why?
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Re: Ask HN: Building a large webapp today - what language for the backend, and why?
#2Ruby/Rails and Python/Django seem to be the most common choices among YC startups. They are pretty much interchangeable on the development time, costs and maintainability fronts.
Re: Ask HN: Building a large webapp today - what language for the backend, and why?
#3lein new noir myBigWebApp
I think Clojure makes a lot of sense for the web, emphasis on immutability etc. I also am a sucker for lisps, and I think the Hiccup templating system is nice. Noir seems to do middleware well. Plus, real nerds get on that ClojureScript.
Then again, I kind of also believe that the back-end really shouldn't do much more than process CRUD commands, and that most of your serious application logic should happen on the client. So it doesn't really matter. Pick something with a DB adapter you're comfortable with and get to javascripting.
Re: Ask HN: Building a large webapp today - what language for the backend, and why?
#4Python/Django or Ruby on Rails. If you have to move fast and change ideas quick and timely. Pick on of them.
Given my current project where i am the sole developer i dont want to know how much more time i would have spent coding in e.g. PHP.
Re: Ask HN: Building a large webapp today - what language for the backend, and why?
#5I'd maybe go for small components with small APIs so team members could build upon and combine on top in whatever language they want.
Re: Ask HN: Building a large webapp today - what language for the backend, and why?
#6Something that runs on the JVM. Personally, I'd pick Ruby on JRuby.
Re: Ask HN: Building a large webapp today - what language for the backend, and why?
#7'Building a large webapp today'
Do you mean starting to build a large webapp today?
I would recommend Ruby on Rails or Python/Django - they allow for fast prototyping and easy collaboration.
Re: Ask HN: Building a large webapp today - what language for the backend, and why?
#8Pick what ever gives you and the people you are working with the greatest productivity. Chances are it will get rewritten later on to address the problems you encountered.
Re: Ask HN: Building a large webapp today - what language for the backend, and why?
#9For a 'large' webapp I would honestly go with Java. A good stack is Jetty for the http server, and Jersey/JAX-RS for the web framework. The JVM is unbeatable, and you will have an easy time onboarding people since everyone knows Java.
It's not as 'hip' as Rails/Django but you will be very productive and you will have the benefit of the plethora of Java libraries out there that are performant and reliable. Not to mention the great profiling tools.
Re: Ask HN: Building a large webapp today - what language for the backend, and why?
#10Just to put this out there -- since nobody has really mentioned it -- ruby (as a language) doesn't have the greatest performance. You can do some tricks with GC to speed it up (Ruby EE might be a faster option), but you're still looking at 50x slower than C (python is 40x, Java 7 is around 2x, Javascript on V8 -- Node-- is 4x). So if you're planning on doing a lot on the backend, you might want to consider breaking off your logic/processing into java or lisp or something and using a rpc/mq system to send it tasks from your RoR/Django app....but then again...you might not want to start with too many moving parts :)