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I would recommend the Java language and platform. It's as mature as it gets, has strong crypto libraries, is quite popular (especially in banking, which I belie

I would recommend the Java language and platform. It's as mature as it gets, has strong crypto libraries, is quite popular (especially in banking, which I believe is the target domain) and has adequate type safety and static checking features. For a high-volume web service API I would recommend the Dropwizard framework. It may not be as sexy as, say, Node, but it is a very solid choice. As a second alternative I would recommend still the JVM and its ecosystem, but with the Scala language and Typesafe's platform. It offers an (arguably) better language, the actor model (which may help with high-volume processing), a modern web framework and may be more attractive to developers, but the ecosystem is not as mature as pure Java.

smt88 12y ago
Thanks for the input! I suspected that Java would be a frontrunner. Scala is really interesting, but I'm concerned about likely having to train every new developer. I know that a powerful tool takes time to learn, but I don't know if we'd have the budget for new devs to be unproductive. I'm also concerned about tooling. Having really deep IDE integration is a huge productivity boost in other languages like Python. Is Scala still weak in IDE integration?
- facorreia 12y ago
  Scala IDE support has improved a lot. I use IDEA and I have no complains at all, at least for my needs. For instance it is very quick to point out errors and to show the inferred types for expressions, functions and variables. Refactoring such as renaming and extract method work very well. I mentioned Scala because it could be more attractive (i.e. "sexy") than plain Java, and produce a more clear and concise code base (if used well). But I agree with you that you'll find many more available and trained Java programmers. If you avoid the old-style, heavy-duty "enterprise" frameworks and stick to a more straightfoward architecure, and perhaps take advantage of Java 8 features, it should be a very good platform to build upon.
- frowaway001 12y ago
  When people complain about poor IDE support, they are usually ex-Java developers which are accustomed to pretty much the best IDEs available (every tried writing Java without an IDE? It sucks.). Scala IDE support is already better than IDE support for most other languages like C++, F#, Haskell, OCaml, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, etc. It can't compete with Java yet, but it is getting there slowly.

smt88 12y ago

Thanks for the input! I suspected that Java would be a frontrunner. Scala is really interesting, but I'm concerned about likely having to train every new developer. I know that a powerful tool takes time to learn, but I don't know if we'd have the budget for new devs to be unproductive. I'm also concerned about tooling. Having really deep IDE integration is a huge productivity boost in other languages like Python. Is Scala still weak in IDE integration?

facorreia 12y ago
Scala IDE support has improved a lot. I use IDEA and I have no complains at all, at least for my needs. For instance it is very quick to point out errors and to show the inferred types for expressions, functions and variables. Refactoring such as renaming and extract method work very well. I mentioned Scala because it could be more attractive (i.e. "sexy") than plain Java, and produce a more clear and concise code base (if used well). But I agree with you that you'll find many more available and trained Java programmers. If you avoid the old-style, heavy-duty "enterprise" frameworks and stick to a more straightfoward architecure, and perhaps take advantage of Java 8 features, it should be a very good platform to build upon.
frowaway001 12y ago
When people complain about poor IDE support, they are usually ex-Java developers which are accustomed to pretty much the best IDEs available (every tried writing Java without an IDE? It sucks.). Scala IDE support is already better than IDE support for most other languages like C++, F#, Haskell, OCaml, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, etc. It can't compete with Java yet, but it is getting there slowly.