5 ms·

Can you really develop complex web apps just using scripting languages

3 points by joubee 17y ago

Is it really possible to write complex web application using just python or another scripting language like Ruby? What have you found Python to be best for when doing web apps and what development sets do you most commonly use?

gsmaverick 17y ago
What do you define as complex web applications?
joubee 17y ago
Good point! At the moment I am playing around with realtime data and displaying it according to a users preference. The data is being taken from other websites (Not a twitter app!) and is using Oauth to access several external websites.... Some collaborative fuctionality like diagramming and also charting. Using SQL 2008 as well. I'm only playing and was re-evaluating / thinking of trying a new language :)
- joubee 17y ago
  I don't know if that's complicated or not (it's hardish for me)
icodemyownshit 17y ago
Why would I want to develop anything complex?
RyanMcGreal 17y ago
Python, to take one example, is a great general purpose language. It is terse, expressive, introspective, and high-level, and it supports multiple programming paradigms (imperative, OO, functional). Its standard library is robust and full-featured, and it also benefits from a vast ecosystem of third-party libraries that do just about everything imaginable. It will never be as fast in execution as, say, C (though we can expect impressive speed improvements through the improved use of VMs); but in terms of developer productivity you can't beat a high-level dynamic language. For any complex app, you need good project management software, version control, unit testing, clear and comprehensive documentation, and so on. I can't think of any reason why you can't apply these techniques using a dynamic language.
tptacek 17y ago
The more complex your application is, the better off you are in a "scripting language" like Python.
- joubee 17y ago
  So where does C# and Php sit in all this? Do you really need it if you are familiar with python. Isn't phython oo in the same way php is oo?
foobaroo 17y ago
are you trollin'? ~90% of the web apps you're using on the web are written in scripting languages.

3 points by joubee 17y ago

gsmaverick 17y ago

What do you define as complex web applications?

joubee 17y ago

Good point! At the moment I am playing around with realtime data and displaying it according to a users preference. The data is being taken from other websites (Not a twitter app!) and is using Oauth to access several external websites.... Some collaborative fuctionality like diagramming and also charting. Using SQL 2008 as well. I'm only playing and was re-evaluating / thinking of trying a new language :)

joubee 17y ago
I don't know if that's complicated or not (it's hardish for me)

icodemyownshit 17y ago

Why would I want to develop anything complex?

RyanMcGreal 17y ago

Python, to take one example, is a great general purpose language. It is terse, expressive, introspective, and high-level, and it supports multiple programming paradigms (imperative, OO, functional). Its standard library is robust and full-featured, and it also benefits from a vast ecosystem of third-party libraries that do just about everything imaginable. It will never be as fast in execution as, say, C (though we can expect impressive speed improvements through the improved use of VMs); but in terms of developer productivity you can't beat a high-level dynamic language. For any complex app, you need good project management software, version control, unit testing, clear and comprehensive documentation, and so on. I can't think of any reason why you can't apply these techniques using a dynamic language.

tptacek 17y ago

The more complex your application is, the better off you are in a "scripting language" like Python.

joubee 17y ago
So where does C# and Php sit in all this? Do you really need it if you are familiar with python. Isn't phython oo in the same way php is oo?

foobaroo 17y ago

are you trollin'? ~90% of the web apps you're using on the web are written in scripting languages.