[HacktionLab] Web development language question

[naomi at aktivix.org]

Difficult to make any claims about what will be here in 5 years time  
of course, but my money would be on Javascript at both ends. Node.js  
for the server, and a front-end app making use of one of the many JS  
frameworks out there. I'm using Backbone and finding it a bit of a  
learning curve - more of a library than a framework. I've heard good  
things about Angular. They all give you an OO / MVC layer to work with  
so you can separate model from view and otherwise structure your code  
in a way that would be intuitive to a PHP or Java dev. But they are  
based on JS as a functional language - you pass around functions, use  
callbacks etc - which once you get your head around it, gives you more  
than PHP or like ever could.

This stuff has crept up on us over many years (6? 7? 10?) to the scorn  
and then increasing incredulity of traditional web devs. At first it  
seemed like a fad but it has really grown up now and seems to be here  
to stay.

It tends to go with noSQL DBs but that is a separate architectural  
decision and there's no reason not to team it up with mySQL.

The JS syntax, once you get functional with it, gets a bit brackety in  
a LISP sort of way. But it's worth it and in the future this may  
improve. I haven't tried Coffeescript but that is, I believe, an  
alternative syntax that may be preferable.

Naomi





Quoting Mike Harris <mike at mbharris.co.uk>:

> Hi All,
>
> I've asked this question before to see what people felt, but that was
> well over a year ago so I'll ask it again.
>
> Say you work on a web based service with a lot of legacy code written in
> an older web-scripting language, Perl, and you're wanting to move to a
> newer language for web applications, or even a framework to do new
> development - you're still planning to support the legacy code for a
> number of years - what language and/or framework would you pick?
>
> What you'd like to do though is avoid jumping on something that is too
> new and too buzzy - http://ttfa.net/lemonmarket - as you'd like to make
> a technology decision that would be good at least for the next five
> years, if not more, and today's rising star could quite easily be in
> tomorrow's dustbin.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Mike.
>
> p.s. and yes it's a work question, but one interesting I think
>
> --
> Mike Harris
> w: http://mbharris.co.uk
> t: +44 7811 671 893
> 0: http://mbharris.co.uk/keys/pgp.html
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> HacktionLab mailing list
> HacktionLab at lists.aktivix.org
> https://lists.aktivix.org/mailman/listinfo/hacktionlab
>