Help to make a decision on which programming language [closed]

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We're developing a system which can be best described as a layer above social networking. It's extremely data heavy, would involve a huge user base, data base would be beefy basically, but it wouldn't involve complex computations. The most complexity would involve fast retrieval of data. Now, we have programmers who're comfortable with JAVA as well as PHP. The front end is nailed - Javascript, HTML, CSS. But we're having a huge debate on what to go with for the back end. We consulted numerous blogs and forums and have a consensus on the pluses and minuses. To sum it up, people say that it's a pain to host Java but it's extremely scalabl开发者_StackOverflow社区e, whereas PHP is fast and easy to host, but not entirely OO or sturdy. We're still not able to reach a decision. For a system like ours, does it even matter what we go with? Because at the end, it's the performance boosters that matter.... or am I entirely wrong in thinking that? Any input will be appreciated. Thanks in advance!

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Java and PHP are both valid choices for developing a web backend. Personally I would choose Java (I'm an OO guy), but the decision for you should be more about what your developers are more comfortable with.

Forcing developers to adapt to a technology which they are resisting will cause problems for management and is likely to even upset the outcome of the project. I would not invest in a project knowing that the developers were not happy with the technology being used - it is too much of a risk.

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I would prefer PHP because of the amount of help you can get (if you are ever stuck). It is also very adaptable, and has many CMS systems available.

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I agree that for a system like yours, the language does not even matter. Retrieving the data efficiently is what matters, and there are umpteen solutions to help you with that.

So then you should choose the language your team is most comfortable with, and helps you code in a safe way (read: tdd).

For me, from the choice you give me, that would be java, as i don't know any tdd solutions for php (doesn't mean they are not there).

I would be so bold as to suggest an alternative: use ruby and Ruby on Rails. At least, that is the switch I made, and i have never been happier. But that is personal, and you and your team should be willing to learn a new platform (and i can imagine it would defeat the whole purpose).

To rephrase: according to what you told us, the language does not matter. Choose the language and toolset where your team is most comfortable with.

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If it's huge data base plus massive read-write in real-time much like apps layered on Twitter feeds and Facebook, you are probably going to be more worried about how fast and efficiently you can retrieve data from database. There are tools to do so, in both, Java and PHP, so you are not going to be worried much what you start with.

I would suggest to with one you have more suitable tools and APIs to develop on. So, to answer your questions:

For a system like ours, does it even matter what we go with?

It does not matter what you choose. At least, when starting it is premature to decide what's the best. I've seen pretty efficient system on Java. So, I am inclined towards Java.

Because at the end, it's the performance boosters that matter.... or am I entirely wrong in thinking that?

Performance boost will come with faster data-retrieval and ability to handle large request load. Java scales pretty well. But there are high performance sites build on PHP.

I would say, it's a good idea to evaluate what makes you to do less work in getting your app done and go with that. In massive load situations, you might have to tweak things in either of the cases.

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You should design your system to scale well with the number of users. You will find CPU/memory is relatively cheap these days so using a bit more cpu/memory is not as big a problem as it used to me.

I would say if you can use Java or PHP, you should consider using Java AND PHP. This way you can take advantage of the best of both languages.