Posts tagged Ecommerce

The programming languages you need to know about for successful ecommerce, online marketing, and search engine optimization

Everyone knows about the excellent content management systems and blogging platforms out there. These will help those who need to quickly put together a site. One needs to factor scaling, search engine optimization, etc. But there are those of bigger size projects who need something more on a professional basis. This is to put together a large-scale site that is usually meant for large companies to build an ecommerce site, social site, or enterprise level. Here is what I think are a complete synopsis but quick overview of what programming language you would want to go with. Let me now explain these in the order as explained at Tiobe.

http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html

1. Java-what else can I say. This is very complex language that makes many vets drop the language and venture into other languages. There are many frameworks that include popular Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE), Hibernate, Struts, Spring, and so many more. There are so many reasons why this is popular. You have the likes of Weblogic, IBM, Oracle, Apple, Google, and many other large vendors who stand behind it. Also, this is a language which is scalable, mature, and proven to handle any traffic load. If your budget is not limited, you could always go with a great application server like Webspeheres (from IBM) or Weblogic or the free JBoss. There is always choice. These servers are rock solid for any project or site. That is why huge sites like Ebay, Amazon, and CNN are developed in Java. Also, Google’s back end services are developed in Java as well. If you ever decide to go with a mobile strategy, Google’s Android, Blackberry, and Nokia’s Symbian are all based on Java 2 Mobile Edition (J2ME) and their own software development kits. You can’t go wrong with Java. One more thing to add is that this language is compiled to the local operating system’s byte code which makes it ideal for speedy sites.
2. C and C++-ahh the older languages, which brought object oriented programming to the mainstream. I am kind of excited by this language, as it is the closest language you will find to any Unix or Linux operating system, Just like Java, it is compiled to byte code to make it really fast. The main purposes of C/C++ is for those more complex backend systems used for purposes like multithreading or concurrency. You will find many local based servers written in this language. I always compare C/C++ like checkers, easy to understand but hard to master depending on the developer.
3. PHP-outside of PERL, this language is great to develop raw websites with. It is also proven it can scale beautifully. Even Apache can easily include PHP flavors into any web server. It is quite advanced if you want to go there. You can also do some fancy stuff. The big disadvantages is you have to code your own navigation with rowsets from calls against databases. I am sure there are more advanced extensions to do this but PHP does show it’s age compared to newer web scripting languages.
4. Visual Basic-Do I really need to talk about this one? First, it is Microsoft (MS). If you are a Microsoft shop, obviously .NET is the way to go so you should stick with the trilogy of ASP, Visual Basic, and C#. It is a very easy language to work with since it is forms based with your controls to do custom stuff. The Visual Studio is really decent to bang out .NET applications. It might be so great to develop custom or back end work so that is where C# comes in. My biggest gripe against Microsoft is the lock down, they force you to upgrade, and the costs involved for licensing. That would suck for those projects that are price sensitive. If you can, stick with open source and free languages outside of the Microsoft world.
5. C# (C Sharp)-I really like this language. The syntax makes sense and yes, there are some unique ideas coming from Microsoft. This is especially true with your getting and setter properties of the language. All though it is not quite an original language, you can see the real rip off from Java and its predecessor to C or C++. Remember that Visual C++ was part of the older Visual Studio a few years ago.
6. Pyhton-there is always this debate between Ruby and Python. Without Rails, Python easily wins over Ruby. Why? It is a closer scripting language that Unix based programmers prefer. From my understanding, it is mostly used for script testing or front-end development. Just ask Google or Yahoo as they use Python for their front-end home pages. That brings some clout for the language.
7. Ruby on Rails-I have not seen a lot of demand for this language on the enterprise level but it is really coming around. It is so easy to put together a website using this language. Major search engines due to its URL structure love it. It is really quick to assemble a website as some consulting companies are switching to it. One needs to understand that Ruby is a separate language. As said, Python would be a better choice but once you implement with Rails the framework, could not ask for a better language. Many former developers of Java and C++ are jumping ship to this language. There are so many reasons that include the ability to quickly whip up a Struts like application. That is really appealing. The only gripe I have for RoR is it’s cryptic syntax. Unless you know RoR, you will not quickly pick up the source as with other more traditional languages.
8. PERL-Do I really I need to review this language. It is a dinosaur web language. To be precise, it was the original so don’t choose this one unless you need to maintain something. There are some many better languages as explained above.

Hope that helps you out, but remember this is only my opinion. It might be a true reflection of your needs.