Internet Programming Languages Pros And Cons

Presentation

There was a revolution in programming languages that started when the Web, and consequently the wider Internet, became mainstream around 1994. Perhaps the revolution was so gradual, it happened over such a long period of time that few people noticed it.

Gradually, a few programming languages took over and became Internet linguas francas: PythonLanguage, PerlLanguage, RubyLanguage, PhpLanguage. CeeLanguage and CeePlusPlus are still used by some sites where efficiency and speed are critical (notably Infoseek and Google), but many Internet developers prefer languages that allow them faster development time.

What is the advantage of each of these programming languages for Internet applications? . What are its disadvantages? If this page has any value, it should relate specifically to Internet applications, not to general language issues.

This site aims to compare languages for server-side CGI.

http://www.rawbw.com/~rem/HelloPlus/hellos.html

C/C++ as an Internet language

Pros

Speed and efficiency when large-scale computing is accomplished in a single HTTP transaction. (e.g., Google, Infoseek)

Cons

Ease of writing code vulnerable to security attacks (particularly buffer overflows)
- Although the most common buffer overflows are easily avoided by modern programmers who know better than to use gets/strcpy etc. It's a shame that not too many of these "modern programmers" seem to exist :( Yeah...well...but also there's just a lot of legacy code that seems to only get fixed one security alert at a time. :-(
It takes a lot of code & development time to get anything done in languages as low-level as this (in tradeoff for execution speed, sometimes) compared to some other options on this page.

Java as an Internet language

Pros

Large commercial support base. Plenty of tools available, and manufacturers to go to for support
Large marketing department pushing it as "The" language for enterprise development
Application servers (J2EE, WebLogic) for scaleable web-based applications.
Has a decent "sandbox" model to reduce leaking control.

Cons

High execution overhead for CGI.
Dedicated, large-footprint server for AppServer alternative
API designed primarily for divided-labor large-org architects rather than smaller-project end-users.
Lack of dynamic language features is not popular with many.

Perl as an Internet language

Pros

Top-notch string processing. Most websites are simple text manipulation.
Related to the above: numerous templating systems. Template Toolkit, Mason, various modules that deal with XML and XSLT and so on
Absolutely huge collection of modules (TheCpan) that are easy to install
Many scripts available for the download.
Can be configured to execute within the server's process space, bypassing the CGI overhead.

Cons

Cryptic syntax that's a mix of several language heritages: BourneShell, C and awk.

see WhyLovePerl and WhyHatePerl.

PHP as an Internet language

Pros

Can be embedded in HTML; seen as a dedicated web language.
Deceptively simple to learn.
Touted as a good beginner language.
Large array of built-in functions for everything from PDF creation to credit-card transactions to database interaction
Available at a majority of hosting services
Relatively good integration with apache.

Cons

While the runtime services are good, the language itself is quite horrible
Encourages writing bad code ^2 {too vague}'
PHP implementation is full of bugs and might change semantics without a note, causing constant security upgrades that break your code
- What language doesn't have this problem (other than being so old that it doesn't need to change or used so rarely that hackers don't bother with it -- AKA "Mac syndrome".)
PHP encourages writing web programs in an insecure manner
Not too fast (good for building database interfaces, not making calculations)