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Ask HN: Language/framework pros and cons for writing a web server nowadays?
3 points by pvnick on Dec 17, 2015 | hide | past | favorite | 2 comments
I'm not looking for "best," but I would like to hear what you guys would consider for choosing between some of the modern languages/frameworks.

Despite the flak that PHP gets, many successful web servers have traditionally been written using PHP, and with modern frameworks like Laravel which use PHP's OOP features it seems acceptable.

There are also great Python frameworks like Django, Flask and Pyramid (I love Flask, and I don't see much talk about Django these days).

Rails seems like it has always been a top choice, even recently.

I also frequently see articles touting Java as a robust web server choice.

What do you guys think?



Django and Rails are similar in the sense that they come with batteries included and favor convention over configuration. Also, Django recently received a grant from Mozilla, so expect some great features to be added.

https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2015/dec/11/django-awar...

Personally, I've worked with Django, Rails, and The Spring Framework (Java).

I'd choose Django or Rails. I do prefer Django, but Rails has a much more vibrant eco system and a lot more plugins (gems) that let you do things pretty fast.

Really you need to be clear on what problem you are trying to solve, because one framework might be better than the other. For example, I've worked with Rails and it has great support for apache solr. If I needed to do full text search on a lot of records and use solr to index them, I'd choose Rails.

Define the problem you're trying to solve, and see which framework is best suited for it.


What is the goal?

What is the architecture?

What is the business proposition?

Who is going to maintain it?

What kind of data will be in the backing store?




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