Which web programming language to use?

[Subotai]

So, I might be able to build a website for a business. The website will have a way for the client to login, and then retrieve their data from 2 or 3 remote websites using those companies API's. The data must be secure. I'm not sure if they want to download the data retrieved to a database or just display it. I also don't know how it's normally done in industry and I don't think they do either. Last time I did any coding other than HTML/CSS/Javascript was 7 yrs ago. Did a little bit of ASP.NET back then. Don't remember much, ha.

What would be the best language, etc. to build this web app? Any pointers appreciated.

[cvigue]

If it has to be secure and you don't know what language/toolchain to use, let someone else do it. Not trying to be a jerk but (re)cut your teeth on something less critical.

[Subotai]

^Thinking about it. But, checking with all my buds to get their opinions.

[cvigue]

^Thinking about it. But, checking with all my buds to get their opinions.

You have to figure out the hosting platform first. Once that's sorted the toolchain of choice will be a lot narrower.

[ocabj]

I'm assuming the APIs in question will be RESTful. There are quite a few frameworks that are ideal for RESTful APIs.

Grails is one popular option, particularly because it can be integrated easily with Java. If you're going with containers, then this is a strong choice.

Mojolicious is another framework that lends itself well to RESTful API and web applications. It is Perl based.

If you're have to go basic, you can always just run a standard LAMP stack and go to town.

Granted, if we're not talking RESTful APIs, then your question will need more context and clarity to provide a better response.

[Subotai]

Hmmm, I emailed a friend of mine who is the CEO of a web dev firm, has 10-20 employees. Maybe I can pass this one to him.

[Librarian]

APL.

“There are three things a man must do
Before his life is done;
Write two lines in APL,
And make the buggers run."

(Kidding, of course; the link goes to a comedic page; there's a real page at wikipedia, but the linked one is much more satisfying.)

[Marauder2003]

Back in the 70s I went on a job interview at the AMA. The guy said APL would be kill COBOL in 10 years. Well, last time I looked if you still have a mainframe you still use COBOL.

[speedrrracer]

So, I might be able to build a website for a business. The website will have a way for the client to login, and then retrieve their data from 2 or 3 remote websites using those companies API's. The data must be secure. I'm not sure if they want to download the data retrieved to a database or just display it. I also don't know how it's normally done in industry and I don't think they do either. Last time I did any coding other than HTML/CSS/Javascript was 7 yrs ago. Did a little bit of ASP.NET back then. Don't remember much, ha.

What would be the best language, etc. to build this web app? Any pointers appreciated.

There's no "best" language. Many languages have mature feature sets and can handle tasks like this, including the .NET you mentioned. As was mentioned above, hitting some APIs is generally a trivial task, you don't need anything special to accomplish that, it's the other issues that loom larger.

Few websites are built using only one language. You might have chef /vagrant scripts to spin up your EC2 instances, bash scripts once they're up, SQL for your database, Java for your server-side code, html / css / js / etc for the client-side stuff. You have a zillion other ways to skin that cat -- maybe you're using puppet instead of chef or hosting your own servers, maybe you'll use .bat scripts and a NoSQL db and then .NET.

The elephant in this room is the word "secure". Exactly what about the data needs to be "secure", and what exactly does that mean -- PCI compliance, government contract work, military contract work, all the various types of medical and financial transactions, etc, etc. All have different levels (and sub-levels within) of security requirements, and there are professionals who do nothing else except work in these fields, as there can be a labyrinth of legal and technical requirements.

I would start from the security aspect, and unwind from there. The security requirements around the various aspects of the data handling will tell you much, and then you can pick designs which work for you.

You'll also want to consider how easy it is to hire good people with a given skill set -- you might think writing in Erlang sounds super hipster, but good luck finding the staff. You might have the staff to write it all in Ruby or etc, but then find that language doesn't have the features you need, so you would end up "rolling your own" (aka reinventing the wheel) for many important features, which adds big time and cost to any project.

It could well be the case that the languages are the least of your worries. Depending on the requirements, your best investment might be an IT guy or a dba or just a lead engineer with experience in your particular minefield to spell it all out.

[diveRN]

You haven't posted enough information to make an accurate assessment of your client's need, but know this: if security of any kind is a concern of theirs and you're asking what language to use, then this is not a job for you.

[sigstroker]

I'm assuming the APIs in question will be RESTful. There are quite a few frameworks that are ideal for RESTful APIs.

Grails is one popular option, particularly because it can be integrated easily with Java. If you're going with containers, then this is a strong choice.

Mojolicious is another framework that lends itself well to RESTful API and web applications. It is Perl based.

If you're have to go basic, you can always just run a standard LAMP stack and go to town.

Granted, if we're not talking RESTful APIs, then your question will need more context and clarity to provide a better response.

OP also didn't mention whether it had to work with mobile devices or not. Either way, Oracle has some new RESTful tools, some or all of which are free.

[wjc]

Perl

[ocabj]

Perl

We still use Perl at work. Granted, for systems administration (now DevOps). We're a bunch of thirty-somethings and older in our department, so we never really cared to jump to Python. We use more Ruby than Python anyway because of Puppet.

[glockman19]

You might want to read this paper

https://www.owasp.org/images/0/0e/OWASP_San_Antonio_0818.pdf.pdf

[wjc]

Perl

We still use Perl at work. Granted, for systems administration (now DevOps). We're a bunch of thirty-somethings and older in our department, so we never really cared to jump to Python. We use more Ruby than Python anyway because of Puppet.

I actually built a lot of websites and cgi forms back in the day. Perl is still a very useful and popular language as the infrastructure of many company's still have it in their legacy systems.

For the record I despised Python....too "free form" for me.