Web developers: what is your platform (back-end) of choice?

[Phantomaniac]

When I was in college I can't recall ANY courses on back-end web development. Perhaps there was a course or two on HTML/CSS, but that was it. Everything was about desktop development in Java or .NET. The only back-end web language I knew about was PHP, because I was required to use it for one project in a "multimedia" class I had. I looked at PHP and thought "Ugh...who'd want to code in this all the time?", and went about my merry way after the project was done.

Flash forward about 4-5 years later and I start seeing some really cool things going on in web development. I decide I want to get back into development (it's not my career, just a hobby) so I start looking into web platforms and...my god...EVERY language these days has its own stable, well tested platform/framework, if not several of them! Out of curiosity I even looked through what PHP has to offer these days and its a marked improvement.

So I pose to you web devs of AT, what is your platform/framework of choice? Yes I know there is a certain amount of "the right tool for the right job" that applies, but I want to know what everyone personally thinks is awesome.

 

[Markbnj]

Mine was Windows/.NET for years, so most recently ASP.NET/MVC4 + C# + SQL Server. But I have moved all my own development efforts to Python, using Django for web work and Postgresql for the database. I may mess with MariaDB as it evolves. The main reason for my transition is that the entire production stack is mature and free, whereas on the MS side you either have to cobble together a development platform using free versions, or pay a minimum of $1200 or so for an MSDN sub. Just as an aside, the top end MSDN sub is now around $13k. Amazing.

Related but subsidiary reasons are simply the lost momentum on the MS side, and my own perception that all the really interesting work is being done in Linux these days (with a few exceptions like games and Kinect and whatnot).

 

[smackababy]

While I don't have a particular favorite, I do not mind working in Java all day. It has a lot of mature technologies to explore.

I do most of my home coding away from the web side though. Been learning / messing around with Direct X, so C++ is what I use at home.

 

[sourceninja]

Honestly, I used to use php for everything then moved to frameworks. But now I basically just build shit in drupal.

It's easier, pay is better, and it's less work.

 

[cytg111]

(java)..back end .. does it really matter? I attended a lecture by Ted Neward some years back where he provocatly asked the audience what they thought the enterprise standard as a whole really has brought us since servlets and stored procs - shooting every contestant down in the process. I tend to agree with him. Find it good, stable and kiss and you're good to go.
I've worked with it briefly but not enough to give expert oppinion on it, but from people I respect i hear that springmvc is a good candidate. (myself, i am tumbling with wicket for "fun" atm.. isnt getting in my way too much..)
For small data domains I suppose i could go hibernate, but i really like my sql's..
For databases I'd go postgresql anyday .. it rocks.

 

[purbeast0]

been doing groovy/grails recently at work. had experience with java at my prior place. groovy/grails is basically shorthand java, but it also allows the whole database/model integration to be much easier to maintain with some additional plugins (liquibase). we support mysql, posgresql, oracle, and sqlserver. our dev environments are all in hypersql.

starting in a few months we're switching to an osgi structured backend that supports mongodb and some others as well.

 

[tfinch2]

Using Jersey (JAX-RS) and Spring JDBCTemplate for a couple of different production backend projects that I am working on now. Pretty easy to use and performance has been good.

For another experimental project I am using Vert.x and Jongo, and it works pretty well too.

 

[tfinch2]

been doing groovy/grails recently at work. had experience with java at my prior place. groovy/grails is basically shorthand java, but it also allows the whole database/model integration to be much easier to maintain with some additional plugins (liquibase). we support mysql, posgresql, oracle, and sqlserver. our dev environments are all in hypersql.

starting in a few months we're switching to an osgi structured backend that supports mongodb and some others as well.

For one project, I have to use these REST services from a grails app. When anything goes wrong I get these 500 line stack traces. In your development have you found that to be a hindrance?

 

[purbeast0]

For one project, I have to use these REST services from a grails app. When anything goes wrong I get these 500 line stack traces. In your development have you found that to be a hindrance?

the stack traces can be a bitch because of all the overhead stuff that is going on. but when i run into an exception of that nature, i just step through the backend controllers and services and find out what is going on. it took me a while to get to the point where i am comfortable debugging that stuff though, definitely a learning curve. we have tons and tons of REST endpoints being hit as well.

 

[TechBoyJK]

CentOS+OpenBD+Tomcat+mySQL

 

[Ken g6]

Am I the only one around here who likes PHP? Maybe because I like my web apps small and simple. Call me crazy, but I also have a fondness for using text files as my database. I tried getting into Ruby on Rails with Sqlite, but somehow it seemed like more work than it was worth.

I've used Tomcat in the past, with MySQL (fine so far as it goes), Apache Ant, Jelly (which I later replaced with more Ant), and XSLT. Seriously, avoid XSLT if at all possible.

 

[Phantomaniac]

Am I the only one around here who likes PHP? Maybe because I like my web apps small and simple. Call me crazy, but I also have a fondness for using text files as my database. I tried getting into Ruby on Rails with Sqlite, but somehow it seemed like more work than it was worth.

PHP is still number one on my potentials list given my past (but brief) experience. Been looking into the Laravel framework doc and it looks pretty awesome.

 

[beginner99]

Am I the only one around here who likes PHP? Maybe because I like my web apps small and simple. Call me crazy, but I also have a fondness for using text files as my database. I tried getting into Ruby on Rails with Sqlite, but somehow it seemed like more work than it was worth.

I've used Tomcat in the past, with MySQL (fine so far as it goes), Apache Ant, Jelly (which I later replaced with more Ant), and XSLT. Seriously, avoid XSLT if at all possible.

I think PHP is fine if you know what you are doing. However if not there is so many dumb things you can do...I would use it for very simple projects or ones that requires 3rd party hosting as most other hosting is just harder to find and more expensive. But I really do get why ppl hate PHP.

Personally I know prefer Java-Stack. i've looked at grails and it's pretty nice but has a learning curve and once you need to do non-standard things it gets tricky and the scaffolding stuff fails. No I'm working with Spring Data JPA (and spring in general). I would say pretty cool for a backend. But if you want to build a complete web application, grails or similar frameworks are probably a better choice.

 

[nickbits]

ASP.NET/C# + SQL Server

 

[Broheim]

ASP.NET/C# + SQL Server

this.

it's not the cool hipster platform, but I like writing C#.

 

[Crusty]

Ruby on Rails.

 

[Leros]

I'm preferential to Java. That seems to be what the big players (Google, Amazon, etc) use for their backends so that makes me feel a bit more confident about my choice. There are tons of libraries and it's performant which is good for scalability. There are also a lot of developers who know Java including a majority of college graduates.

I might consider other choices for prototyping or low scale ites. There are faster technologies from a development point of view, but they don't perform as well at scale. For example: we used Django to rewrite an internal tool. It performed about 200x slower than the nearly identical version we wrote in Java. The speed wasn't a problem when there were < 5 simultaneous users. It was a problem when there were 20+. It would certainly have been a problem if there were 1,000. It took a lot of manual tweaking to get the Django app to be only be 5x slower than the Java version.

 

[BigDH01]

Started with C#/ASP.NET MVC/Entity Framework on SQL (really liked it even if EF has its quirks and is not as fast as writing custom SQL), now my job requires Python/Django/NoSQL. I also really like Ruby/Sinatra/MongoDB. Great for getting REST services up quickly.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Linux/Apache/PHP/Mysql. Completely free, no restrictions and very solid. Also easy to automate stuff in Linux such as backups with rsync over ssh.

Php is kinda outdated though, I don't even know if they maintain that project anymore. Been wanting to look at learning the alternatives like ruby on rails. Most web apps like forums and such are mostly all php though, so it's not completely dead.

 

[Dravic]

My Current stack - Linux/Nginx/Python+Django/Postgres

 

[smakme7757]

Linux/Apache/PHP/Mysql. Completely free, no restrictions and very solid.

Same for me.

 

[mkrohn]

Am I the only one around here who likes PHP? Maybe because I like my web apps small and simple. Call me crazy, but I also have a fondness for using text files as my database. I tried getting into Ruby on Rails with Sqlite, but somehow it seemed like more work than it was worth.

I've used Tomcat in the past, with MySQL (fine so far as it goes), Apache Ant, Jelly (which I later replaced with more Ant), and XSLT. Seriously, avoid XSLT if at all possible.

I love PHP too. I've found that if you build things right and have been doing it a while you can quickly put some amazing things together.

I like how every server supports it and you CAN make it run very efficiently. Any of my high traffic stuff though I use it to create static pages or content blocks.

I've found things like drupal to just be very bloated but yes it's easy to make some smallish chunks of change tossing crap together in things like wordpress and those other big CMS's

 

[Obsoleet]

I don't do much web development but-
Debian stable + Nginx + Postgres + Django is really tough to beat. I'd build a business on it, and many people do.

That said if you know PHP.. PHP is huge. I don't think it's the ideal thing, but I'd stick with that just for the job prospects if I already knew it.

 

[Phantomaniac]

I don't do much web development but-
Debian stable + Nginx + Postgres + Django is really tough to beat. I'd build a business on it, and many people do.

That said if you know PHP.. PHP is huge. I don't think it's the ideal thing, but I'd stick with that just for the job prospects if I already knew it.

Nice choice on Debian + Nginx. That's what I use on my web server, and it runs very well under low ram conditions.

I agree that PHP isn't the "ideal" thing, especially when looking at the language itself. Its just so easy to get things done and deployed with minimal effort compared to everything else.

 

[Graze]

C#/ASP.NET using entity framework on MYSQL
PHP With MYSQL would be a close second.