I will be programming in Python with Django on Google's App Engine. I can create a Twitter bot or a Facebook application and running it from the App Engine where I don't need a conventional shared hosting server or a domain name. Platform as a service on the cloud computing will be the driving factor on how I choose a programming language for my next project.
C/C++ programming language had been enslaved me for at least 15 years. Well at least, C/C++ language is much easier than the assembly language that convert instructions to machine codes. I chose the C/C++ language because it performed the best on all machines. Now for me most of the machines are on server farms that I don't know where they are. I just never have a privilege to log onto any of the new servers as administrator or root, as I used to. I really need to have full control of the computer for me to program in C/C++. Loosing that control makes me choose another language.
I have a couple of years programming in C#, doing ASP.net applications and some MVC based applications on .Net framework. I admit that it is much easier to program in C# than in C/C++. However, .Net based web applications load very slowly on first attempt. They load faster on the subsequent attempts. But they will be back to load slowly after you are not loading them for a while. On the first load .Net will compile the application into a machine code and cache it. All subsequent calls will run from the cache. After an idle of a predetermined period the cache will be gone. It sounds reasonable but I hate the slow response especially on the first attempt.
I hated PHP. I am an object oriented programmer. PHP is a patchy object oriented language. A language must be well-formed where PHP lacks in so many places. However, as a web application a PHP program load fast. PHP can do that because it only load the file that has been requested because it doesn't have to compile anything. In comparison, a .Net application has to load the entire assembly and compile it if there is no pre-compiled cache. Speed is always a factor to me. However, I choose PHP not just for speed but because there are plenty of third party shared hosting servers where I can park my PHP web applications. One of my project in PHP is BlindTalk.net. In contrary, there are a lot of restrictions with .Net and even more for C/C++ web applications on those servers.
Nowadays, we are talking about cloud computing. What the heck is cloud computing? Let me animate the description in words. In the beginning we hosted an application in a server that we could physically see it in the server room in our office. Later we moved the server in a server room run by a third party provider. We can still manned our server in the provider facility. Then the provider introduced clustered servers where there are many servers acted as one. That was the moment where we lost control of a physical server. We were only given a virtual machine. In a virtual machine we were still controlling the operating system. Now in the cloud computing they are not just taking away our physical server but they are also taking away our operating system, and only leave us with an application environment. They have to do that because the clusters of servers now are too large that the servers are distributed all over the globe where it will be impossible for us to maintain the operating system. However on the other hand, we gain scalable application environment. Today in the notion of cloud computing the concept of physical server and operating system have gone.
I want cloud computing. Not many companies can provide cloud computing services because of the huge investment required to build up the facilities. Large companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Googles provide cloud computing services. I am not going to compare those services. At this moment I am inclining towards Google App Engine as a cloud computing environment for scalable web application. Google App Engine gives me the damn reason to choose Python as my next scalable web application programming language. The App Engine also supports Java but I'm not going to talk about it.
C/C++ programming language had been enslaved me for at least 15 years. Well at least, C/C++ language is much easier than the assembly language that convert instructions to machine codes. I chose the C/C++ language because it performed the best on all machines. Now for me most of the machines are on server farms that I don't know where they are. I just never have a privilege to log onto any of the new servers as administrator or root, as I used to. I really need to have full control of the computer for me to program in C/C++. Loosing that control makes me choose another language.
I have a couple of years programming in C#, doing ASP.net applications and some MVC based applications on .Net framework. I admit that it is much easier to program in C# than in C/C++. However, .Net based web applications load very slowly on first attempt. They load faster on the subsequent attempts. But they will be back to load slowly after you are not loading them for a while. On the first load .Net will compile the application into a machine code and cache it. All subsequent calls will run from the cache. After an idle of a predetermined period the cache will be gone. It sounds reasonable but I hate the slow response especially on the first attempt.
I hated PHP. I am an object oriented programmer. PHP is a patchy object oriented language. A language must be well-formed where PHP lacks in so many places. However, as a web application a PHP program load fast. PHP can do that because it only load the file that has been requested because it doesn't have to compile anything. In comparison, a .Net application has to load the entire assembly and compile it if there is no pre-compiled cache. Speed is always a factor to me. However, I choose PHP not just for speed but because there are plenty of third party shared hosting servers where I can park my PHP web applications. One of my project in PHP is BlindTalk.net. In contrary, there are a lot of restrictions with .Net and even more for C/C++ web applications on those servers.
Nowadays, we are talking about cloud computing. What the heck is cloud computing? Let me animate the description in words. In the beginning we hosted an application in a server that we could physically see it in the server room in our office. Later we moved the server in a server room run by a third party provider. We can still manned our server in the provider facility. Then the provider introduced clustered servers where there are many servers acted as one. That was the moment where we lost control of a physical server. We were only given a virtual machine. In a virtual machine we were still controlling the operating system. Now in the cloud computing they are not just taking away our physical server but they are also taking away our operating system, and only leave us with an application environment. They have to do that because the clusters of servers now are too large that the servers are distributed all over the globe where it will be impossible for us to maintain the operating system. However on the other hand, we gain scalable application environment. Today in the notion of cloud computing the concept of physical server and operating system have gone.
I want cloud computing. Not many companies can provide cloud computing services because of the huge investment required to build up the facilities. Large companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Googles provide cloud computing services. I am not going to compare those services. At this moment I am inclining towards Google App Engine as a cloud computing environment for scalable web application. Google App Engine gives me the damn reason to choose Python as my next scalable web application programming language. The App Engine also supports Java but I'm not going to talk about it.
Comments
Post a Comment