[GLLUG] Best Web/Desktop Programming solution (...)

[Clay Dowling]

Jason Green said:
> At the risk of starting a major flame war, I'm going to post this
> question just to get some outside perspectives...

Way way too late for that.

To be honest, C and C++ are ideal for this situation.  Unfortunately it
doesn't sound like those languages are ideal for your department.

I would strongly recommend -not- choosing a single language for both
environments.  Desktop apps are radically different from web apps.  There
are languages that meet your RAD requirement on either platform.  I don't
know of any languages or technology that meet it on both.

You mentioned that rapid deployment is one issue you need to contend with.
 To that end you should consider your language in the context of what
people will have on their desktops.  For instance, are all of the client
machines even capable of running mono/.net?  Using perl on the desktop
requires installing ActivePerl on the Windows clients.  Work out how
you're going to manage the installation of both the application and the
runtime, because that's going to be your biggest headache.

For your GUI clients you want something that can generate an easy to
install executable.  For your web clients you want something that has
decent speed. My own personal recommendations, informed by my own biases
and experience: C++ with wxWidgets for GUI clients (makes future migration
easier, integrated ODBC support) and PHP with a good templating engine for
the web applications.

Clay Dowling
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