From: ccc <cartercc@...>
Date: 2006-01-05T00:17:59+09:00
Subject: Re: application and web app technologies

> I don't foresee this solving your problem in the least.  Unreadable or
> unmaintainable code can be written in any language.

> That having been said, however, you could do worse than Java for your
> purposes.  After all, limiting the damage that large numbers of mediocre
> programmers can do over an extended period is the one thing at which
> Java seems to excel most.

A pretty high priority is getting everyone to use the same language. If
we do that, we will at least have the benefits of cross pollination,
and other shoulders to cry on if something doesn't work.

The pay is low, but one of the benefits of working at a school is that
you get your education at a greatly reduced cost. We have a PhD
candidate in SwEng, several MS candidates in CS, and several MSs in CS
floating around, and Java is real big right now in academia.
Personally, I just have this nagging suspicion, an anxiety really, that
we haven't done everything we should unless we look at alternatives.

But we'll probably gravitate to Java, kind of like a satillite falling
to earth -- it's gravitational attraction is so strong that it's a lot
more work to try something different. That said, I really like Perl,
but it seems too hard to use in an environment where we have a lot of
turnover and always need to change something someone else has written.

Thanks for your advice, this exchange has been helpful for us.

CC