[UPHPU] Is PHP the right language for my project?

[thebigdog]

> I'm in an odd situation where our programmer resources probably don't match
> what I need done.  I've got a couple of hard core C programmers that work on
> our hardware product and our parent company has some hard core COBOL
> programmers.  :) There are two of us that can hold our own in Perl, but web
> development or much UI development in Perl is not the direction technology
> and tools are going and we don't have time to work on it.
> 
> The reality is that I'm going to end up hiring somebody to write it or
> contract it out.  I'm not constrained by what my staff knows or what we have
> developed in previously.  It's a catch 22...  I can't base my decision on
> what the skills of the person doing the programming since that person
> doesn't exist until I decide what language/platform we will program in.
> 
> I have started building out the requirements document independent of the
> language and doing a lot of the things you talk about (thanks for the list
> of things to cover).
> 
> Given my lack of constraints and the ability to start from scratch, do you
> have opinions one way or another?

Chris,

PHP developers are a dime a dozen and you should be able to find some really 
good talent locally for the development. The costs should be fair if you look 
around for great talent! The key here is finding the talent. About 80% of my 
contracts are fixing PHP applications that companies have outsourced and did not 
receive the desired result. I would suggest that if you outsource you provide 
very detailed requirements and work on a development phase plan.

If it was me i would look at a couple languages: php, python and java. But that 
depends on the hardware and deployment strategy that you designed. Server wise i 
would be on linux with apache or whatever app server you need.


--
ray