Best lanuage for making seo automation tools

by Thomas Michal

Posted: 13 years ago 15 replies

PROGRAMMING

To all the programmers out there, what would be the best language to write an automation tool like senuke, xrumer, scrapebox and such.

I am learning python right now as my first language but I don't know if that language would be a good fit...

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

#automation #lanuage #making #seo #tools

K Meier 13 years ago

python is definitely a good start to get into it. Main problem with python is that it's a high level programming language (which is not a good thing in your case). Meaning that if you program something that is heavy on your CPU, you are very limited on optimizing CPU performance.

C++, C# on the other hand are low level programming languages, which means you have full access to lower level of the system and can therefor optimize the CPU usage to your needs. Downside is, it's a good bit more complicated and can be very overwhelming to start of with since you can do anything with it.

But then again, as a beginner who only wants to create one program, go for python, or try Java. Good thing about Java is that is cross platform compatible. Windows, Mac, Linux and even web based. You'll attract more users in the end
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wayfarer 13 years ago

Just because something is high-level doesn't make it automatically "bad". Performance is only relative to the weakest link in your system anyway, which in the case of a web scraper is the time required to actually make an HTTP call to gather information across the network which is the web. Since the actual time it takes to process the resulting information is so tiny compared to the call time, performance on the processor level is not critical. Since it is much faster to write code in a high level language than a lower level one, it is often the better choice.

Google's spider is written in Python. Their indexer is written in C++.
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K Meier 13 years ago

I didn't say it's a bad thing in general. I personally prefer high level languages. But from the looks of those tools he mentioned, where you scrape and ping 1000s of websites in a short time, its definitely a CPU heavy tool, or to be more exact, you're gonna use lots of Threads for a tool like that.
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zone117x 13 years ago

C# for desktop, PHP for server.
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- K Meier 13 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by zone117x
  
  C# for desktop, PHP for server.
  
  I'm sorry, but what? Did you even read the OPs question? Or did you just post to get your post count up?
  
  Thanks
  
  1 reply
  
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  zone117x 13 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by Londrag
  
  I'm sorry, but what? Did you even read the OPs question? Or did you just post to get your post count up?
  
  >_>
  
  If making tool to run on a server, use php. If making the tool to run on desktop, use C#.
  
  Thanks
  
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stufftheme 13 years ago

i will always prefer php for this
as it is easy to learn
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- HostingWarrior 13 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by stufftheme
  
  i will always prefer php for this
  as it is easy to learn
  
  But i don't think php will help for desktop software.
  
  Thanks
  
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wayfarer 13 years ago

My recommendation, is that since you're learning Python, stick with that until you learn as much as possible. Once you're confident at programming in general, you'll be better qualified to judge for yourself. One nice thing about Python, is that it has a very large standard library, and can handle complex networking tasks out of the box. It also supports true multithreading, which can be very helpful.

Python is a great general-purpose programming language, though it does take a bit of a performance hit vs C++, C#, and Java, as mentioned. It's about in the same class as Perl, and is generally much faster than a scripting language like PHP.
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mologic 13 years ago

i use c# and am happy with it ,, not a big fan of java

visual studio vs eclipse

nuff said
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jminkler 13 years ago

HTMLUnit
cUrl
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drewcur02 13 years ago

I would suggest PHP from a Linux terminal (very stable).

You need to know:

- some PHP
- cURL
- Regular Expressions
- maybe MySQL

It will depend on your requirements.
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Alicia Allen 13 years ago

PHP an MySQL are the best.
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- kenmichaels 13 years ago
  
  @ the risk of getting flamed here. Anything visual will work well and be pretty easy to pick up on. 1000 's of code snippets and help sites that will basically walk you thru anything you want to do. Visual Basic was designed to do exactly what you want to do.
  
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website design 13 years ago

Yep visual, C++, C#, Python... all depends on what your most comfortable working with. All are great options but if you were to start from scratch I would go with C#
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