Addressing the "Which Programming Language is Best" question / debate.

I know this is opening things up for a flame war, but in my short time visiting this corner of the forum, there are repeated questions on which web development language is best.

I've worked with ColdFusion, PHP, .NET (ASP C#) and C/C++. I've used MySQL and MSSQL for various projects, and have dabbed in Java to do some voice-recognition stuff. Each language has it's positives and negatives.

I develop most of my web applications in PHP because I like how "raw" PHP is. PHP (the source) was developed with great memory management, which leads it to have the lowest footprint of the popular web programming languages. Since it's similar in syntax to C/C++, for me it was also more intuitive for logic based programming. PHP is free, and is widely supported.

With that said, ColdFusion, I found, simplified many of the things I needed custom classes for in PHP. In my stress tests, there were minimal pitfalls in processor usage. It was definitely much more tag oriented, which if that's the way you learn, isn't so bad. Cost is an issue to a degree with ColdFusion. Though, one can (and should) make the argument that cost should be a moot point for anyone serious about developing a web application, or data driven website.

ASP.NET is a huge language that has the pleasure of being able to make use of your C# or VB.NET development skills. It has so much more "built-in" functionality than many of the other languages. It's much harder to learn, and like ColdFusion, is more costly than other open languages like PHP and Ruby on Rails. The real downfall is the footprint. It takes more to deliver less, the flipside of that coin is that out of the box, it's easier to scale an .NET application than say a PHP one. Just like everything else here, it's a give and take.

Those are really the three primary languages, with Ruby on Rails making a run at ColdFusion for the 3 spot (I haven't looked at current estimates, so it may have already done so).

One way to choose the language best for you is to figure out for which do you have the most readily accessible help for? Looking at which sites use X is misleading.

What's the "best" language? Well, that depends on what you want. Since PHP isn't even close to as organized as ColdFusion, Ruby or ASP, there's a lot more room for you to do things the wrong way and open yourself up for headaches. So maybe in that circumstance the "best" would be ASP. If speed is what you're looking for, and you're confident you can structure your code, and server correctly, then PHP is your answer.

BUT. If you really want to use what the "big boys" use, it's gonna be a hybrid of a low-level programming language and a web development language. Facebook is built using a hybrid of C++ and PHP. They've even created a nifty little tool, HipHop for PHP, that can turn your PHP into C++. C++ is what's most commonly used to develop video games and even operating systems. It's not nearly as easy to learn as a web development language because of memory management, but if you want a website that is blazingly fast and can handle the highest load, that's your best option.

So to wrap up this unreasonably long post, and to reiterate. There really is no "best." Each person will have their preferences, and any performance gained in one, in the end, is really minimal and shouldn't be used to choose between one or the other. The reality is, there really isn't anything you can do in one, that you can't do with another.