Re: [Chicken-users] Choosing a programming language for a web project

[Jean-Philippe Théberge]

<quote who="Graham Fawcett">
> On 9/29/07, Jean-Philippe Théberge <address@hidden> wrote:
>> I'm in the process of choosing a programming language.  I am
>> investigating
>> PHP5, Python, Ruby and, of course, Scheme.
>
> Is it a one-developer project? If not, will your colleagues be
> comfortable with Scheme?
>

This is a one-programmer project for the start, more will join later so
yes, programmer recruitement is an issue that scheme is not really good
at.

Most of what is needed is available with chicken (mysql, tinyCLOS, ssax)

I have benchmarked all thoses languages and chicken, even interpreted, is
a clear winner.

Python seem a good alternative but since the project start with me as the
only programmer and I have no experience with it I am afraid that this
could lead me to make mistake I will regret later when my knowledge of the
language will be stronger.

I could do it in PHP as I have a lot of experience with it.  But I really
dont like this language.

I have a good knowledge of scheme but none with chicken. (I'm used to
guile and Gauche).

I dont know much about Ruby but browsing the documentation and doing the
simple script for the benchmark did not give me a good feeling.

So the question is: Is programmer recruitement that important and are good
scheme programmer so rare?

Does Chicken have strong concrete advantage over other languages beside my
"I dont like it" and "I have a bad feeling about it"

For the record, here's the benchmark result (average of 50 invocations of
"time -f %U" on a script doing a simple but lenghty SQL query)

"./php5.php":    0.0378
"./chicken":     0.017
"./chicken.scm": 0.0202
"./gauche.scm":  0.193
"./python.py":   0.1224
"./ruby.rb":     0.0252
"./perl.pl":     0.1154

> Are the libraries you require available in Chicken; and if not, are
> you willing to put in the time to develop them? If you're integrating
> with existing C libraries, will you be comfortable working with the
> FFI?
>

There is no existing C lib that I need to link to, but It seem that the
possibility of writing in C for mission critical part of the project (and
linking to them) can be done more easily with chicken than the other
languages - but I havent tried it yet.

> The SSAX tools are excellent; Chicken's database support is pretty
> good; there are some nice eggs related to Web apps; and of course
> there are loads of general application-development eggs. Review the
> eggs list (http://call-with-current-continuation.org/eggs) if you
> haven't already; to see what is available, and what you must develop
> yourself.
>

Yes, SSAX is, to me, one of the greatest thing since the wheel.

> If you have a "do-it-yourself" mentality, I think you will find
> Chicken / Scheme very rewarding (as I certainly have). If you just
> want to get your project done quickly, it may not be the right choice,
> given the number of frameworks and libraries in Python and Ruby (and
> given the unknown nature of your application).
>

I mostly have that "do it yourself" mentality, but I do appreciate good
libraries also, especialy when I'm short of time.

> Graham
>

Thanks Graham!
-- 
Jean-Philippe Théberge
Programmeur-Architecte
http://www.BuddyPilots.com