OT: C,C++

[sstirling at mediaone.net (Scott Stirling)]

Learn Java.

C would be great to know, as would PERL, C++, Python, etc.  They all have
strong support in the development world.  For easy and powerful web
client/server-side+database work, there's probably nothing better than
ColdFusion.  I work for Allaire, but I am a Java guy, not a CF guy.  Just
the same, the more I learn about CF, the more I'm impressed with it's ease
of use.  As someone else said, it's recently been ported to Linux.  It's
easy to use because it's basically an extended set of HTML tags (though it
allows you to write your own extensions in C++ or Java if you wish).

But, Java is where it's at, and where it's going, with server-side
programming.  Servlets and JavaServer Pages are already big time and they
will become huge (especially JSP) in the coming years.  Server-side Java is
generally faster and more efficient than native CGI once its loaded; after
an initial request, a servlet will remain in memory to handle further
requests, sort of like mod_perl in Apache.  And servlet engines can run
in-process or out-of process with the web server (depending on the
implementation), the latter allowing you to bring the two up or down
independently, which makes for better fail-over capability.  A great benefit
to all server-side Java is that it's platform independent--servlet engine's
like JRun run with Apache, IIS, NES, and on platforms from Linux to Solaris
to NT.  EJB is another huge server-side technology--built-in security,
concurrency handling, transaction management, etc.  All of these
technologies are based on a language that was designed with the Internet in
mind, with tons of standard APIs for everything from networking and email to
3D imaging  to cryptography, and which is intrinsically multi-threaded.

JDBC is the Java version of ODBC.  It's platform independent and widely
supported (everything from Oracle to MySQL has a pure Java JDBC driver).
And Java performance is getting better all the time as companies like Sun
and IBM research ways to improve it.

My .02,

Scott Stirling
West Newton, MA


----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Katz" <mkatz at meganet.net>
To: <discuss at Blu.Org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 18, 2000 8:38 PM
Subject: Re: OT: C,C++


> I have given a browser based solution some thought.... Im asuming that
with
> any of the browser based solutions (php3 and pearl) I could use odbc.
This
> would intergrate pritty easly into paradox....But Ive heard that odbc is a
> dog...is this true?  I nead to be able to read and write real time to a
> multi relational db.  Whats is the cleanest back end to use for web
browser
> based client solutions?
>
> Thanx agian
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Charles C. Bennett, Jr. <ccb at kukla.tiac.net>
> >
> > Hi Mike -
> >
> >    If you are looking to do database front-end type work, consider
> > something that's web-centric.  If you need cross-platform you might
> > consider learning Perl (www.perl.org), PHP3 (www.php.net) or Cold
> > Fusion (www.allaire.com).  Perl and PHP3 are provided with most Linux
> > distributions, are known to work with various web servers on NT and
> > Mac and have excellent database access capabilities.  PHP3 is probably
> > easier to learn.  A quick search at softpro.com shows four titles
> > currently available.  Cold Fusion is a commercial package that's
> > widely used in ecommerce and has recently been ported to Linux.  PHP3
> > provides roughly what Cold Fusion provides and you get source code.

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