The Joel on Software Discussion Group

We were discussing the "Language Wars" article at work...  Was Joel speaking only to web development or development in general?  A co-worker thought that the article did not apply to desktop applications.

Thanks,

John

No I don't think it applies (even in Joel's own mind) to desktop development.

How many desktop or shrinkware apps are written in PHP for example?

If you draw from it the simple kernel of truth that certain platforms are more proven and safe, with less uncertainty and risk, and that you need to leverage the skills you already have, then I would say that it applies to all development.

That's a good point Dennis.


Specifics, only relevant to web dev.

Generalties, generally relevant

On a whole, it's definately relevant to any language war. Like pointed out earlier, you can't specifically do some things (Like realistically develop a PHP executable.)

Thanks,

that was the direction I was leaning towards...  And yes, I should have been a little clearer in my question, I understand you can't develop desktop applications in PHP :-)

thanks,

John

The desktop language wars are less fiery only because that's not the platform that's hot right now.  When it was hotter, there were plenty of language wars.  Delphi, Visual Basic and C++ were only the major contenders.  There were plenty of also-rans in there as well, some of which I have helped to build very large systems with.

Language Wars pervade every aspect of sw development. I remember the discussions we used to have doing board level stuff as to whether to go to C or not.

Good clean fun for the whole family. In the Yeshiva world, we tug at our beards and payess and call it "pilpul" (:=)

"you can't develop desktop applications in PHP"

Not true!  You can write GTK apps in PHP, and maybe there are other windowing toolkits available, too.

However, I think Joel was writing about how "safe" the choice of language is given the amount of people doing what you're trying to do in that language, tools available, etc.  If the point is that PHP is not "proven" as a desktop development language, then I completely agree, and there are probably better tools than PHP for desktop development.

joel, has alot invested in the MS world has he ever depended upon a non MS world programming language... how has C# or .NET made it from <5 years old to enterprise ready? is it like Vista? going to be when it's released? ready for the enterprise immediately? how long will it take and what could anybody every do to make a newly independent language like Ruby to satisfy him?...if find Ruby a pardigm shift worthy of note!