Comparing Programming Languages

There are many discussions about which programing language is better, what OS is the fastest and best for websites and who is better than who.

If you don't know programming then you wont know the difference between C, C++ or C#. You wont know the difference between PERL, Python, PHP. ASP or Java.

The fact is, they are all good and they can all accomplish the same tasks. From a programming view, C is a slower language to develop in because of the compiling requirements than PERL or PHP which are compiled as they are used. But as an end user, you would never know what language is serving the page unless the programmer or system administrator has opted to use a standard extension to identify the page type.

In a more general overview, if you compare English to French to Japanese or Russian they all work well to communicate and have proven that with advanced technology and higher educational institutions. The real power of a language is not the language itself but the person using it.

A William Shakespeare or a Mark Twain has a different handle and ability to write than the average person. As does an advanced programmer over a newbie programmer or weekend warrior.

It really is the programmer that has the ultimate control. Just like giving good directions to get to your house. If you tell someone to come to your house and send them miles out of their way you can't blame the cars or the roads for the slow trip.

A programmer is in total control of what the programs do. If the programmer does not know how to do things in an efficient manner then the program will be slow. It does not have anything to do with the language but the way the program is written.

In many cases programs are offered free on open source websites. There is no real financial gain for doing the program more efficiently or developing the program to advanced levels. So the programs tend to be basic and lack in real refinement.

The programs are downloaded thousands of times but people that don't know how to write the program from scratch but they do modify the code to meet their requirements.

Already you should see the problem. The user does not understand the language enough to build the program, but they are changing it and the original write has no incentive to make the program the best it can be. The more the program is modified by someone other than the original coder the more problems become visible.

There are simple mistakes like opening files that are just too large or building hashes out of files that have unlimited size can slow down a server to a crawl. While a much bigger concern is security. Most of the programs being hacked out have almost none since most of the people modifying them don't know what security holes they might be opening.

PHP is one of the most beaten up languages in the forums simply because it is the most popular. When a language is used more than any other, it will have the most programs out there with the most security and performance issues.

PHP was designed to be the fastest thing available and despite its limitations it is very fast by design. But in the hands of an inexperienced programmer it can be an open window to hack the website or a certain way to crash the server by overloading it.

In many cases programs are represented as UNLIMITED. Shopping carts with unlimited items. Well, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to know nothing is without limits.

If you have a pickup truck or SUV and say it can hold unlimited bricks, you would know if you keep loading bricks into it, eventually it will just collapse.

This is precisely what happens with PHP programs. People think the program is unlimited and just keep adding and adding until the coding cannot manage the data efficiently, then the program slows down or becomes unresponsive.

People first tend to blame the hosting company for having slow servers and then when that fails they blame PHP for being a bad language.

Programming languages are just tools. They all have merits and all can provide great platforms for web based applications, but without a professional programmer writing the code every program has the potential to become a disaster.