Should you not be technical, here are some questions for you. Would you use chainsaw or axe? You pick what? You may first be wondering for what? Then You will say NO if we answer sewing fabric; if we answer cutting wood, you might say YES. Let us now address even another issue. Should you have to start from nothing and build a house, what would you prefer? Using a hammer or a drill?
Do you not consider it vital to know the size of the house you wish to build before rushing to any response? You seek for how many rooms? Where on Earth would you like your house built? It might be built of brick or timber.
Now, consider the following whether your work in software development or technical fields.
- If there are just two languages available for an iPhone, how would you choose one?
- If there is only one language available for Android, how would you choose it?
- In software development, before we decide on a language for a project, we should pose several questions to ourselves. What sort of endeavor, for instance, is it? Application security; scalability of the application; complexity of the application; development budget; development time restriction; available resources; etc. Though later on business changes take place, the project team always wants the application to remain for the long run and meet the needs of the customer.
Some Short Notes
One of the main challenges technology managers have is selecting a language for a project in the corporate IT domain. The ecosystem, the community, and the availability of programmers become the most crucial factors in selecting programming languages.
Many developers choose programming languages only because they are more popular, hip, and cool—despite their flaws. Should you decide on Lisp for a project only because it is a really elegant and neat functional language, later on you could find yourself in a bad position. Avoiding this error is therefore wise.
Programming language for a project should be based on your business demands not only because it has some syntactic sugar or it is talked up. Perhaps you believe that, as the developer, you should be entirely in charge of using any language. Although only you have all the freedom to choose the technology whatever you want, this is not possible in an IT company and could boomerang on you.
First as a technical manager
you must focus on every moving component of your project. To get a better vision, you should know all the elements; this will guide your selection of a certain programming language. A good perspective at the start of your project facilitates the selection of a reasonable programming language, which reduces the time needed for later on project security, scalability, and maintenance.
In programming, you may also create awful software using Java, C#, Python, PHP, or any other language if you can create good software in any other language. Any program would benefit from no one language as the preferred choice. Projects would fit some languages and frameworks more than others. Think of Java as one example. The language was not good from the time it was developed. It just proved more practical than rivals. You should consider this before selecting a language.
Let us now go through some questions you should ask yourself while deciding on a programming language for a project.
- Questions to Consider Selecting a Programming Language
- Does the language’s ecosystem support make sense? Long term, is it going to be feasible? Does vendor support the language?
- Regarding the project—web, mobile, etc.—what surroundings exist?
- Should we take some infrastructure into account, such fresh hardware? We require what kind of deployment?
- Which option the client prefers?
- Are any particular specifications for libraries, tools for the programming language, or features?
- Do we need to employ fresh developers or the developer is here to code in this language? Do they need to pick this language fast or are they seasoned and at ease working with it?
- Which are some significant project constraints? Resources, time, money, and budget?
- Which performance factor should be taken into account, and which languages could fit this one?
- Is security a factor here? Should we make use of any outside tools?
- Many of the questions above help to clarify the uncertainty surrounding the choice of programming language for your project.
Now, in programming, imagine you have an extremely hard number crunching chore. In this situation, you want a language that can easily handle the numbers and supports some libraries to execute advanced mathematical operations for you. Another instance you might take into account is reading a lot of material. In this instance, you should use a language whose characteristics enable simple textual data search, slicing, and chopping.
You must weigh several elements—performance, type of application, security, etc.—which we have covered in the part of questions we need to ask—that will help you decide which programming language best fit your project. Now let’s get into great detail about these elements to apply suitable language for a project, but keep in mind that trade-off is always inevitable.
Kinds of Use
Before deciding on a programming language for a project, you should be sure you have a definite objective in mind. The kind of application determines the language choice rather much. You are planning to create what sort of application? Is its embedded firmware or a web or mobile application? Before you decide on any programming language for a project, initially and most importantly take into account these elements.
You also must take application complexity or size into account.
With some CMS systems like WordPress (needs PHP knowledge) or Umbraco (requires C# knowledge), small projects including web application forms, portfolio presentations, basic marketing websites, or simple personal blogs can be developed. Medium-sized projects include e-commerce sites, internal company apps, and IoT solutions can be handled either Java or C#.
Object-oriented languages, for instance, are most fit for web applications. Java or Kotlin is good for Android apps; for system programming middle-level languages like C, Java or Kotlin can be utilized.
- Front End Development: HTML, CSS, JavaScript,
- JavaScript, Python, or C# 2D Backend Development Game Development: JavaScript or C# 3D Game Creation: C++ or C#
- Data Science, Machine Learning, Analytics: Python, R, Clojure, Julia
- Mathematical and scientific computing: Matlab, FORTRAN, ALgol, APL, Julia, R, C++
- Big Data: R, Scala, Java, Python, Closure
- Operating systems include C, C++
- Distributed System: C, Rust, Go
- Another element you should take into account is the platform you intend to use for running your program. Assume your two languages are Java and C. If you wish to run a C program you created on Linux and Windows. In this situation you require two distinct executables and platform compiler.
Regarding Java languages, the bytecode will be created and run on any machine should Java Virtual Machine installed. Websites are comparable in this regard. It should appear and function the same on any browser. Should you be employing HTML5 and CSS3 tags, your website can look and function differently on other browsers.
Manageability
We obtain the ecosystem of libraries and vendor support regardless of the technology and language we decide upon. We should always review the most recent release of the language or technological stack since we should pay attention to the maintainability of the program. Whatever we choose should be current and remain current for a considerable period of time.
As you create an application, you should consider long-term customer engagement as well as occasional team transitions including another team from your codebase. Depending on the technology you will be working on, you will have to pay the maintenance expenses and recruit the local internal developers.
The availability and skill of the development staff in your location will influence this maintenance expenses. For instance, hiring C# and Java engineers in the Midwest is simple compared to Ruby, Python, and PHP professionals. The whole goal is to consider the long-term survival of your application and the simplicity of maintenance while selecting a programming language for your project.
Efficiency and Scalability
The programming language you use will mostly determine how well your application performs. When the development environment provides limited opportunity for scaling, it becomes quite important. You must use the correct programming language if you want to maximize the performance from your application.
What would happen in the future should user count rise? How many users your program can manage? Will the increasing number of users cause your program to function slower or Will it compromise your application? Consider how scale-wise your application is. Is your application flexible enough to let more add-ons without compromising its performance?
Many research have been done to evaluate the application’s performance. Still, the outcomes were not exact evaluations of programming language performance. Handheld devices are one instance of such kind of environment. Ruby on Rails (RoR),.NET, Java Spring, LAMP and MEAN are some well-known tech stacks with reasonable scalability.
Safety
As you select a programming language for your project, you also have to consider the security of your program. Every application calls for distinct types of security needs. For instance, banking apps need PCI compliance and healthcare-related applications need HIPAA compliance. If you pay constant attention to the security of your application, it will get more strong.
You also have to guard your application from hackers and cyberattacks. Before selecting any programming language for your use, you must abide by security recommendations.
Public Support
Any program you construct will cause several problems; without proper community support, this can lead to a major dilemma. As you create an application, you can find yourself stopped at any moment and need assistance from some resources or another developer. This explains why you should also give this element some thought.
It will be difficult for you to adapt the language and work on it if you are selecting one for which there are few tutorials or articles to study. Examining the video tutorials, articles, forums, and some community support including GitHub, Reddit, or StackOverflow helps one choose any programming language.
Development Period Limit
Every company wants to activate the application right away. New features or the application should also be ready right away, as demanded by business partners. This explains the need of considering this element related to development time.
You should pick a language that will enable you to create the application as fast as needed. Enough library support, packages, or modules for a language will minimize the development time for your application and prevent you from building everything from scratch.
You should so pay close attention to the experience in your selected language. You will take less time for the development the more familiar you are with the language. Stated otherwise, if a language is easy to learn, you will not spend much time learning it, generate the code, and have your application live on the server.
Thoughts on Last Notes
Having a list of questions to ask, a list of programming languages accessible, and examining the several elements will help you to decide which programming language you should use sensibly. Comparing the languages in light of the above criteria helps one select the appropriate one for their project.