AlanBarber.Org
Monday, October 06, 2003
Enterprise Web Applications Popular
Infoworld had an interesting little article in their September 29th issue.They surveyed some 800+ programmers and managers on software development. Some interesting things came out.
1) Web Apps rule the roost. Some 52% prefer building web based applications over the standard "fat-client" GUIs.
It's pretty well know web apps are the big "in thing" right now. But I would have never realized that it was that big. I've been working on doing web app work and it's a pain. Trying to be cross browser/platform compatible can be a nightmare. Every browser has their own way of rendering, processing css, etc. You can spend hours just getting layout of a gui to look right never mind the functionality.
2) Java and Visual Basic are used more often than other languages. Not must surprise there atleast for me. Java and VB are really good at doing Rapid Application Development (RAD) and in the enterprise market that's what's important. The overhead to dev up an app in c/c++ can waste a lot of time. Although with the new .net stuff from Microsoft cranking out a gui frontend for c++ is a snap.
3) Framework / API use MS win32 beats out unix/Linux by just a few points. Once again not much of a surprise there. The use of *nix in the enterprise has been on a major rise. Although with the win2003 server .net stuff just really rolling out the numbers might change with time.
Anyways just thought I'd share that.
Personally for my development work I like web based apps that use *nix backends and windows frontends. *nix just kicks the lead out when it comes to DB / webserving / security but regardless of what people might think Internet Explorer provides the nicest and easiest to use user interface. Considering most businesses are running windows anyways for Office you know you have IE sitting there to use.
on 10/06/2003 at 01:50 PM