I assume you are all talking about the best overall language? In my opinion there simple is none. Even the concept of being the best is unclear. Best what? Best syntax? Best speed? Best cost effectiveness? Best learning curve? Best extensibility? Best reliability? Judging something like syntax and learning curve is like judging which is better: vanilla or strawberry. Take your pick.

It all depends on your situation. Simple as that. There are different tools for different jobs. Not one single language/framework is good in every single aspect. And that's actually a good thing sometimes because since there are so many technologies out there for us to use, we can pick and choose what we want to suit our needs. For example, every time I ask one of my clients what software/language/tools I should write their applications in, the first thing they say is Microsoft. I personally have no problem with Microsoft, nor hate them, but as soon as I give them a chart of their initial expenses, they tend to freak out. Then I start going over open source solutions. At the end, because it's me that will be developing the software and not them, they don't mind me going with open source solutions because of cost. Now mind you that these are for small to midly medium sized companies. When it comes to companies that already have a good source of capital, it works a little different because they can afford to spend (more money on software as far as Microsoft, and more money on technical support when it comes to open source).

So what's my favorite technology? I like them all. By that I mean that I like each for its capabilities. I like Perl's string manipulation and regular expression engine. I like PHP's syntax because it resembles Perl's syntax and C++, and the way I can easily combine it with HTML. I like .NET, not just because of its huge framework, language support, and compiled code, but also because it has the brand "Microsoft." I like J2EE for the same reasons I like .NET (except for the language support of course). I like ColdFusion because I believe it has the fastest development time.

As far as speed, this is also a debate that can last years. It's not just a matter of which application server is the fastest, there are other issues too, as far as which operating system, hardware, etc. I still haven't seen any reliable benchmarks, and I believe I never will. Companies release benchmarks for their products only if the results are in their favor. Organizations that are neutral I think are still biased. Everyone claims what they use is the best. To me it seems more of an ego thing than anything else.


Even if it's compiled, PHP can still be faster. The .NET framework hasn't been around too long compared to PHP. Also, a lot of PHP pages get cached. Zend also has optimizer programs to even increase the speed of PHP pages. Apache can also be tweaked and mods can be added to pump up the speed even more. The .NET framework is huge and some of the languages it supports might let you create applications with less lines of code compared to PHP. However, this makes me think how much overhead your compiled application will have at the end.


Just my two cents. Oh yeah, my favorite flavor is strawberry by the way. 8)