The Evolution of Web Langauges
I’ve been noticing something that actually scares me a bit lately. If you look at the last approximately 10 years in web development languages you’ll notice a trend.
JAVA
Java and all its subsets(J2EE, J2SE etc) started out as a small movement trying to gain in over Microsoft technologies and other smaller web development languages. Over a period of 6 years I saw it “rise” from a small language to the complex ball of wax it is today. Is that bad? Yes! Why? I’ll explain that later. The thing is Java moved from what I call a “KISS”(keep it simple stupid) language to a MVC architect-ed database abstracted mess.
PHP
PHP hasn’t always been the big rage it is now. It started off rather simply mostly used by small business as it was simple and you could easily hire cheap labor to use it. What is it now? Well its still workable as a “KISS” language, but there is already a huge trend towards the somewhat costly method of MVC architecture with database abstraction. I do not see it staying that way. PHP will most likely become a “Big” company tool and morph itself into an expensive and cumbersome tool for small time programmers.
The Trend
So what do you see with just these two languages? Its rather simple really they just can’t keep it simple. There will always be a market for a simple language to program in since small to medium businesses often can not afford the price most will charge for the “Glorified” and “Bleeding edge” languages. Its this trend from small through medium and up-to large business that happens with any language that “makes it mark”. While PHP isn’t there yet, its getting there and I’d be willing to put money on the fact it will be there within the next 5-10 years, probably on the smaller side of that range.
Problems with that
Alright so whats the big deal? Most people including the companies etc driving these languages believe its best(and by that I mean more financially beneficial) to move along this path to large companies. While I don’t know the stats on which size business really does the most actual web development it does seem that while large companies may have more complex website and small companies often don’t that there are fewer large companies and more small. That kind of evens things out in my opinion.
If your not a developer you don’t know what I’m talking about when I discuss MVC and database abstraction, but basically they are ways to separate layers of the development cycle. Why does this cause higher costs? Its simple for 1 man to do an entire site/program in an MVC he not only has to do all three areas anyway he now has to deal with and understand the layers of overhead involved with these technologies. I admit if you have a team of people who specialize in certain areas and need them focused MVC is great, but isn’t that just big companies?
Whats Next?
Well I can’t answer that really. Some would say Ruby or well Ruby on Rails would be next. I may be wrong but isn’t it starting out MVC and database abstracted? Well that makes no sense how will the normal “working man” afford to have anything done in that? It’s inevitable that something will come along operating on the KISS principle and that language will most likely win the run for small to medium business.