How to rapidly build a Web Application?

Question

To build a Web Application, what kind of open source web application frameworks / technologies are currently present that would be:

• Faster to learn.
• Ease of use.
• Have widgets for rapid development(From a GUI perspective).
• Database integration.

I would want this web app to communicate to a Java client. I am not bound to Java on the server side and free to try out any good rapid application framework.
To summarize, I haven't done much work for the server side hence am not conversant with the tools and technologies for the same.
What would you suggest?
Any and every input would be welcome!...

Answer 1

There is no single "right" answer to this question. As a Java programmer of some 10+ years when asked this question my usual answer is... PHP. There are several reasons for this:

• Low resource usage (Apache, nginx);
• Cheaper hosting;
• Really low barrier to entry;
• It's really Web-oriented rather than being general purpose that can be used for Web (like Java);
• The fact that PHP scripts aren't persistent (like Java servlets are) between requests makes them much more forgiving and less likely to cause memory leaks and other problems;
• No deployment step (like Python, Perl, etc). I'd say this is about the best thing about dynamic scripted languages. Just save the file and click reload on your browser;
• PHP might be inconsistent in syntax and several other things but it's also mature and used by some really large sites on the Web (eg Facebook, Yahoo, Flickr, Wikipedia);
• PHP is by far the most popular Web development language.
• Widgets can be done by any manner of Javascript frameworks like YUI, ExtJS, SmartClient, jQuery UI, etc;
• PHP fits well with MySQL.

That being said, a lot of these apply to other languages too (eg Python/Django).

I don't think you necessarily need a framework for PHP but if you do I'd look at one or more of:

• Kohana: it's like a more modern version of the more popular CodeIgniter;
• Zend Framework: it's modular so you can use as much or as little of it as you like;
• Smarty: it's a powerful templating system.