Nathan CrauseMusings of a Software Developer

Everyone knows the most common web-capable languages - BASIC (from ASP), PHP, Ruby, Java, Groovy, Python, Perl (by "web-capable" I mean there is a runtime/framework to allow using said language).

I worked for a company which still used FoxPro for many of their web sites.

I was a tad surprised to see C++ still used (I thought it died when CGI-BIN stopped being the norm).

I was a little amused to see someone had put in the effort for Common Lisp.

However, I was frankly floored when I saw COBOL represented.

Of course, now I have to wonder when Fortran is going to make a showing. While it may seem ridiculous at first to write systems to cater for these languages, there's a few very valid reasons to do so:

1. legacy system compatible - the dream of CORBA was to allow modern languages access to legacy systems. The problem, however, is that CORBA servers are actually expensive, require custom IDL compilers, and you end up having to do a lot of work to create the hook into the legacy system anyway. Providing a native C++ system, by contrast, allows direct access to the legacy systems, no extra "fluff" required.
2. comfort - if you're a Lisp programmer, and you can churn out Lisp applications at a good speed, and your work is stable and can cater for every scenario you have, then there's no need to be forced into using some new fangled technology which still has massive teething pains, despite any hype (sorry, Ruby on Rails fans, your framework is fraught with these sorts of pitfalls).
3. time/budget constraints - think of a scenario like the government of California. The vast majority of their systems are written in COBOL. But folks wants to access information and such on-line. Switching and entire government's systems over to a new language would be a monstrous undertaking, both labour-wise and financially. Cobol-on-cogs (for example) would facilitate web-based interfaces without overhauling the existing systems.

If you can think of any other languages which should be represented here, drop me a message!