One of the more
irrelevant parts of
designing a
computer system.
All too
often, the
programming language is chosen even before the
requirements of the
computer system are known.
Why? Well, the considerations in choosing a particular programming language include the following:
- the problem domain
- Unarguably, some programming languages are better-suited to particular problem domains than others. However, the real restriction here is availability. If you could get OO-COBOLscript, I'm sure it would be a reasonable choice for web development in some places (see available resource below).
- the exising system
- it may be that the development means changes to an existing system. Budgetry restraints usually preclude rewriting in a different programming language.
- available resource
- Further constraints in choosing a programming language arise from the day-to-day availability of appropriately-skill programmers. Your fancy new ASP server might be best written in C++ but all your C++ coders may be working on something more important. You either delay the project or rethink.
So, even before you've got the user requirements written, you know it's being coded in Visual Basic...