best programming language for console/sql application?

[Mike Jeays]

On Sunday 22 April 2007 06:32, Zhang Weiwu wrote:
> Dear list
>
> This is OT. I am a 4 year php developer and is very familiar with
> javascript and awk (familiar = knows and used all functions and features
> of the language itself) and I am a 5 year FreeBSD user. Being frustrated
> for the lack of a good console-based issue tracking tool (like mantis or
> bugzilla), I think I should start to write my own. I'll either start
> from scratch or (better) write a frontend for mantis which I used for
> years.
>
>    1. If someone has already started, I should try join him/her rather
>       than reinventing the wheel. So if someone knows any person who is
>       starting to work on a slim console-based issue tracker, please let
>       me know. I already did quit a few searches. I know someone is
>       working on a console front-end of G-Forge, but a big software like
>       G-Forge is not what I am thinking of.
>    2. If I start my own, I think I'll be using a console widget library
>       (ncurse? because it's famous), an SQL database (no problem) and a
>       programming language. I never developed console application
>       before, so here asking for suggestions on what programming
>       language to choose. Non of my known language php/javascript/awk
>       are suitable so I guess I have to learn a new language anyway. The
>       language better be easy to learn and work with (C++ is out), not
>       necessarily have complicated calculation feature (like the
>       graphical report mantis makes), not necessarily OOP. I have perl
>       and tcl in my head now, can you make some recommendations?
>
> Thanks!
>
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I would recommend any of Perl, Python and Ruby.  Python is excellent for 
writing clean, self-documenting code, and is my current favourite.  TCL is 
more verbose, and does not have the excellent OO features to be found in 
Python and Ruby. Python is very easy to learn - it even seems a bit naive to 
begin with, but it is actually very powerful.

OT as you said, and the stuff of flamewars!

-- 
Mike Jeays
http://www.jeays.ca