Which Framework should we build our Web app on?

3 points by lauken 16 years ago | 10 comments

My co-founder and I have a concept for a web service solution that we would like to begin developing. We have not been involved in development or hands-on programming for about 5 years. Our first step was to align with a developer I know from my corporate past. Our young start-up is now faced with a difficult decision, which framework do we build our web service on? We are intending on building content management system for a niche market. Our developer is recommending drupal but I am worried about building on a GPL license as it would close the door on an acquisition. Does HN have any suggestions? I heard Ruby on Rails has scalability issues. Microsoft is inherently more expensive. I would love your thoughts and I appreciate your time.

bwh2 16 years ago |

It sounds to me like you're worrying about problems you don't have. You're talking scalability and acquisition before you have a single line of code, let alone any users.

lauken 16 years ago | |

Excellent point but isn't it prudent to take these factors into consideration before choosing a path? We don't want to dwell on the irrelevant but we would like to make a sound decision based on where we envision the product going. Do you have any words of wisdom for choosing a framework? Any recommendations?

bwh2 16 years ago | | |

Worrying about scalability and acquisition is not prudent at this stage, it's a waste of time IMO. Odds are that nobody will use your CMS.

That being said, my advice is to get something up and running now and fail fast. I'm not a 37signals fanboy, but I think you should read: http://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc.php

Your problem right now is to figure out what customers want. You need a product up and running. If you have a (good) HTML/CSS/JS/PHP developer on board who knows Drupal, he can probably get a Drupal+CCK prototype of your customized CMS up and running in a couple weeks, if not days. Who cares if Drupal isn't your long term solution? It just doesn't matter.

adelevie 16 years ago |

Oh and BTW, I've been on Rails for about a year and it's been excellent. Support from the Ruby community (blogs, presence on Stack Overflow) has been excellent, and so many of the gems/plugins have been so good. Not to mention, Ruby is a fun language to program in (at least for me).

adelevie 16 years ago |

If you're not tech-minded, and the developer that you already have wants to use X, you should go with X. This increases the likelihood you have to spend big $$$ changing systems away from a GPL system so you can make even more $$$ from an acquisition.

lauken 16 years ago | |

Thanks alot for the comments and RoR suggestion. I am not sure I totally understand the second piece of the post. Are you stating that we will have to spend $$$ now transitioning to a new framework or were you saying that we would have to transition to a new framework before the big sale?

adelevie 16 years ago | | |

the latter: transition to new framework before big sale.