Plat_Forms is an international programming contest. It aims at comparing different technological platforms for developing web-based applications such as Java EE, .NET/ASP, PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby-on-Rails.

Why such a contest? Selecting the right technology for any particular software project is very important and there is consequently a lot of discussion regarding the pros and cons of the various platforms. However, much of the discussion is more akin to religious debate than to a rational discussion in an engineering mindset.

The reason: hardly any neutral information is available that allows for direct comparison of the practical (rather than theoretical) effects that each platform will have in your project.

The purpose of Plat_Forms is to change that and to obtain neutral information on practical consequences of using one platform versus the other.

Plat_Forms took place on January 25-26, 2007, at the "Open Source meets Business" conference in Nürnberg, Germany.

27 professional web developers (9 teams of three) from 5 different countries participated. There were 3 teams using Java, 3 using Perl, and 3 using PHP. There had not been enough applications from the other platforms for including them in the contest.

Read more...

• Some more details about the setup of the contest and its history.
  
• The list of Teams, the Organizers, the Contest Committee and the Sponsors.
• The Task solved by the teams (PDF)
• The Live Contest Blog written by teams and organizers during the contest.
• The Results of the evaluation