The Plat_Forms contest attempts to obtain objective evidence regarding platform characteristics and their differences.

In addition, we were interested in learning about your personal experience in this respect. In contrast to the common platform advocacy type of discussion in forums and on mailing lists, we only called for opinions of people who really know what they are talking about.

Our survey, run in June 2007 asked 268 web developers to directly compare their two best known platforms for 12 aspects of software quality. The results of this survey ideally show where the objective results of the Plat Forms research agree with the current opinions of web developers, and where they disagree. In addition to the 3 platforms measured in the Plat Forms research (Java, Perl, PHP), Ruby and Python developers were also involved.

Many of the survey results agreed with the objective research, for example PHP was less dependent on tools and frameworks. Some results differed from the Plat Forms research, for example, PHP was rated poorly for security and robustness.

Go to the survey. (The survey is now closed for the season)

The results are described in a Technical Report called "Comparing Web Development Platforms Through the Eyes of Professional Developers".