The Power of Multi-Language Applications

wbav queries: "I've been programming for a number of years, and someone always asks, 'What language do you use, Java or C++?'. Now personally, I find that question a little biased, mainly because, of how I program. Rather than making one massive program, adding in all the support I need to make up for weaknesses in languages, I prefer to make several different apps that call each other, each using the strengths of that particular language. I tend to use C++ as my controlling program, and then execute Perl, PHP, or Java depending on what will give me the best performance for and cause me the least amount of pain to accomplish the task at hand. Do you guys use this kind of method, or do you try to do everything in one program? What advantages or disadvantages do you see in creating one program compared to many programs?"

Comments

More annoying question

[totallygeek]

More annoying than hearing "What language do you program in?" is "What school did you attend to learn all this computer stuff?" How about years of trial and error and late nights and weekends on computers while everyone else partied?

As for the language -- my programs are usually small and foisted on the web, so perl, php, bash, csh, sql, and c.

I have even used Pascal recently -- but that was just to modify some earlier made code.