hey guys. Im new to websites and coding and just had a couple basic questions. I want to create a couple financial calulators (where you plug in numbers and get an answer, for example a discounted cash flow calculator, net worth calculator etc...) I was just wondering which scripting language is best to accomplish this? or how should i go about doing this? Thank You.

Um. Think long and hard, and talk to a lawyer. Make sure you get some good legalese that basically says "You can't sue me if I screwed up the math".

Any scripting or programming language would be best for this. I would recommend C# for a number of reasons. Failing that, I'd go with C++, then VB.NET, then J#, then Java proper, then PHP.NET. You'll only need one - that's just the order I would consider them in.

The main thing in financial calculations is precision. You want lots of places to the right of the decimal, to avoid rounding errors compounding over time like interest.

thank you... i been doing some research and it seems that javascript might even be the best option.

Programming a financial calculator isn't something so complex that you really have to look hard into the structure of any language, provided that it supports floating point operations (floats or doubles). It's mostly going to depend mostly on what you are comfortable with. Keep in mind that your calculations are going to be more prone to error if you are unfamiliar with a language. Any of the languages that John mentioned will do fine... and just to encourage you to pick the language based on your own comfort I'm going to say that I prefer them in the opposite order John did

That's not completely true (but close) and there are many cases where language selection is going to be make or break but this is not one of them.

As for javascript, I don't see any reason why it couldn't work, just be aware of what you language select entails. For instance any code you write in javascript is going to be visible to your users.

I don't feel qualified to talk about the legal implications of any of this so I won't, but you definitely won't be sued because any of these langauges are incapable of the calculations involved.

I think that your best bet with this is flash . Actionscript 2.0 or 3.0 will guarranty that the calculators will work without having to reload the page.

Javascript is a good idea because it's front-end and therefore platform-independent.

If your hosting is Linux, please use perl. Perl is the cleverest language alive and most banks and other major important structures have perl running through them, oh yes. Everything else is for office workers or young people (even these newfangled so-called just-as-good languages/wotsits like python and ruby).

Perl is WELL easy and in terms of maths, it's just so simple to do whatever in hell you want.

javascript is definitely the least troublesome option, though

flash sounds like a bad idea to me... develop in languages which don't rely on people having good hardware and O.S.'s - if they can access it in the worst browser, even in WAP, then you know you're a good developer.

i can build it for you, at a cost - of nothing more than a link to my website!

Originally Posted by witnesstheday

Perl is the cleverest language alive and most banks and other major important structures have perl running through them,

There's also more cobol code floating around in financial institutions than any other language, but that doesn't make it a good idea*


I stress the point that langauge selection isn't going to make a difference given the calculations you mentioned. Any mention of the question which language is best for x is only going to reveal the personal preference of the person answering.