

Ask HN: Best language and database for specific project - calebhicks

I have a very specific project in mind that I would like to do on my own. It's high time I learn a little bit of backend.<p>I have an iPhone app (already made) that requests an ad in two parts - an image, and text. We currently use OpenX to deliver our ads, but our needs are much more simple, and we'd like the control of rolling our own solution.<p>So, I would like to create a simple backend. Database that holds the image, text, link, mobile link, and advertiser info. Then  some sort of script to pull and deliver that info to our iPhone app.<p>Also, I'd like a basic set of analytics: impressions, clicks, maybe geo, etc. should I build this in or integrate Google Analytics or go with something like MixPanel?<p>Some details about our expected performance. We currently have a 512Mb VPS (Linode). We have between 400,000-500,000 impressions each month. We would want to build something that could scale much larger.<p>I'm drawn to Ruby, but want to use the best and easiest setup for the project. Python? PHP? JavaScript? I don't know much about databases... MongoDB, MySQL, nosql?<p>As always, thank you for your responses and help.
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JoachimSchipper
Use whatever you're most familiar with, this is not a hard problem (the data
is fairly static, and you can always add a cache if you need more
performance).

Note that the big ad networks usually allow fairly specific targeting (by some
combination of geolocation, signup/survey data and tracking cookies), have
lots of ad inventory and ad buyers, offer decent analytics, etc. Those are
harder problems.

