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[Phillip_Graham]

This one is about as far off topic as it gets.

I want to try to develop an application based on some algorithm ideas that I have.  While i learned some Java in college, and knew the basics of programming in TRS BASIC and PASCAL as a kid (Dad wrote banking software), I am definitely not educated in the writing of good performing, optimized code.  These days I mostly cobble any programming together in Matlab, which is simple, powerful, and handles all the behind the scenes stuff well.

For these reasons I am looking at doing the development using a platform as a service (PaaS) platform.  The one that seems to make the most sense for this idea is force.com, the application platform of salesforce.com.  The application is business related and would be targeted to companies who are likely already customers of salesforce.com (or similar).

So my question for the IT and programmer types out there:  Is force.com the best way to go for application development?  Are there other hosted "cloudish" application development platforms I should be looking at?

Any and all insight is appreciated!

[Jeff Babcock]

Hi Phil,
The force platform does seem to be one of the easier ones to jump into if you don't have a ton of programming experience.  I don't know the nature of your app, but am assuming you have investigated enough to ensure that the platform is capable of handling your desired functions.

You have probably already seen this:

 http://wiki.developerforce.com/index.php/An_Introduction_to_ Visualforce

http://wiki.developerforce.com/index.php/An_Introduction_to_ Apex

That's pretty simple to follow.  

Most of the stuff I have tinkered with has been part of Microsoft's Azure cloud, which is better suited if you have any background in their .NET based dev environment (VB.NET and C#).

As an aside, have you checked out ODesk.com?  You can post jobs there and usually find a programmer for stupid-low prices.  It's an international site so the community is very large (if you are comfortable with the ethics and potential communications barriers of outsourcing overseas you can hire extremely inexpensive labor from India and similar regions).  You can do hourly or fixed price jobs too.  

I only dabble in programming on the side, so I'm not exactly an authority on this stuff.  PM me if you want to discuss stuff in more detail.

Cheers
Jeff

[Ryan Garnett]

Interesting topic...being a software engineer during the day I wish I had an answer for you, unfortunately it's not in my area of expertise. I mostly do c# apps/services/webservices with mssql on the back end, typical MS dev shop.