I made a number of Google searches of the forms below and averaged the results:

"implemented in <language>"
"written in <language>"

¹ combines Lisp, Scheme, Common Lisp, Arc & Clojure
² combines OCaml, (S)ML, Caml
³ summed separate searches for sml and ml

"implemented in <language>"
"written in <language>"

I’m very curious to see how these stats change over time, so I’ve added a calendar item to recompute them in six months. Leave a comment if you’d like to add a programming language to the list, and I’ll update this article and it will be included in the recomputation six months from now.

¹ combines Lisp, Scheme, Common Lisp, Arc & Clojure
² combines OCaml, (S)ML, Caml
³ summed separate searches for sml and ml
Update 4/23/09 added C#, Tcl per comment requests.

It’s been a joy to work with Jordan and Scott over the last year and we’re now to the point of beginning to heavily promote our three web applications to churches. These are two men I can learn a lot from – both technically and spiritually. I would be hard pressed to find better business partners.

Gospel Software currently has three web applications.

Directory:

I just released a new version of the Gospel Software Directory a few minutes ago – there are some new screen shots to show some of the features. I had wanted a nice online photo directory for our church for quite a while. I finally wrote a simple bare bones version a few years ago and ended up using it all the time, so I thought there might be a market for the product.

Over the last year, I wrote a completely new version, and now each church member can edit their own information, upload new photos, etc., so the information is more current and the church administrative staff has less work to do. I still think one of the best features is simply being able to match the faces of people I’ve met with their names. It’s now available for churches to try out and purchase.

This new version is just the beginning. I have a long list of enhancements I’ll begin rolling out over the next few months.

GuestView:

Scott’s GuestView program is something I use regularly as I follow up with visitors to our church. It’s so handy and easy to use. I get an email when I need to call a visitor, then I can enter notes about our conversation, and if they’d like information from another leader in the church, I can notify the appropriate people.

SongBook:

I had thought about developing a program to manage worship songs back in the mid-eighties, but I was never motivated enough to do anything about it. When Jordan showed me his SongBook application, I was blown away – it did everything I had thought of and much more. And of course it was web based since the internet had been invented since I began thinking of a similar program :)

I’m excited about seeing what will be happening with Gospel Software, LLC this coming year.

We do have an affiliate program that rewards both the affiliate and any church they refer. Contact me for details if you’re interested.

The technical experiences we’ve had over the last year should provide for some interesting and informative blog posts in the future. When we came together to form the company, we had three products written in three different languages / frameworks. Integrating the three products together with a common infrastructure has been very educational :)

We now have a robust infrastructure that will support any future applications very well.

• Server configuration, backup & light disaster recovery
• Ecommerce – credit card processing, subscription management, invoicing, etc.
• Auditing and event logging
• Easy deployment of new releases
• User management, authentication, authorization & accounting
• And more…

As I mentioned, there are three languages / frameworks involved, but there is quite a bit of Ruby and Rails, and there will likely be more in the future. Each of the three languages / frameworks have their pros & cons, but I do feel that Ruby and Rails does very well in the evaluation.

The following are some things that I have been particularly pleased with:

• My Macbook Pro with OSX and Emacs as a development environment
• Ruby & Rails
• nginx web server
• mongrel application server
• Postgres relational database
• Trac issue tracker & wiki
• Subversion source code control (possibly moving to git in the future, but for our purposes, svn has worked out very well)
• Slicehost.com – being able to restart a VM on another server if hardware fails is awesome
• Ubuntu Linux
• istockphoto.com and fotolia.com for inexpensive stock photos
• jQuery – it might not satisfy comp.lang.javascript, but it’s been great
• Did I mention Emacs? :)