Hello Programmers,

I was looking for some advice in regards to a software business idea I have. Unfortunately for me I am the business side of things and not the computer programming side. Basically my business colleagues (myself included) have been looking to add a few programmers to our business team. Truth be told, we do not know exactly what we should be looking for in a programmer, we really only know what we want the program to do. So I have to come to a forum like this to get some answers from people with the expertise in this field. I was hoping someone could give me the answers or some direction to the following questions:

The software would focus on mapping (get from point A to point B while traversing objects in between.)
1.) Is there a preferential programming language for mapping?
2.) Is there open source code on the internet that I can be directed to?

The program could be used potentially world wide, so there is a need for multiple languages
3.) For multi-language capabilities is there a preferential software language?

The program would be displayed in 3-D graphics
4.) Is there a potential programming language that is best for graphics?

Any answers or direction to any of these questions would be a great help and would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

First off let me say that I have never written a MapQuest program. What I am about to say is based upon years of programming experiance, a few graph theory and lattice theory classes, and a few google searches.

Well. I can't really say that there is one language or another that can handle all of the above better than the other major languages. A question you may want to ask yourself is, "on what platforms do I want my application to run?" as this will help narrow things down. Another good question is, "Is this a client/server application or a dedicated application?" (meaning will this be distributed on a CD and need no connection to a server, or will the data be on a server that clients connect to).

The backbone of your program will be a well designed database. Although there are some languages that deal with databases better than others, most of the major languages (.Net et al, C++, Java) can handle database (mostly you will be extracting data to build graph structures and search trees) activity.

If you are thinking client/server then another question to ask yourself is, "what scale are we looking at?" -- My advice is to plan BIG, or at the very lease scalable.



A place to look at some open source tools might be Map Tools and Open Source GIS