What is the best platform for buildinga socail site; Python, ROR, or ASP.Net?

I would probably go with Django if you are down with Python.

I hate RoR with a passion.

Have you looked at any of the PHP based MVC frameworks? I’m fond of CakePHP myself. And I know lots of people like to hate on PHP, but it is fast and it works.

With all of them they have their pros and cons. ASP .Net is rather easy to get used to, with the helpful IDE of Microsoft’s but it’s only limited to Windows based servers, which are quite costly in comparison to the likes of Linux based ones. Python, PHP, ROR and Java are suitable for virtually all server platforms and so are cheaper to get up and running in the short run and they are all very quick to build up a simple base and get something running.

PHP is one of the most widely used web-based languages, although I say this from personal experience, not from any statistics, which may, or may not, prove me wrong. It’s easy to learn, very versatile, works with all sorts of server setups and is one of the typical programs in a LAMP setup. That doesn’t however mean it’s the best language to work with, although I do know a number of PHP developers who are very good at what they do and create some solid code.

However look a site like Fluther, it’s wonderfully created, very solid, has scaled nicely (from the different bursts of people from Askville, Digg etc.) and it’s coded in Python. Ben and Andrew have used the very helpful Django framework, which is very useful for web development and I have heard lots about.

As for ROR, I’ve not really heard much good out of Rails but I’ve heard good out of Ruby on it’s own, but I’ve not really met any ROR or Ruby developers.

Java, well although you didn’t ask about this (or PHP for that matter, I’m just giving options) I’ve come to understand is a rather ‘heavy’ language, it requires a lot of work, and unless you setup the server yourself you may struggle to find a host that supports Tomcat (or an equivalent).

Saying all of this, many sites have been created with all the languages and many of these sites can be found in Alexa and such. There are a number of well built sites created in ASP .NET (Dell), Python (Google, Fluther), PHP (Deviantart)...I don’t know any sites using ROR (or Ruby) to be honest, and Java I guess Sun Microsystems (well what else would they code their site in?)

So all in all, each language has it’s ups and downs that can’t be easily described in such a way, some are quick and dirty, some are solid but bloated, others are light but take a while to learn etc. It depends entirely on what you want, how you will host it, the audience (how fast will it grow, as you said, scalability).

So I’d say if you wanted to quickly throw together a site learn PHP, it is powerful as a web language and can do a lot of things, but it may not be the best, Python is a nice solid language and is nice to learn as well, although it may take you longer to get used to it and such.

I’ve rambled on so far, I hope someone picks up something useful out of it, I’m sure I’ve repeated myself a number of times haha, anyway…

I hope whatever it is that you are creating goes well and I hope the language you pick serves you well.

Don’t forget to check out Turbogears which works with Python. It is specifically designed to make web-applications easier and more intuitive. It has built-in, but transparent, hooks to SQL database objects, templating libraries, and javascript. The only catch is you’ll need to make sure your web-hoster can host the Turbogears framework (or use your own dedicated server: recommended). The Turbogears team posts a list of known web-hosters that work well with Turbogears.

RoR hasn’t proven itself to be scalable, which is something completely different. In fact, the only large-scale website using RoR I’m aware of is Twitter, which has had quite some downtime.

Note that I haven’t used it myself: I’m a fond PHP user, having found the Zend Framework to be excellent.