I am wanting to develop a web application, what is the current state of the art to do so?
Google Web Toolkit?
Favorite languages: C#, Java, Python.
If I understand correctly the respective best ways are ASP.NET, Spring, and Django correct?
Also Rails is out there too.
I’m just saying general purpose?
Suppose you had a version of MSPaint you wanted to put on as a web application, what would you use? If you wanted multiple people to draw on the same canvas… If you wanted to make Photoshop as a webapp.
For instance, have you guys seen VMWare-Server for Linux, the entire thing is a web interface. What was that written in?? What is the best thing to write it in?
HTML + CSS
Without it the result will be sorrowful.
When seriously, there are many frameworks with different philosophy behind. They have their advantages and drawbacks. Cannot speak about all of them, but generally frameworks backed up by a good programming language at the server side are especially good (when not the only option) for developing web applications as opposed to “stupid” web sites. With .NET it’s classic WebForms, the new extension ASP.NET MVC along with various ORM solutions like LINQ, EntityFramework, nHibernate etc. With Java, Spring is very popular.
The best would be if you let us know what kind of project you wish to build.
Try to decide first what language are you leaning towards. Then it will be easier to decide on the actual tool to use.
Or check for yourself: Web application frameworks