Can the Wolfram language be used to do web development?

Question

Is it possible, and if it is, would it be viable to do web development with the wolfram language?

Maybe not 'general web sites', but web applications, web services? Maybe something to do with big data, data mining, machine learning, heavy mathematical computations on the server side and the display it in the front end (html/js/etc)?

Answer 1

Certainly webMathematica offers a way of constructing dynamic real-time computational websites. Wolfram Alpha is actually built using webMathematica technology. With the new products coming soon (as of 10 Mar 2014), it seems like this will increase with the new Programming Cloud and deployment options.

The degree of customization may be difficult depending on what you attempt to do, but data processing is possible and will improve with the new releases.