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I ran across a grant proposal written by Guido van Rossum, the author of the Python language. He proposes to use Python (which is very easy to learn) to make programming literacy much more common that it is now. His idea is to extend the open-source notion of parallel coding and debugging efforts to include millions of people rather than today's thousands. Not clear whether this is really a feasible idea, but it's an interesting one, and even if it fails, it will produce something good and useful.

Zope is about as full featured as you can get. I've been using it daily for a few months and haven't run into any real problems. The biggest plus is how easy it is to configure, use and maintain. Customization and extending its capabilities are fairly simple and easy with Python. There are already quite a few add ons for it, even one called Squishdot that mimics the way /. works that is very easy to setup and use. Check out Zope, you won't be disappointed...

Though in all honesty, GUIs are much more easily programmed when you have languages with real first-class functions (eg Python, Scheme).

Of course GUIs can be done other ways, but why would you want to? Speed? Bah. Scheme and Python both run plenty fast enough to handle waiting for you to click on things. Just take the parts that really NEED optimization (which will not be the GUI) and write them in C or assembly. So you get ease of programming with a nice high-level language, and speed where you need it from a low-level language. Don't try to find one language that will do both for you, because you'll probably end up with the worst parts of each rather than the best.

With that said, I should admit that I usually program in C++. What can I say? I don't often program GUIs, and I like to overload operators. "You have no power! I will TELL you what addition is! Hahahahaha!" =)

-jacob

Hmm. I imagine I should air out the asbestos suit right about now...

Perl is the COBOL of the 90's. No-one (in their right mind) would want to maintain Perl code, but tonnes of scripts have been written in this ugly language. Whoever manages to kill off Perl for good deserves the prize for "helping the community the most".

Switch to Python before it's too late!!!

Ok, some of you people really have got to get off of this Java app servers over everything else kick. Lots of clueless people seem to be implying "Well, some sites use lowly scripts to run their sites but we're special. We need JAVA for our super-duper, highly-scalable, object-oriented, five-tier, dynamic xml-parsed 'solution'." Grow up. Many of the most trafficked sites use Perl, PHP, Python, Tcl, and sometimes C. Is your site going to be more popular than any of these?:
www.deja.com
www.imdb.com
www.hotmail.com
www.yahoo.com
www.photo.net
www.digitalcity.com
www.villagevoice.com
www.metacrawler.com
slashdot.org

Telnet to port 80 on these sites or use Netcraft's "What's that server running?" feature to see what these guys are using if you don't believe me.

Don't believe the hype and marketing around application servers. They are for corporate IT departments who don't know better and want to appear sophisticated (and I say this because I work in said clueless environment). Don't believe your hack CS205 professor who pimps OO as the end-all be-all of programming. OO is nice but it's not a panacea for bad design. You can program just as brainlessly with Java as you can with Perl. And for those of you who bitch about Perl's syntax. What exactly is it about Perl that bug's you? Lack of typecasting? Gosh, "use strict;" is hard to type. Messy syntax? Yes, you can write ugly code with Perl but the same can be said for any language. Perl is just more lenient than most. I can't understand people who don't appreciate leniency in a language when you are trying to release a dynamic functional site in a couple of weeks. Sure, we'd all like to make pretty programs at work but sometimes we need them to get out there ASAP and with as little overhead as possible (those of you who can't appreciate this are still in school and haven't dealt with competitive deadlines or you just don't see what a competitive advantage being first and scalable on the web gives you).

Name one commercial app server that scales as well as the open-source combos. Kiva server was a complete piece of doo-doo. Oracle Application Server? Yeah, right, it was so good that Oracle stopped using it for their own site. Some will argue that app servers are necessary because they support transactions, failovers, etc. You can encapsulate most of this in the db without burdening your web developers. If you really need these features then you should consider looking at your design again and seeing if you can simplify it. In my opinion they are not necessary for 99% of the problems you'll run into.

For people who would like another opinion on why commercial app servers suck read this:
www.photo.net/wtr/application-ser vers.html

For those who'd like to read about one possible open-source solution (the same one that slashdot uses and my personal favorite):
perl.apache.org/stories/

Other good environments:
www.php.net
java.apache.org
www.aolserver.com
www.python.org

For those of you who push Java app servers over everything else: why don't you write down a list popular sites (your intranet or school projects don't count) which are using them and give examples of the hardware necessary to keep it going. I'm excited about the Apache Java project (look at above link) but everything else is just marketrdroid talk until there are results.

Odds are that all this entails is making Perl's COM support and Unicode support better than it currently is. If they're really ambitious, maybe they'll add better support for Windows threading (process creation is expensive on Windows, but threads are cheap and easy, so the Unix fork() trick doesn't work so well).

If you want to see what the end result will probably look like, take a look at the Python Win32 extensions or the Active Haskell package for Haskell. These extensions let you do things like write COM servers, conveniently access the Win32 API, and so on from within your scripting language.

This will just add one more language to the toolkit of those who need to automate tasks on their WinXX boxes. It is an event of no particular metaphysical or political significance, so relax.

Python compilers: JPython compiles to Java byte code. Python2C translates to C code, but not a lot of people seem to be interested in the project. (Anyone going to review the new Learning Python book for /.?)

I find the Dylan posts not out-of-line, and they've been enough to interest me in learning more about Dylan; a Dylan book is sitting in my to-read queue, and I'll probably write a /. review of it.

I'd like to see more language and programming-related items, too, since the business-related items are kind of boring and are usually covered by LinuxToday or LWN anyway. CmdrTaco, how about a new section like the book reviews or "Ask Slashdot", just for technical programming items?

Javascript turns out to be really suitable. It's easy to pare down, has a good native interface, can compile to bytecode at runtime, and supports multiple contexts.

BTW, also worth a look are tinyscheme (which is a nice small embeddable Scheme), Python, Lua, and the fairly obscure ICI. ICI is a very nifty C dialect for scripting but it doesn't seem to be intended for embedded applications.

Nothing wrong with rolling your own, though. Especially if you've got a lot of scripters to support. I'm interested in seeing how Q3A's plans for scripting in ANSI C (using lcc) turns out.

Some more suggestions:
SGML and XML News
Python News
Most of the Unofficial Netscape channels would be good ideas, too.

It's a trade-off; for programs that do lots of complicated regex processing, Perl's notation gives it an edge. On the other hand, there are lots of applications where regexes aren't very useful, and for those applications this clumsiness is irrelevant.

Anyway, most things can be found on www.python.org. Many people started off with GvR's tutorial; O'Reilly's "Learning Python" book is currently scheduled for release in April.

Java hackers should take a look at JPython, a 100% Pure Java reimplementation of Python that's an astoundingly cool tool for prototyping and testing Java code.

People interested in the Web should look at the recently freed Zope; the documentation still needs work, and lots, lots more examples, but it's also a very powerful publishing system.

Anyway, most things can be found on www.python.org. Many people started off with GvR's tutorial; O'Reilly's "Learning Python" book is currently scheduled for release in April.

Java hackers should take a look at JPython, a 100% Pure Java reimplementation of Python that's an astoundingly cool tool for prototyping and testing Java code.

People interested in the Web should look at the recently freed Zope; the documentation still needs work, and lots, lots more examples, but it's also a very powerful publishing system.

Anyway, most things can be found on www.python.org. Many people started off with GvR's tutorial; O'Reilly's "Learning Python" book is currently scheduled for release in April.

Java hackers should take a look at JPython, a 100% Pure Java reimplementation of Python that's an astoundingly cool tool for prototyping and testing Java code.

People interested in the Web should look at the recently freed Zope; the documentation still needs work, and lots, lots more examples, but it's also a very powerful publishing system.