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The Year in Scripting Languages
Mitchell writes "People from several language communities came together to create a
joint year-in-review
for Lua, Perl, Python, Ruby, and Tcl."
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I can't believe all the biased articles on this place! I can't believe the would cover Perl, tcl, etc, and leave out the Windows Batch file scripting language! This is dispicable! It's so powerful, no wonder it's #1.
If you had nuts on your chin, would they be chin nuts?
It does have a large market share, ya know.
Not really ports to the platform itself, but great productivity boosters regardless. I've used VisualPython with VS.NET 1.0 and it rocks.
The reason is simple: I need to use several non-scripting languages (Java, Smalltalk, etc.) and remembering the language syntax and class libraries for more than 4 or 5 programming languages is a hassle.
BTW, scripting languages are not necessarily horribly inefficient anymore.
A little off topic, but I compared the resources used for a small web app on the following platforms:
- Java servlets/JSPs - minimum memory footprint is about 75 megabytes
- Smalltalk servlets - mimimum memory footprint is about 20 megabytes
- Python Zope - minimum memory foortprint is about 11 megabytes
In all three cases, the server processes use negligible CPU time after startup (mostly waiting with select).Anyway, for lots of applications, Python is fast enough - no need for high performance compilers like Common Lisp, C++, Smalltalk, etc.
-Mark
Unlike Ruby, Python, Lua, Perl, and Tcl, PHP doesn't have any real uses other than websites, and it could be disputed that it doesn't even do websites all that well ;) PHP isn't really a scripting language in the same sense that those others are. ASP/ASP.net and Java Server Pages aren't on there either, you might notice.
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
scripts are for kids!
Script reviews and naked girls.
Or try Pajonet.com
I hope Python integrates wxPython. With Python + wxPython, it can take on things like Java, Mono, and .Net.
I originally learned Tcl/Tk about 4 years ago, but stopped using it once my job no longer required it. I took a joke course on scripting languages last fall, and the professor was in love with Tcl/Tk, but seeing as how no one cared, we learned Perl/Tk instead. The Tk widgets are the more useful part of it...Tcl was OK, but it frankly shocked me that it was still being developed actively. Anyone used the new version and can vouch for the speed boost? It was so gawd awful slow before that I couldn't bear it.
http://thechubbyferret.net - Ferret pictures and informative links.
What? Bourne isn't interesting because it's not
being developed anymore?
I'm a big fan of Python, but for every Python
script I write, I write dozens that start out
#!/bin/sh.
It may not be sexy, but it's maintainable (every
admin knows it), portable (any system that has
sh or bash), and dirt simple to write.
*sigh* back to work...
- php - 1.1 million hits
- perl - 56,200 hits
- lua - 478 hits
- python - 27,800
- ruby - 54,400 hits
- tcl - 4,680 hits
And the winner is: PHP by a landslide!--naked
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
Perl Data Language (http://pdl.perl.org) is a set of C and FORTRAN bindings that make perl into a complete vectorized scientific-computing language that's useful for big tasks like inverting 1000x1000 matrices or fluid-dynamic simulation, but that can also be used interactively to work with image and spectral data.
That's neat because interactive data analysis is a pretty small niche market with a few proprietary (and, IMHO, seriously broken) languages dominating. With PDL, I can give fresh science data to high school students, straight from the spacecraft. Their L337 gaming machines are plenty powerful enough to run the tools they need, and perl is pretty much universal.
awk essential for pipe work.
you'll see it here used like
wget -O - http://domain/info.html | awk -f proc.awk | mysql -u news newsdb
rc shell and it's unix implmentation
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
TCLs claim to fame is its small memory use. TCL can be included as a command interpreter in other programs easily and without much bloat. There are more embedded TCL applications than any one person knows about; both in hardware and software. TCL was also first with UTF-8 support in strings, around 1998 or before, way before Perl, so there are probably more TCL CGI scripts overseas than most English users think.
As for benchmarks, TCL is getting faster, with a huge jump from v7 to v8 and about a 25% improvement from 8.0 to 8.4a3 (scroll down to bottom of linked page.)
Since most of this is about your experience there is not much anyone else can say but...
After about a day I had an excellent understanding of both PHP and SQL.
I don't know PHP but you don't have an excellent understanding of SQL in one day. Its not a that hard but ain't that easy either. Rather what is probably true is that you have an excellent understanding of how to write SQL to get information from the types of simple database with simple underlying business rules.
The modern SQL spec runs 2000 pages you don't have an excellent understanding of 2% of that in one day.
This is because Perl isn't OO (so you can't create Node classes, for example, usefull in a linked list) and because it lacks pointers.
I don't know what you are talking about. If X is a type of object then X's are passed around as pointers (see bless). Arrays in Perl are linked lists so an array of X's is a linked list, that's why you use things like push, pop, shift, etc... on arrays in Perl.
As for graphics Perl libraries support a wide range of graphics formats.
There are some other things like your comments about the regex engine that I highly doubt. No regex engine has had the time, attention and work of Perl's, Its not Perl's strong suit because of some sort of myth, for example Perl's grep has outperformed the native grep on Solaris. My guess is that the failure lies with you on this one.
As a C programmer myself, I think it is pretty evident that you are not. That's not meant to be offensive, but you should not attempt to speak from inexperience as a general rule. Try to be more open minded, or at least only form an opinion after you have educated yourself on a particular topic.
:-)
:-)
For example, after your attempt to say that PHP only slightly resembles C, you try to point out weaknesses in PHP by mentioning functions that are direct equivalents of C functions (strlen, strchr, sprintf, etc.). Make up your mind.
Also, since it seems you suggest otherwise, there is a good reason why not every string manipulating function begins with str_. Do you think C should have used str_printf() and str_sprintf()? How about PHP's functions crypt(), echo(), explode(), md5(), trim(), soundex(), etc. Should these all be renamed? Bill Gates may agree with you, but I doubt you will find many open source developers who do.
In case it is helpful, strchr() and split() do not do the same thing. It sounds like you're heading for trouble there.
I guess my point is that your inexperience is not a valid complaint against PHP. Yes, it is not the perfect language, but it happens to work well for a lot of people. If you want to bash it, at least use valid reasons (which there are plenty) such as how mod_php is a content generation module and therefore unable to interact with other request phases within Apache (though I think this is being remedied in the apache_hooks API). Or, point to a benchmark showing how Perl parses large text files 20% faster in some cases. Or, show how Python's OO model is more advanced.
Sorry if this post comes off a bit strong, but I tire of seeing hollow rhetoric.
Although K really isn't a scripting langauge (neither is C), results were done for it, too (being faster and having less code). There is also a shallow introduction to K on Kuro5hin.org.
Parrot isn't the VM for Perl6. Parrot is a "new language from the creators of Perl and Python." Duh. There's even an O'Reilly book on it.
:/
Seriously though. They barely mentioned Parrot and Parrot is coming along very nicely I think. Even with a Java to Parrot Bytecode program, Brainfuck, Jako, Befunge-93, cola, forth, miniperl, ook, (non-final) perl6 interpreters/compilers, as well as python, ruby and scheme interpreters/compilers coming. Of course it's not finished, so not all of the languages are either, but hey, it's getting there, and damn fast. There's even a Parrot Assembly Lange.
Parrot is definately not Perl6. It's much more. It's like java, but open source, and independent of Languages. They're hoping to have it compile on as many platforms as perl does now, unlike Java which is Windows, Mac, Linux, and some PDAs, end of story.
So everyone check it out and throw some patches in too! Of course, the only support I've given so far is moral support.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!