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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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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();
I hope Python integrates wxPython. With Python + wxPython, it can take on things like Java, Mono, and .Net.
Yeah but then you'd have to invite ASP, and really, who would want to do that? =]
-Valiss
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.
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.)
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.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!