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What Makes a Programming Language Successful?
danielstoner writes "The article '13 reasons why Ruby, Python and the gang will push Java to die... of old age' makes an interesting analysis of the programming languages battling for a place in programmers' minds. What really makes a language popular? What really makes a language 'good'? What is success for a programming language? Can we say COBOL is a successful language? What about Ruby, Python, etc?"
Portability and scalability are what win it for me, I like to write my code once and it's got to be powerful enough to deliver a complex solution.
Procrastinators, Unite Tomorrow!!
Java's well organized, has a great standard library and is (mostly) consistent with itself. Its only problems, as far as I can see, was that it was initially slow and that it marketed itself as a web language, when there were better choices for that.
Disclaimer: I've only coded in Java since 1.5.
Power: What can it do?
Performance: How fast can it do it?
Ease of Development: How fast can quality code be turned out by regular programmers?
Most modern languages fail on a couple of these. C is first class in Power and Performance, but it's not Easy. Ruby is okay in Power, and its very Easy, but it's slow. Java is Powerful, but doesn't match C for Performance, and it's not the quickest for development.
I'm sure many fanboys will disagree with my analysis. They'll say "Regular programmers don't matter (C)" or "It's NOT SLOW (Ruby)" or "Development is too quick! (Java)".
Really though, that's what it comes down to. The problem is, that there are unfortunate tradeoffs that have to be made. Most languages have a strength, but they all make sacrifices to be strong.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I think many people fail to recognize that the average age of software engineers has gotten higher and that many have realized that most of the pitfalls in software development have little to do with the language chosen. I would rather concentrate on good engineering practices and refining familiar modules I have developed than learn a new language.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Not to sound too much like Obi Wan, but many of the truths we cling to depend a great deal on our own point of view and all that.
If I was working for O'Reilly, Manning, APress, Wiley, et al I'd say a successful programming language was one which sold lots of books.
If I was a hiring manager for a large software company, I'd look closely at what language allowed the most cheap new grads to work together an produce something resembling quality code.
If I was teaching intro to computer science, I'd worry about what was preparing my students for the rest of their education.
If I was teaching a certificate-level course to people looking to get into the job market quickly, I'd look for the language with the highest placement rate.
If I was a person of little clue, I'd go largely by the hype. Some would go with the mainstream hype, and some go with the counter cultural "that's the big hype, but our language is better" underdog hype.
As a programmer, I prefer the language that helps me turn customer requirements into working programs that fastest with the least fuss on my part, and allows decent maintenance and customization later.
As the owner of a small boutique programming shop, I want my expressive, powerful language to give me an advantage over others using less expressive languages. I'd like to find others who can use it, but a few is alright as I don't need a huge team to work on programs.
Every program on your screen and your OS was written in C/C++
I just started at a new job at the beginning of this year after quitting from my last job where I barely got to do any programming. The place where I work now is a Java shop. I was getting back to Java programming after a hiatus of a few years. For the last few years I mostly doing Perl with a smattering of C (PHP and Javascript on occasion). My experience with Java was mainly from college and a few odd projects I did here and there. The language had changed quite a bit over the last few years and to be honest, I surprised myself by being happy to get back to it (I had some sort of vague dislike for it for a period of time).
The company sponsored a trip to JavaOne at San Francisco earlier this month, for the Dev Team. I also got to go. This was my first time at JavaOne. It was amazing, exciting, and I learnt a LOT of new stuff. The main thing I got from there was that Java, far from being a programming language, is also a platform. There are a lot of new things being built on TOP of Java. For example, Groovy, and JavaFX. Java now has excellent support and frameworks to roll your OWN domain-specific languages.
Python and Ruby are not going to push Java out of the way. For example, you have mergers of Java with these languages (Jython and JRuby). Essentially you have Python and Ruby using Java resources and libraries. I think instead of "dying", Java is just going to evolve into a stable platform that lets you build stuff on top of it.
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
What makes a programming language successful?
Same thing that makes a religion successful. Adherents.
Lately democracy seems to be based on the skybox, the Happy Meal box, the X-box, and the idiot box.
You didn't review any C either, yet we all know that the language is out there and being used. Same with perl.
I think your field of work is too narrow to be completely explanatory.
Btw, I do agree with your general point - I don't see python or ruby bumping aside java. But your personal experience, extensive as it appears, is not enough to derive that conclusion
-Jeff
P.S. I really wish java would go. I hate the upper/lower case thing in all the names.
Please learn the difference between a dissenting opinion and a troll before you moderate.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
yeah, you know, 'cause when you have 50 programmers on a project, C l33tnesses like
while (x-->0) { blah; }
are so cool and easy to understand. and malloc()s make memory management so easy and cross-platform. and clustering is for wussies, if you need more than a core2duo on Linux, is because you're unl33t or because you need to do some routines in über-ELITE assembler.
now when you program in Java you forget all that crap, you just code. need a bigger app? J2EE it and run it on a cluster. add nodes a needed to keep performance. node dies? no problem, J2EE takes care of it.
migrated from mysql to Oracle or DB2? no problem, just let Hibernate know about it.
tired of Windows Server and want to run opensolaris, linux or OS X Server? no problem, just drop your EAR/WAR on the new server and relax. it's working.
wanna add more coders to your project? point 'em to the javadoc and let they read through the verbose (and thus self-explaining) code.
strong typing is there to keep you from doing stupid things. you can always tell what the program IS going to do in all situations, because you HAVE to specify all situations.
but you're too cool for java. lemme know when banks switch their systems to LAMP and we'll talk.
Do you ever think that maybe your survey has a heavy self-selection bias? I mean it seems to me that the most likely candidates for security reviews would be applications that have been around long enough to have somebody in management say, "Hey, we need to have a third party review this!". This explains how FIVE PERCENT of your applications are COBOL while only "three" are PHP. By your analysis, it's as if C/C++ doesn't even exist...
Java isn't going to die any more than C. Nor will Python or Ruby die any time in the foreseeable future.
Anyone can play Devil's Advocate and make one language look better than another from some point of view, but the fact is, different languages have their different pluses and minuses. I'm sure Ruby and Python have their pluses, but I don't see them being used NEARLY as much as Java. And take into consideration that Ruby has been around just as long as Java and Python has 4 years on both languages. If they were going to kick Java's ass, it would have happened by now.
I suspect the article is wishful thinking (though I can't read it 'cause the site didn't survive this post). I don't know why people have to make such a big deal about this stuff anyway. Languages evolve and new languages and paradigms will be created in the future. Computer programming is still in its infancy. There's a good possibility that 20-30 years down the road, none of these languages will be around. They may be completely replaced by some far more powerful paradigm we can't even imagine yet.
These kinds of predictions are old and pointless.
What's wrong with Java? Sure I can't slap together a web 2.0 site in 1 day like I could with .net 3.0 or Ruby, but they can't enable a high availability transactional based middle ware system. Java has so many great uses beyond simple web apps, it will always have a place in the enterprise and mobile devices.
You may find my appearance and demeanor foolish, but it is you who plays the fool.
> And repeat smart things like not treating arrays as first-class entities?
> Honestly, C is full of design errors.
Come back when you know how the computer works, grasshopper. C doesn't treat arrays as "objects" because the computer doesn't do that. If you want higher level abstractions, use C++, where you have the nice vector class that does what you want.
It's not about the platform, language or the framework that makes an application safe, it's the security engineering that does. If you don't do any, your app WILL be insecure by design and there's no way you can't fix such code.
.NET (C# and VB.NET) since .NET 1.0
However, you have a point to a degree - I am initially more productive reviewing frameworks I am familiar with. But that doesn't mean I would be ineffective at reviewing Python or Ruby. It would take me about half a day to spin up in any language or framework as I found things that are missing. And that's the important thing:
I hate reviewing apps with zero security engineering. It's exactly like shooting fish in a barrel, but hopeless as you're not going to get a nice fish stew at the end.
What I look for are meta-issues found in all languages and frameworks. Syntax and functions can be found in online references - if you need them.
There is nothing special about any language as few protect against the security artifacts we look for.
For example, if your code has an access control mechanism, I look at it in situ on a live test app, deciding how best I might attack it, and then research using the code how I can obviate it at different levels:
* Coarse grained - is this feature access controlled at all? This is definitely a problem for J2EE apps that use servlets as folks think presentation level security is adequate. It's not
* Medium grained - does this feature offer different levels of access based upon your role? If so, how does this mechanism work? What do I do to get around it and steal stuff?
* Fine grained - does this feature restrict access to secured resources (direct object references)? If so, how does this mechanism work?
Each of the things we look at are verifying security mechanisms. Knowledge of the language or framework is simply not necessary. If you know what you're doing, you can prove the lack of security engineering by testing the app in situ and then research why it fails. Once I find a weakness, I look at the code to see why the weakness exists. Once I've found the issue, I look further afield for the pattern and then I document the issue. Rarely does an app or framework have just one weakness - they are usually patterns.
Picking up a new language or grammar and framework, like going from Struts to Spring MVC takes about half a day for someone like me who knows multiple languages, both functional like Haskell, or OO languages like Smalltalk or Ada, or scripting dynamic languages like PHP, Ruby or Python, or declarative languages like C or Java. We do not write the app, we are reviewing the app.
Security mechanisms are usually fairly clear if they exist. If they do not make themselves immediately obvious, they are usually missing.
Folks who have the hubris to think their code is somehow safe, like the COBOL folks on the mainframe or your example of not reviewing code if you don't know it well. That's why I turned down the Haskell review as I didn't know it well enough in the time available. If it was a longer review, I would have taken it as I love to learn new languages.
However, fyi, if you paid me to be a developer, I could be immediately productive in the following languages:
J2EE - Since Java was first released. Major frameworks include Struts, type 1 JSP with JSTL, Spring MVC, Struts 2.0, and JSF
PHP - Since PHP 3
Could code if absolutely required:
COBOL - 12 months review only experience
RPG - 12 months review only experience
Perl - 15 years experience
Shell scripts - 15 years experience
Ruby with RoR - tested it out for a new version of my forum (UltimaBB/XMB) but it was too slow
C - since 1985. Co-wrote the Matrox millennium driver for XFree86 back in the day
C++ - since CFront was a bastard child
Ada - since 1990. Still have fond memories
Pascal - since 1985, haven't used it for a while
Languages that I don't suck at but wouldn't claim any particular skills:
Andrew van der Stock
I'll take any language that can let me write, read, and understand as fast as the speed of computers is progressing, i.e., exponentially.
I don't give a crap if language xxxxxxx is more efficient, more hardcore, etc. You know why?
Because I don't want to spend a year writing an application in C for efficiency and find out at the end that for a mere $1,000 I could have written the same thing in Python in a month and just bought a faster computer 11 months later.
YOUR time is linear, while the computer's is exponential. You'd be a fool to not take advantage of that and, frankly, type safety, efficiency, platform independence, programming style, power, etc. etc. can all go to hell. Just give me a beautiful language.
I am completely confused as to how the author can even ask the question "Is COBOL a success?"
Is COBOL old? Certainly.
Is COBOL outdated? Yes.
Has COBOL since been replaced by better languages? Yep.
Would you be insane to start a new, large, application from scratch using COBOL? Of course.
But "Is COBOL a success?" Without doubt, yes. Countless millions (perhaps) billions of lines of production COBOL code are still in use. It is still the core behind many of the applications that run our day-to-day lives. These applications have been running for decades with downtime records that would put an average "Web 2.0" app to shame.
Certainly, IBM deserves a lot of credit for this, maintaining pure 100% backward compatibility for those apps for the last forty years or so, but some credit is due to the language itself.
SirWired
Not every big library is bloated. It's only bloat if it has a poor size to functionality ratio.
For example libc is small, but it does not include XML parsing, HTTP support, SHA1 and MD5 sums, the ability to read compressed files etc. Sure there are libraries for that, but you have to pick and add them yourself. So libc is small not because it is amazingly efficient, but because it is limited in scope.
Personally, I like big standard libraries like Java and Python have. You pay for it in the initial install, but once that is in place, your application has access to a huge amount of functionality without having to add a lot of external dependencies.