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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?"
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.
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.
Portability and development speed are what drive it for me. Most of what I code is for log parsing, network device configuration, and reporting. To that end, I have never seen a need to look too far beyond Perl. It does everything I need with very minimal effort and development time, even for reasonably complex projects. Still, when Perl code becomes too large to work with effectively even after breaking down individual tasks, I change languages.
I think the point is "which tool fits the current need best." Far too many people seem to want to use a hammer when a screwdriver would work better out of potentially misguided allegiances. Languages are no different than any other tool.
I suspect TFA is more 'overrated' than 'insightful' since it makes some gross generalizations, cites search results as indicators of popularity, and completely neglects some of the nicer features of the popular scripting languages.
Well, it's got a better object model than Java, and it's a lot faster to code with. Java just isn't appropriate in every situation.
Python also plays well with C, so it's often used in concert with C for interfaces, etc.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
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
My father, just before he retired, got into a big argument with the kids. They had an embedded system, 32K onboard memory, everything was written in straight C.
The kids wanted to do OOP. My father felt there wasn't enough memory to do this effectively and it was foolish.
The reality was, that the kids just wanted to pretend they were doing OOP. They still used straight C, they just created structs and organized functions in files as if they were classes. It was actually rather clever and made it easier to maintain.
It's hard as you get older, I think, you hear about some new idea as the silver bullet and your immediate reaction is negative because you've heard this so many times before. But you have to have an open mind, and watch and see what is happening.
Otherwise you'll end up as a COBOL developer.
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.
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I don't think that Ruby is bad, not by a long shot. It's seems fairly decent and it doesn't seem to be lacking anything necessary. I'm just curious as to why someone would pick Ruby over some other language. I'm not quite understanding what the "killer app" of Ruby is. I'm not sure why this language had to be created.
My understanding is that the main reason for choosing Ruby is to use it with Rails (which I have not looked at yet). And yet it's rare for me to read a good word about Ruby on Rails.
Does anyone else get the impression that a lot of these newer languages are simply solutions that are looking for problems?
"Flag on the moon. How did it get there?"
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...
The thing that makes a programming language successful is the existence of a large group of programmers who are familiar enough with the language to use it. That's pretty much it.
If I can start a project in a particular language, get hit by a bus half way through, and finding someone else to sit in my seat and finish the project isn't a problem, then the language is a success. If I don't have that confidence, then the language is nothing but an interesting curiosity for academics.
Pretty cut and dried.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
I tend to agree with you that personal preference is one of the biggest factors in the choice of a language... but it's the strengths and weaknesses inherent in any language (or more so the language's purpose) that also shapes this. I rarely use only one language/model anymore.
For instance, in my day to day life, I see a clear distinction as to when procedural/object oriented languages such as C, PHP, and Java should be used, and when a relational language like SQL should be used, and I rarely confuse those two classes of programming. Markup languages (though hardly programming languages) like HTML and CSS also have their essential and distinct roles. Were I forced to select only one, I'd probably quit programming!
Programming languages are just tools to get the job done. When was the last time you saw a carpenter with only a chisel?
Everybody's so quick to get into pissing matches.
(Forgive any flawed terminology, I was just speaking casually.)
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