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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?"
I thought it was the beards on the creator(s) of the language that determines the success?
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
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.
Don't count out the "dead" languages... IBM estimates that more than 30 billion transactions occur within Cobol programs every day. By contrast, Google averages about 150 million searches each day, or about .5% of Cobol's daily workload.
Rather than a "gee I need a cool website for my mom" choice, perhaps the number of transactions or dollar value would be a better count.
Cobol would probably win, followed by java and the Microsoft languages (C++, C#).
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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?"
I'm sorry, the number you have dialed is an imaginary number. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and dial again.
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...
Need code that you KNOW has no errors aside from logic errors on the part of the programmer? Use Ada. That's really where Ada fits. You can do very little wrong without the compiler screaming at you and then failing to compile. Like as in, things that cause C "warnings" cause Ada to fail compilation until you fix it. Need to rapidly produce major components, and easily wrap C for the lower level, more performance intensive stuff? Use Python. No, really. That seems to be Python's main niche. It's a great language for writing large blocks of program logic very quickly, is poor at low-level stuff, but can trivially wrap C to do the things it is very poor at.
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
It's hard not to turn this discussion into a war and I do believe that even from a qualitative perspective, this discussion is entirely subjective. Let me preface my comments by saying I work primarily in C#, Java, Ruby, and Python in my job, and previously was a C, C++, Fortran, and Assembly programmer. I know about a dozen more languages as well, so I feel I've at least had exposure to many languages to guage success from a developer's point of view. Generally, I think being good at a certain job/task makes a language successful. There is a corollary that one should pick the best tool for the job, not because it's the "best" language. C++ is successful because it was very fast at the time, had a lot of features people wanted, and was relatively easy to learn. Would I do a web page in C++ these days? Probably not.
If I had to pick a language to discuss and deem successful, it would be either Smalltalk or Lisp. Some people find either of those esoteric or "weird," but I rather enjoy writing code in both. Interestingly enough, in many respects neither language is particular successful in a commercial sense, but very much so for most implementations.
I'll stick to Smalltalk because it's a good example for this discussion. It's a case where popularity in my mind is not equal to success. Smalltalk works because it is simple (there are really only 6 keywords or so and not even really keywords at that) and is designed impeccably. If success is related to imitation and admiration, then Smalltalk is up there. Of course in itself, the language is derivative, but it's well-known enough to claim/steal credit for one of the best implementations of existing ideas. I have to laugh at other languages, especially Ruby, Python, C#, and Java as they are adding language features or libraries that emulate things that have existed in Smalltalk for 20+ years. That's rather laughable, but also an indicator of success.
As the Smalltalk saying goes, "Files? How quaint." The language just proves you can design something successful by simplifying and focusing on enabling people to design and use their brains. I feel like I can focus on code rather than language constraints. Smalltalk coding is like teaching them to farm rather than giving them food. There are obvious merits to both approaches. The fact that the language is still around 20+ years later and gaining momentum speaks volumes.
I think what makes it unsuccessful is that a lot of people have no idea it exists in the first place and how it really works. They might look at it and say, "yeah that looks something like Ruby, so what's the point." Usually I find it's lack of understanding of not only Smalltalk, but the fact that the development environment in many ways is the language. Most Smalltalk implementations simply don't have the problems in file-based languages like disorganized code, "too many classes," etc. So many of the plights in other languages don't happen in Smalltalk because of the design and that to me is success, regardless of the number of commercial installations.
Another issues that has halted the language's success in commercial spaces has been ugly UI. Until recently, most implementations have looked awful. Squeak used to look like a child's toy without customizations (still does to some degree, but there's 100s of customized images floating around the internet now). Visual Works looks like an ugly ms-app sometimes, but is a huge leap over the past. Gemstone Smalltalk has no real UI (but can use Squeak). The list goes on, but the point is that even in dev environments, eye candy has a big influence.
It gets even weirder when you look at Smalltalk and languages from the perspective of supporting products. Databases are probably the biggest, and Smalltalk can work with just about everything, but the simple support for the RDBMS is pitiful compared to most popular languages. Especially in recent years, a lot of that has to do with the Smalltalk view. In the Smalltalk world, it seems stupid not to use an object database at this poin
John put the CD in the cabinet and then sold it.
Faulty pronoun reference. Which one am I talking about? You'll never know. (And if you pick one, I'll just say it was the other one.)
I was on an old dial up bbs once having a fierce argument and was deep into a paragraph lambasting my foe, when a nearby thunderstorm injected about 4 lines of pure static garbage characters into my text, and the techy walked by, glanced at my screen and said "taking up perl?"
And this is why God invented comments.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
You've probably never done any coding in Python. Check out the book Dive Into Python (it's free and online): http://www.diveintopython.org/ Even browsing through it will give you a better idea of what Python is good for.
Personally, I think of Python as a prettier and more coherent version of Perl.
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.)
Move all sig!
"this load of crap", sir, is the latest cool new thing. Why else would microsoft spend lots of ther precious development and research resources on adding lambda functions to C#, creating F# and why Haskell is now the de-jour of forums and blogs around the world.
Why, I believe you are one of those old style programmers who believe in making things simple, easy to read and maintain, straightforward to develop and simple to understand. How will you appear superior to your colleagues and peers if you write code that they can understand? You have no clue, sir, of the need nowadays to preen your feathers by appearing to "grok" something as obtuse and needlessly obscure as this kind of coding style.
If your code is so simple, and anyone can understand it, then there is no reason why it can't be shipped offshore to Elbonia. So, get with the program and spend at least an hour a day "refactoring" your code to the required level of spaghettiness. Thank you.
Killer apps are overrated. Ruby is an expressive language, period. Studies have shown that software developers can only write a few lines of correct code per day. Making those lines count for as much as possible is important from a correctness, and a maintainability perspective.
Furthermore, application complexity increases non-linearly with lines of code. The fewer the lines of code, the more maintainable and understandable the program.
This is one reason why C is a poor choice of application language, because it requires verbose solutions, and why OCaml is a better choice.
So the winning factor of Ruby over Java is its expressiveness. The big downside is the loss of static typing, and the subsequent loss of certain pre-runtime guarantees. If we could have both, we'd have a real killer language.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
To be fair, chisels aren't Turing-complete.
When's the last time you saw a contractor with 7 power-drills all made by different manufacturers?
The answer is somewhere in between - one language isn't enough, but many languages are indeed superfluous.