The State of Scripting Languages

Esther Schindler writes to tell us that Lynn Greiner has another look at the state of the scripting universe as a follow on to the same topic three years ago. Greiner talks to major players from each of the main scripting languages (PHP, Perl, Tcl, Python, Ruby, and Javascript) to find out the current status and where they are headed in the future. "The biggest change since 2005 has been the growth of richer Web applications that perform more of their computations in the browser using JavaScript. The demand for these applications has forced developers to learn and use JavaScript much more than before. There's also been a lot of interest in Ruby, another dynamic language, spurred by the release and growth of Ruby on Rails. As a result of these changes, many developers are becoming more comfortable with dynamic languages."

Comments

Java != Javascript

[Anonymous Coward]

Preemptive strike! You're a moron, and Java != Javascript!

Schindler's List?

[PunkOfLinux]

schindler's list looks neat. I'll go read it sometime.

Re:What about a Comparison Matrix

[Surt]

Language | Turing Complete?
PHP | yes
Perl | yes
Tcl | yes
Python | yes
Ruby | yes
Javascript | yes

Re:What about a Comparison Matrix

[El_Muerte_TDS]

Language | Has a "p" in it's name
PHP | yes
Perl | yes
Tcl | no
Python | yes
Ruby | no
Javascript | yes

Re:Struck out

[75th Trombone]

Maybe someone needs to look up the word "Preemptive"?

Re:What about a Comparison Matrix

[serviscope_minor]

PHP | Annoying fanbois
Perl | Annoying fanbois
Tcl | No fanbois
Python | Annoying fanbois
Ruby | Annoying fanbois
Javascript | Annoying fanbois
* | rand()%2?"Annoying fanbois":"No fanbois"

Actually, I think one can draw more useful conclusions about fanbois than languages. How about something more concete.

Advantages:

PHP | It's not perl, tcl python, ruby or Javascript
Perl| It's not PHP, Tcl, Python, Ruby or Javascript
Tcl | It's not PHP, perl, Python, Ruby or Javascript
Python| It's not PHP, perl, Tcl, Ruby or Javascript
Ruby| It's not PHP, perl, Tcl, Python or Javascript
Javascript | It's not PHP, perl, Tcl, Python or Ruby

Funnily enough the disadvantages are *exactly* the same.

Re:What about a Comparison Matrix

[serviscope_minor]

TCL is very strongly typed. Everythin is a string. That's a 100% unbreakable typesystem :-)

Future of scripting langauges

[xpuppykickerx]

What did they use to code the Matrix?

Re:future of perl?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Pffft, Perl is perfectly good for anything that needs string manipulation and such.

Unfortunately for Perl, so is Python.

(Well, and Ruby. I'm partial to Ruby, but there's no XKCD for me to link to.)

Re:What about a Comparison Matrix

[Bromskloss]

Javascript | yes

Are you really sure?

Re:Caught in a crossfire

[Jonboy X]

perl is basically that weird old guy down the street who keeps trying to talk little kids into coming into his house to play with his new puppy. *shudder* There's just something *wrong* with that guy.

Perl: The language of choice for pedophiles.

Re:Major players?

[coryking]

but in the Ruby world they are not

Of course they aren't. Ruby is for fashion programmers with iMacs, iTunes and iPhones. Ruby is for programmers who moonlight as bar tenders. Ruby is for companies with numbers in their name. Ruby is for minimalists who eschew corporate wisdom. Ruby is for those who use words like eschew.

Ruby is hip. It is edgy. If you went into a bar and said "I use Ruby", you would get first game on the pool table. If you use Ruby, people call you by your initials, not your name.

You dont use Ruby to just get work done. No sir. You use Ruby to make a statement about who you are.

CF, DT, DHH and M himself are all cool beyond belief. They are the superstar hipsters of our modern programming world. C programmers, Java programmers and .NET programmers could never be as cool as DHH--not even on the best day of their lives.

Go home you Microsoft Player. Go home you inbred C programmers and Billy-Joe-PHP'ers. You are the rednecks of the computing world. You are the fly-over programming languages that keep us busy wondering who uses your language as we our active records fly over your heads.

Re:What about real languages?

[coren2000]

When are we going to get a new high-performance, clean, simple, meta-programmable, incrementally-compilable language to replace C++ with?

Java?

Going for a +5 funny IC.

Re:What about a Comparison Matrix

[dash2]

Tcl and Ruby have a p in their name, but the p is silent... as in swimming.

Re:What about a Comparison Matrix

[ignavus]

Yeah? So what?

In Javascript everything is a var.

So it is strongly typed too.