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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."
schindler's list looks neat. I'll go read it sometime.
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
I am getting more comfortable with Javascript, though I still think DHTML and CSS are fundamentally fucked, and it really is time, if this web delivery of apps thing is for real, to find some more rational means of actually dealing with dynamic content.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Language | Turing Complete?
PHP | yes
Perl | yes
Tcl | yes
Python | yes
Ruby | yes
Javascript | yes
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Language | Has a "p" in it's name
PHP | yes
Perl | yes
Tcl | no
Python | yes
Ruby | no
Javascript | yes
This essentially summarizes the reasons I prefer to use Perl: the quality of the implementation, and the good libraries. However, there is a dark side that we Perl lovers don't talk about much, which is that although Perl has good quality and good libraries, many of the libraries are not of good quality. My purpose here isn't to name names and rip into individuals who have contributed open-source code to CPAN out of the goodness of their hearts, but honestly, some of the code on CPAN is of very low quality and/or very poorly maintained. Quite a few CPAN libraries are basically glue that interfaces to some C code, and when you look at some of that C code, it looks like examples of the worst coding practices of the 1980's, before the internet existed, and before it really registered on coders' consciousnesses that buffer overflows, etc., were not just bugs but security holes. I've had a couple of bad experiences where I hitched my wagon to a particular CPAN module, and later had serious problems because that module was not actively maintained. E.g., crippling bugs would go unfixed for a year at a time.
On the other hand, I'm not sure that any of the other scripting languages come off any better. What the article says really is true: the base implementations of the other scripting languages are really not anywhere near as solid as Perl's is -- probably partly because Perl is so much older than the others, and therefore more mature. But this may change a lot in the future. Perl 6 is eventually going to be ready for prime time, and there will be a certain amount of chaos and confusion and bugginess at that point, as everyone adapts to the new environment. Also, Perl's head-start in terms of maturity will start to mean less and less as time goes on and the other scripting languages start to get more mature.
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TCL is very strongly typed. Everythin is a string. That's a 100% unbreakable typesystem :-)
SJW n. One who posts facts.
They all still suck for about the same reasons they sucked three years ago.
The problems of Perl are well known, but it's probably the closest thing to "write once, run everywhere" that we have. Perl is essentially static at Perl 5. There's a Perl 6 effort, with a major language redesign, expected to ship shortly after Duke Nukem Forever.
PHP is gaining because it's a simple way to do dynamic web site back ends. It's not a great language, and limited to its niche, but useful there.
TCL was never a very good programming language, and it hasn't improved much.
Python is a nice language, but it still suffers from the limitations of the CPython implementation. It's slow, and integration with standard C modules is troublesome. Python has distro packaging problems - the Python maintainers don't coordinate with the maintainers of key modules, like the ones for talking to databases, and as a result Linux distros don't consistently ship with a CPython and a set of modules that play well together. That's why Python hasn't replaced Perl.
Javascript is a moderately painful language, yet we all have to use it. The object model is ill-designed; borrowing from Self was a mistake. Too much use is made of "eval", creating the "JSON" security hole. (Memo to language designers: don't combine the primitives for reading a string into an internal representation and for executing the internal representation. LISP has the "reader" and "eval"; Javascript has one function that does both.) Variable scope, given that the language has "var", is badly thought out. (Python is one of the few languages that does implicit declarations well. Perl had to retrofit "my", and Javascript had to retrofit "var", and in both cases, implicit declarations stayed, confusing the issue.) Because of this, Javascript has scaling problems. Attempts are made to paper this over with "toolkits", usually a bad sign.
I can't really say much about Ruby.
It's interesting that nobody uses Java applets much any more. It's worth understanding why that failed. But that's another subject.
I was surprised that Groovy didn't appear anywhere in the article. If there's a dynamic language poised to convert the enterprise crowd, its Groovy. Able to compile into Java bytecode, compile Java code, and directly exploit the huge base of Java, but without the cumbersome Java syntax. I wouldn't be surprised to see Python and Ruby supplanted by Groovy in a couple of years.
007: "Who are you?"
Pussy: "My name is Pussy Galore."
007: "I must be dreaming..."
That was a pretty reasonable guess, except it isn't correct. :-)
Lynn understandably went back to the same people, initially, since it would be easiest to say, "Hey, three years ago you said this... change you mind on anything?" Some of the guys didn't have the time (for example, Guido's a little busy with the next version of Python), so she asked who they'd recommend she speak with instead. To my understanding, Dave Thomas suggested Lam. Though he might have suggested someone else who suggested Lam.
IOW it had nothing to do with Microsoft. Though, come to think of it, it could be a good idea to ask all the Scripting Dudes and Dudettes from Microsoft for their opinions on stuff. Hmmmmmm.
python - an interpreted, interactive, object-oriented programming language
ruby - Interpreted object-oriented scripting language
java - Java interpreter
First of all, ruby's man page calls itself a scripting language, and secondly...
#!/usr/bin/java
println("Hello World!");
Oh right...
You can call all of these "interpreted" languages, but the ones with interactive prompts, or able to execute a source input file I throw at it, those are scripting languages. Java is nowhere NEAR a scripting language, it was not built for this. The other languages WERE built for this. It's an important distinction, and it doesn't make a perl/python/ruby developer any less of a man. Honestly, the interactive portion, and executing with #!/usr/bin/foo are the #1 and #2 indicators that it qualifies as "scripting".
You almost sound like "scripting language" is derogatory. Well, it's not.
Many people WANT scripting functionality for the Java platform, but it isn't here until I can run a one liner from the command line.
but I jumped ship for Python a long time ago. I think most Perl hackers have done the same, or picked up Ruby.
I really don't get it. I know Perl inside and outside. Last year I learned Python, and currently I'm reading a book on Ruby. But that doesn't make me forget Perl, so why not use it when it fits the problem being solved. Additional languages are new tools to add to your toolbox, but they don't remove your old tools. Why stick with one language when you can use all of them as you see fit?