What JVM Language are you using for your startup? if any.
Java/Groovy/Scala/Clojure/Ruby?
For what layers? And why?
Ask HN: Java/Groovy/Scala/Clojure/Ruby for your startup?
1–10 of 24 posts
Re: Ask HN: Java/Groovy/Scala/Clojure/Ruby for your startup?
#2Not actually using any, but if scale problems come, we have the following order: Jruby, Clojure, Scala. The reasons behind the order:
* Jruby, because we really like the level of metaprogramming of ruby, the readability, the ammount of libraries, the effort Charles Nutter put into making it a very good port of ruby, and the library support that feels like ruby (dsl-ish, easy to use, easy to change, with tests as documentation, etc), even if you are not using Rails.
* Clojure, because it is dynamic, and enforces immutable state (most of the time), it has great metaprogramming support as well (which is very important for readbility), and you can use type annotations to remove all reflection code, and use direct invoking (as fast as java).
* Scala, because it is much more convenient to use than Java (and has other advantages, http://bit.ly/4DIKy4), while still being compiled to very efficient java bytecode. Its static typing has issues (http://bit.ly/asQ7FC), as its lack of metaprogramming. Implicit conversions, on the other hand, can deal with it for most part.
*Java/Groovy: Scala should be the lowest level we would like to handle. Groovy feels a bit like Ruby, it has more metaprogramming facilities (like categories, and AST manipulations are builtin, unlike Ruby's Parse Tree, which doesn't work on 1.9). However, Jruby is the same language we use everywhere else, and Groovy is not faster than clojure. So it is a "master of none" type of language. Not to mention that its stack trace is riddled with java garbage, and it feels a lot like Java, which is really a put off.
This is mosty for backend, as with are probably sticking with Sinatra on front end for a looong while. Twitter uses Rails on front end even nowadays, so it seems like we won't have too much problem with it as well.
Re: Ask HN: Java/Groovy/Scala/Clojure/Ruby for your startup?
#3Gah use python!
Re: Ask HN: Java/Groovy/Scala/Clojure/Ruby for your startup?
#4Not actually using any, but if scale problems come, we have the following order: Jruby, Clojure, Scala. The reasons behind the order: * Jruby, because we really like the level of metaprogramming of ruby, the readability, the ammount of libraries, the effort Charles Nutter put into making it a very good port of ruby, and the library support that feels like ruby (dsl-ish, easy to use, easy to change, with tests as docu…
I wouldn't necessarily put Clojure between JRuby and Scala (I hope I am not misinterpreting). I think it should be more along side of JRuby depending on the type of problem you are trying to tackle, it supports a totally different paradigm of programming.
Re: Ask HN: Java/Groovy/Scala/Clojure/Ruby for your startup?
#5I know that the University of Oslo started on a rather big Groovy project, but after a few months ported everything over to Ruby (not sure if it runs on JRuby though). As far as I remember, they felt that Groovy was a terrible "clone" of Ruby: Long and Java-ish backtraces, small community and much broken code.
http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=thomasfl worked on the project, so maybe he'll chime in with more details.
Re: Ask HN: Java/Groovy/Scala/Clojure/Ruby for your startup?
#6You should use what you are comfortable with and most productive. If Visual Basic make your product work, go with it.
Re: Ask HN: Java/Groovy/Scala/Clojure/Ruby for your startup?
#7Not actually using any, but if scale problems come, we have the following order: Jruby, Clojure, Scala. The reasons behind the order: * Jruby, because we really like the level of metaprogramming of ruby, the readability, the ammount of libraries, the effort Charles Nutter put into making it a very good port of ruby, and the library support that feels like ruby (dsl-ish, easy to use, easy to change, with tests as docu…
I wouldn't necessarily put Clojure between JRuby and Scala (I hope I am not misinterpreting). I think it should be more along side of JRuby depending on the type of problem you are trying to tackle, it supports a totally different paradigm of programming.
This is our options. Jruby and clojure are both dynamic, and we prefer them over static typing of Scala. But jruby is closer to ruby, therefore clojure takes the second place in our list.
Scala's type inference makes the typing a lot less of burden, when compared to java, but it is still there.
Just our options. Feel free to make your own. People with lots of Groovy experience may choose Groovy, and those who really don't need much metaprogramming support may choose Scala. This is just not our case.
Some people also feel very uncomfortable with the lack of almost perfect auto-complete. Ctrl+k (text complete) on Netbeans is magical enough for us most of the time. We use lots of TDD, such that we can also refactor safely, therefore, type safety feels more like a burden when writing tests for things that don't exist on statically typed languages than on dynamic. Again, is a matter of taste as well.
Re: Ask HN: Java/Groovy/Scala/Clojure/Ruby for your startup?
#8python. python beats ruby in community imo. if you're just doing a webapp then rails wins, but with scipy conferences and researchers from astronomy to biology putting out python packages, if you're doing something outside the normal webapp you'll probably find a more useful community with python.
Re: Ask HN: Java/Groovy/Scala/Clojure/Ruby for your startup?
#9Avoid to use Java directly, if you need any Java libraries choose Clojure to wrap it, that strategy works well for me. Scala is another alternative here. It's a bit more complicated to work with Java libraries but great for writing code.
For a general programing task my choice is Python, stable, mature, well documented with an extensive library support. iPython is a fantastic shell for it, that's my interface to Python libraries and programs, good for developing, running code, debugging or for a quick peep to the documentation. Highly recommended.
Re: Ask HN: Java/Groovy/Scala/Clojure/Ruby for your startup?
#10python. python beats ruby in community imo. if you're just doing a webapp then rails wins, but with scipy conferences and researchers from astronomy to biology putting out python packages, if you're doing something outside the normal webapp you'll probably find a more useful community with python.
This opinion sounds very one sided. Do you have any experience within the ruby community, personally?