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Ask HN: Java/Groovy/Scala/Clojure/Ruby for your startup?

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Re: Ask HN: Java/Groovy/Scala/Clojure/Ruby for your startup?

#11

Post by zavulon »

I'm really curious for the purpose of this question. Are you trying to find the most popular language of choice among HN hackers that have their own startup? Shouldn't you at least mention "and what does your startup do"? Or at this point, "startup" is automatically assumed to be a "webapp"?

My startup specializes in bringing other people's ideas into life. Most of our clients are also startups. Depending on their needs, we use Ruby on Rails, PHP, Java, Objective C/Cocoa, or C++. For my other startup, which is a webapp, I use Ruby on Rails.

Re: Ask HN: Java/Groovy/Scala/Clojure/Ruby for your startup?

#12

Post by wlievens »

babo wrote: post #9

Avoid 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 Pyth…

I know that dissing Java is cool these days, but some arguments would've been neat.

Re: Ask HN: Java/Groovy/Scala/Clojure/Ruby for your startup?

#13

Post by babo »

wlievens wrote: post #12
babo wrote: post #9

Avoid 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 Pyth…

I know that dissing Java is cool these days, but some arguments would've been neat.

From my experience Java programming is too slow and inflexible for a startup while there are good and important libraries, that's why I suggest clojure to use them. That's based on first hand experience using various Java projects for a large traffic site, including Cassandra, Solr, hadoop, restlet, etc. We started with java for coding all of these but replaced most of the code later and not for fun. :-)

Re: Ask HN: Java/Groovy/Scala/Clojure/Ruby for your startup?

#14

Post by cmars232 »

judofyr wrote: post #5

I 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 detail…

I'm not at a startup (anymore... we got bought), but we're using Groovy for unit/functional testing.

It's a nice compromise when you want something that cuts through boilerplate with metaprogramming/duck typing but can keep tight interop with Java where you need it... and you need a quick learning curve for Java devs.

That said, stack traces are horrible, debugging in Eclipse is difficult to impossible depending on how "dynamic" you get, there's no interactive debugger like pdb.set_trace() (that I know of) and the flexibility of the syntax can get out of hand quick. Great for limited use, like making mini-languages and glue for testing. Wouldn't want to support a large application written in it.

Re: Ask HN: Java/Groovy/Scala/Clojure/Ruby for your startup?

#15

Post by rossedwards »

WALoeIII wrote: post #4
DanielRibeiro wrote: post #2

Not 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.

The problem is that there really isnt any definition of languages within the java landscape right now. Meaning theres a bunch of languages but noen really stand out for any specifc uses with the expection of people that know them well and are using them well. So its very confusing to know which to use.

For example Grails and groovy were supposed to be big on the java framework but due to seveeral reasons they seem to be really more niche. PArtly because it seems the people behind both of them just arent dealing wiht the problems such as bugs quickly enough.

Scala is an interesting language but again there doesnt seem to be a heavy push for it. Expect for peopel that are using it and know what its strengths are.

All of which leads to alot of confusion about which technology to use.

Then theres the issue of frameworks. Theres a million of them but none of them really stand out. ANd personally i dont think it helps that oracle is no running things.

On the other hand ruby is known by many people as being pretty powerful and used by alot of startups. Same thing with php. How many startups do you know that use java? I know foursqaure uses liftweb but thats about it.

Re: Ask HN: Java/Groovy/Scala/Clojure/Ruby for your startup?

#16

Post by durbin »

mdwrigh2 wrote: post #10
durbin wrote: post #8

python. 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?

It is very one sided as almost everything I've seen about Ruby is Rails focused, especially outside of japan. Please fill me in where you think the Ruby community has more to offer in a scientific environment.

Re: Ask HN: Java/Groovy/Scala/Clojure/Ruby for your startup?

#17

Post by rossedwards »

durbin wrote: post #16
mdwrigh2 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This opinion sounds very one sided. Do you have any experience within the ruby community, personally?

It is very one sided as almost everything I've seen about Ruby is Rails focused, especially outside of japan. Please fill me in where you think the Ruby community has more to offer in a scientific environment.

I believe python is better frankly at doing mathematical types of things. ANd definitely has more of an engineer crowd to it.

Re: Ask HN: Java/Groovy/Scala/Clojure/Ruby for your startup?

#18

Post by rossedwards »

wlievens wrote: post #12
babo wrote: post #9

Avoid 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 Pyth…

I know that dissing Java is cool these days, but some arguments would've been neat.

The java landscape right now is confusing and choatic. THeres 5-10 languages around with none of them standing out and no explanation of their use cases. Theres also alot of web frameworks but none of them rally are being pushed as the main framework. So unless youve used java quite a bit its simply easier to use rails or heck php as those are easy to use and are known to be used by alot of startups.

Re: Ask HN: Java/Groovy/Scala/Clojure/Ruby for your startup?

#19

Post by DanielRibeiro »

rossedwards wrote: post #15
WALoeIII wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The problem is that there really isnt any definition of languages within the java landscape right now. Meaning theres a bunch of languages but noen really stand out for any specifc uses with the expection of people that know them well and are using them well. So its very confusing to know which to use. For example Grails and groovy were supposed to be big on the java framework but due to seveeral reasons they seem to…

Just because you are not aware of what is being used, does not mean that it is not used. Scala startups: KaChing (follow http://twitter.com/eishay for more info, he talks a lot about the Lean startup practises on Kaching as well) and Etherpad (wave-like product, bought by google last year). Eishay also gave a great hint for startups looking for scalable technologies: http://twitter.com/eishay/statuses/20478841811

Flightcaster, which is funded by YCombinator, uses clojure and Ruby on heroku (more on their infoq profile: http://www.infoq.com/articles/flightcaster-clojure-rails).

Most startups are not actually vocal about what they use. Most of them actually are not heard, so they could be as vocal as they wanted and still noone would hear them.

Re: Ask HN: Java/Groovy/Scala/Clojure/Ruby for your startup?

#20

Post by vorg »

cmars232 wrote: post #14
judofyr wrote: post #5

I 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 detail…

I'm not at a startup (anymore... we got bought), but we're using Groovy for unit/functional testing. It's a nice compromise when you want something that cuts through boilerplate with metaprogramming/duck typing but can keep tight interop with Java where you need it... and you need a quick learning curve for Java devs. That said, stack traces are horrible , debugging in Eclipse is difficult to impossible depending on…

Groovy also has a faster static version, Groovy++ at http://code.google.com/p/groovypptest which can intermingle with the more scripty Groovy code using annotations.
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