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Programming languages worth checking out

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Re: Programming languages worth checking out

#21

Post by stcredzero »

agentcoops wrote: post #13

I find Self to be worth checking out, as well ( http://research.sun.com/self/ ) if for no other reason than seeing how fast dynamic languages can be. The research that went into it--techniques for blazing fast implementations of highly dynamic, object-oriented languages--has become especially relevant and provides the basis for many of the numerous new Javascript vms (especially V8). With regards to Smalltalk and its…

Strongtalk is definitely worth a look. The ability to have static typing when you want it is awesome!

I could imagine a deployment process where code can't be deployed unless it's all statically typed. This lets you do very fluid rapid prototyping, but then firm up parts of the system once they go into production.

Re: Programming languages worth checking out

#22

Post by gaius »

felixmar wrote: post #15

11. F# F# is a mixture of C#, OCaml and Haskell. F# will be included in the next version of Visual Studio so it's no longer just a research language. Performance is similar to C# but coding in it is faster in my experience and above all a lot nicer if you like functional programming. Because it runs on the .NET VM or Mono VM it has good multicore support unlike OCaml. Haskell is more powerful as a language, but also…

If Microsoft can work out a sane licensing arrangement for compute farms/clusters/clouds (whatever we're calling them this week) of Win 2008 Server, then F# is a game-changer of a similar scale to Google's MapReduce. That's a big if tho'.

Having said that, Windows is cheaper than RHEL already...

Re: Programming languages worth checking out

#23

Post by gaius »

agentcoops wrote: post #13

I find Self to be worth checking out, as well ( http://research.sun.com/self/ ) if for no other reason than seeing how fast dynamic languages can be. The research that went into it--techniques for blazing fast implementations of highly dynamic, object-oriented languages--has become especially relevant and provides the basis for many of the numerous new Javascript vms (especially V8). With regards to Smalltalk and its…

Self seems to be a dead project?

Re: Programming languages worth checking out

#25

Post by snprbob86 »

felixmar wrote: post #15

11. F# F# is a mixture of C#, OCaml and Haskell. F# will be included in the next version of Visual Studio so it's no longer just a research language. Performance is similar to C# but coding in it is faster in my experience and above all a lot nicer if you like functional programming. Because it runs on the .NET VM or Mono VM it has good multicore support unlike OCaml. Haskell is more powerful as a language, but also…

I'm learning F# now because it will be another weapon in my arsenal that I would be allowed to use here. My impression of it, so far, is: "Heh, kinda cool". It is basically the total compromise functional language, but in a good way. Immutability is optional, you can write imperative code whenever it makes sense, and there is a reasonably syntax for defining .NET object oriented constructs. It is very much a functional language that peacefully co-exists with the rest of the .NET ecosystem and that is a strength if you need it. Sure, all of that interop comes at a power and complexity cost, but it is surprisingly small.

Re: Programming languages worth checking out

#27

Post by agentcoops »

gaius wrote: post #23
agentcoops wrote: post #13

I find Self to be worth checking out, as well ( http://research.sun.com/self/ ) if for no other reason than seeing how fast dynamic languages can be. The research that went into it--techniques for blazing fast implementations of highly dynamic, object-oriented languages--has become especially relevant and provides the basis for many of the numerous new Javascript vms (especially V8). With regards to Smalltalk and its…

Self seems to be a dead project?

Actually, checking out the cvs repository on sourceforge (http://self.sourceforge.net/), there seem to have been some recent commits; though, in general, I think you're right that there isn't much active development.

There's also work on a linux port at http://www.gliebe.de/self/download.html, but I think it might be relatively defunct as well.

Re: Programming languages worth checking out

#29

Post by felixmar »

davidw wrote: post #19
felixmar wrote: post #15

11. F# F# is a mixture of C#, OCaml and Haskell. F# will be included in the next version of Visual Studio so it's no longer just a research language. Performance is similar to C# but coding in it is faster in my experience and above all a lot nicer if you like functional programming. Because it runs on the .NET VM or Mono VM it has good multicore support unlike OCaml. Haskell is more powerful as a language, but also…

Sounds interesting. How much is the community tied to Microsoft? "Runs on Mono" is ok, but if no one actually does, that's perhaps problematic for those who don't do MS.

Good cross-platform support is indeed very important for a programming language. The F# community is still small so there probably aren't many users on Linux and OS X.

Don Syme (the creator of F#) has said that Microsoft will release the F# compiler under an open source license. I think that the future of the language will depend on it. If the F# compiler cannot be included in Linux distributions then the uptake from Linux and OS X users will be low. That would seriously hinder the (open source) community aspect of the language. I don't think that a young advanced language can survive without it.

Re: Programming languages worth checking out

#30

Post by antiform »

trevelyan wrote: post #11

experimenting with lua this evening. be curious to hear if others have had good/bad experiences with it.

Playing with Lua is a blast. I don't have much experience in using it for anything but a third-order language (e.g. writing programs that write programs), but it's very lightweight, fast, and easy to pick up. I view it as a language that I use when I need the power of a programming language (as opposed to a one-off program), but not enough to justify using Perl/Python/Ruby.

There are some parts that I did find annoying, however, like the fact that in the standard libraries array indexing starts at 1 instead of 0 and that it gets a bit kludgy when you try and add lots of things that are not part of standard language features, but nothing you can't overcome.

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