[NCLUG] Looking at programming languages...

[Chad Perrin]

On Wed, Jan 16, 2008 at 07:39:54PM +0000, Walker, Philip M (Optical Storage) wrote:
> Two possiblities come to mind:  python and groovy
> 
> Of the two, python tends to suffer performance issues (maybe similar to ruby).

Much as I prefer Ruby over Python, personally, I must admit -- for Ruby
1.8.6, Python averages better performance than Ruby.  There are specific
cases where Ruby outperforms Python, and many cases where their
performance is roughly equivalent, but there are also many cases where
Python clearly outperforms Ruby.  This is likely to change significantly
with Ruby 1.9.x and 2.x, however.  At least, that's the rumor.


> 
> Groovy is very similar to Ruby, if you use the new idioms, so it's very easy to learn.
> The performance is very good because it compiles to java .class files.

Yes and no.  Groovy is really more of a Java++ than a Ruby sibling, where
its developers retrofitted many of Ruby's benefits over Java to a variant
of the Java language.  If you want something more like Ruby on the JVM,
try JRuby instead.

I'm not saying Groovy is a bad choice.  I think Ruby and JRuby provide a
better language design (leaving the implementation out of it for the
moment), but Groovy may serve as an excellent introduction to the world
of Java, and as an excellent introduction for Java programmers to the
world of excellent Ruby semantic features like duck typing and proper
closures.

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
Patrick J. LoPresti: "Emacs has been replaced by a shell script which 1)
Generates a syslog message at level LOG_EMERG; 2) reduces the user's disk
quota by 100K; and 3) RUNS ED!!!!!!"