Re: To php or not..

["Matthew Gillen" <user=50@nabble.blu.org>]

 Stephen Adler wrote: 
> I've quite a bit of working using sun's java. From using the Swing 
> class, to corba and some db connectivity. I find java to be too much for 
> most applications and I prefer to stick to shell scripting. (My theory 
> of how we will write code in the future will come down to the choice of 
> a well designed scripting language. CPU cycles are soooo cheap, that why 
> bother compile stuff these days...) 

That would be fine if you fix a particular variable, in this case: "the 
kinds of problems people try to solve with computers". 

I argue performance will /always/ be an issue.  The things it will be an 
issue for will evolve (i.e. it used to be that doing 2-D graphics was 
high-end, now it's dealing with the genome), but there will always be some 
problems where it will be worth the effort to use a less human-friendly 
language like C/C++. 

A particular area where I do see scripting languages taking over completely 
from what was previously the sole domain of compiled-languages is 
user-interfaces.  And I don't just mean how most software nowadays generate 
some HTML and use a web-browser as the UI.  I mean using scripting-language 
bindings to toolkits (such as PyQT/PyGTK). 

But I think for the foreseeable future you're going to see a lot of back-end 
algorithms keep getting implemented in crusty old compiled languages.  The 
difference is that the UIs wrapped around them will be scripting languages. 

Matt 

-- 
This message has been scanned for viruses and 
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is 
believed to be clean. 

_______________________________________________ 
Discuss mailing list 
[hidden email] 
http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss