Re: [ooc-compiler] Dead or just comatose?

[Stewart G. <sgr...@ii...>]

Michael van Acken wrote:
> On 28 July 2010 17:29, Stewart Greenhill <sgr...@ii...> wrote:
>> [...]
>> These days I'm mostly using Java though I have recently been looking into
>> Python and Scala - don't have time to learn every new thing. I still have
>> some semi-active code using OOC. I occasionally use C for embedded
>> programming - still the most efficient for small machines.
> 
> Interesting that you mention Scala.  I was considering to take a look at
> this language as well.  But then I decided that one JVM based language
> like Clojure is more than enough for me.  So Odersky's 750+ pages Scala
> book never found its way onto my bookshelf.
> 
> Erlang is also tremendously interesting, but it's unlikely that I will
> encounter a problem in the near future where I can put its strengths to
> good use.  It sure does provide a very different view on programming, and
> especially on how one can do reliable and/or distributed systems.
> 
> When I started using Python years ago, I thought that it had a lot of appeal
> for an Oberon programmer like myself.  I like how it evolved over time, the
> Python guys are a bunch of very bright folks.

It looks like there is quite a trend these days towards interpreted, 
dynamically typed code especially for things like web frameworks, which 
is where my interest in Python comes from. It looks like there is a 
great community and lots of libraries available. For some applications 
this can dramatically reduce development time which is a big point in 
its favour. However, I'm not a great fan of dynamic typing. It means 
that many bugs are not detected until run-time, and therefore requires a 
lot more testing to verify code. Also, the lack of defined return types 
makes APIs very hard to navigate. Compared with Javadocs (and OOC docs) 
Python docs are a nightmare. The other problem is performance, which is 
quite poor compared to compiled code. Of course, for some apps it 
doesn't matter (assuming you've got a fast enough machine).

Scala is interesting because its functional but supports static typing 
(actually, type inference) and compiles to very fast code that runs on 
the JVM. I looked briefly at the Lift web framework which is implemented 
in Scala. Scala includes language-level XML support, and the basic APIs 
support actors, messaging, etc so its quite a good fit for a web 
environment. Unfortunately I don't have the brain-space at the moment to 
learn so many new things at the moment.

What sort of things are you doing with Clojure?

Cheers,
   Stewart