The dynamic languages meme spreads

September 30, 2004 13:25:55.136

The idea that dynamic languages are the future is spreading:

Dynamic languages are high-level, dynamically typed open source languages. These languages, designed to solve the problems that programmers of all abilities face in building and integrating heterogeneous systems, have proven themselves both despite and thanks to their independence from corporate platform strategies, relying instead on grassroots development and support. Ideally suited to building loosely coupled systems that adapt to changing requirements, they form the foundation of myriad programming projects, from the birth of the web to tomorrow's challenges.

Comments

No mention of Smalltalk though

[Giovanni Corriga] September 30, 2004 14:19:30.338

I'm quite disappointed that the author didn't care to even mention Smalltalk, though.

[Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants] The dynamic languages meme spreads

[ Mark Derricutt] September 30, 2004 18:03:26.443

Comment by Mark Derricutt

Dynamic languages are high-level, dynamically typed open source languages.

I'm amused that he's stating that dynamic languages are "open source languages", as thou to say theres no commerical dynamic languages out there. Eugenia says:

...proven themselves both despite and thanks to their independence from corporate platform strategies, relying instead on grassroots development and support.

"Independance of corporate platform stragegies", when you see alot of these up-and-coming new dynamic languages such as IronPython, Nice, Jython, JRuby and Groovy which all "depend on the corporate strategy" of their underlying VM ( .NET in the case of IronPython, and Java for the rest ).

It would seem that people writing code with these dynamically languages, will still be making use of the underlying frameworks and libraries of their target VM, such as writing J2EE applications in JRuby - this code is tied to J2EE and the Java platform and WON'T run under normal Ruby, or under Ruby.NET.

Independant? I think not.

no smalltalk neither lisp

[gabriele renzi] October 1, 2004 3:46:37.944

because they're not in the ActoveState's business, that is a market paper you should take care of that.

Nice enough but not dynamically typed

[Isaac Gouy] October 1, 2004 12:11:35.944

Mark Derricutt: "up-and-coming new dynamic languages such as IronPython, Nice...
Nice is statically-typed (and more concerned with type-safety than Java).

It demonstrates how much of the pain has to do other aspects of language design - beyond the simplistic static/dynamic type checking dichotomy.