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>You'd never see a language like Perl, PHP, or even Javascript come from the academic community because they don't break any new ground. No, you'd never see th

>You'd never see a language like Perl, PHP, or even Javascript come from the academic community because they don't break any new ground. No, you'd never see these languages from the academic community because they're horribly designed. They design betrays someone who has learned nearly nothing from existing languages as they all make mistakes that were encountered and solved decades ago.

berntb 16y ago
>>They design betrays someone who has learned nearly nothing from existing languages as they all make mistakes that were encountered and solved decades ago. But... the whole point with the popular scripting languages is that they are easy to pick up -- just because they are heavily influenced by old languages! (Besides, it is one thing to copy features from existing languages -- doesn't imply there is nothing interesting in the new languages. [Edit: Not all, at least. :-)] ) Edit: Here is an example of the last case: A few years ago, I heard a talk about Moose, a replacement for OO in Perl (by Yuval Kogman/"nothingmuch"). There were two main points (1) Moose is stable, (2) it is modern. "And with modern, I mean the latest research papers".
- loewenskind 16y ago
  >just because they are heavily influenced by old languages! They show signs of knowing about older languages but not understanding them. For example perl has dynamic variables (this is a huge win and for me the only good thing I have to say about the whole language)... but they're default. We had already fought this out in Lisp and found out that while they're an incredible concept and should be in any language that favors mutating variables, dynamic variables should not be the default. Python using crappy one line lambdas instead of real closures. Why? Because Guido seems to not get functional programming. Ruby copies Smalltalk but Katz says Smalltalk "goes to far". What? A lot of the problems that trip people up in Ruby aren't a problem in Smalltalk. The biggest difference between the two is that Ruby isn't image based, but Smalltalk doesn't have to be either. For me the biggest problem with the scripting languages is that they don't have any need to exist. They usually copy features from existing languages that already did a better job. If the manpower they got had been focused on the source languages the communities could have gotten a lot farther. >There were two main points (1) Moose is stable, (2) it is modern. "And with modern, I mean the latest research papers". The papers he was talking about were likely the Traits papers. Traits were done first in Smalltalk and aren't needed in Lisp because CLOS has proper multiple inheritance. Moose does look ok though.
  - berntb 16y ago
    >>problem with the scripting languages is that they don't have any need to exist. They usually copy features from existing languages that already did a better job. All I've read (and own experience), says that scripting languages are much faster to develop with? Do you have anything contradicting that? Edit: Grammar
    - masklinn 16y ago
      > All I've read (and own experience), says that scripting languages are much faster to develop with? Much faster to develop with than what is the question. Much faster to develop with than C++? Or Java? Sure, but that's not a very impressive benchmark is it?
      - berntb 16y ago
        The scripting languages are, in much, a reaction to the system level programming languages used at the time of their creation. A pity Lisp or some other existing neat envirnoments didn't fill that niche. It might have something to do with their community, I guess.
    - loewenskind 16y ago
      >All I've read (and own experience), says that scripting languages are much faster to develop with? Well, your throwing me an anecdote and asking me to contradict it so I guess I can do so with an anecdote as well? "Faster to develop with" isn't a sign of a properly designed language and it certainly doesn't justify the language existing. It only speaks to the packaging of said language. I think we can find a great example in PHP. I think we'd be hard pressed to find someone that would suggest PHP is a well designed language [1], yet it uprooted perl and took over the web. Why? Because it was less effort to go from zero to working web application than anything else. If the creator of PHP had, instead, created his platform on Lisp (and excluded the poisonous Lisp IRC community), who knows, he might have had even more success because Lisp is better designed, actually existed, etc. [2]. [1] But this is the Internet after all, so I'm sure you could find some one who would say that. [2] Of course you might say "yea, but it's hard to get Lisp running on new servers" and there is truth to that, but PHP didn't exist at all. Surely it would have been at least comparable effort to fork some Lisp project and create "PHP" from that.

berntb 16y ago

>>They design betrays someone who has learned nearly nothing from existing languages as they all make mistakes that were encountered and solved decades ago. But... the whole point with the popular scripting languages is that they are easy to pick up -- just because they are heavily influenced by old languages! (Besides, it is one thing to copy features from existing languages -- doesn't imply there is nothing interesting in the new languages. [Edit: Not all, at least. :-)] ) Edit: Here is an example of the last case: A few years ago, I heard a talk about Moose, a replacement for OO in Perl (by Yuval Kogman/"nothingmuch"). There were two main points (1) Moose is stable, (2) it is modern. "And with modern, I mean the latest research papers".

loewenskind 16y ago
>just because they are heavily influenced by old languages! They show signs of knowing about older languages but not understanding them. For example perl has dynamic variables (this is a huge win and for me the only good thing I have to say about the whole language)... but they're default. We had already fought this out in Lisp and found out that while they're an incredible concept and should be in any language that favors mutating variables, dynamic variables should not be the default. Python using crappy one line lambdas instead of real closures. Why? Because Guido seems to not get functional programming. Ruby copies Smalltalk but Katz says Smalltalk "goes to far". What? A lot of the problems that trip people up in Ruby aren't a problem in Smalltalk. The biggest difference between the two is that Ruby isn't image based, but Smalltalk doesn't have to be either. For me the biggest problem with the scripting languages is that they don't have any need to exist. They usually copy features from existing languages that already did a better job. If the manpower they got had been focused on the source languages the communities could have gotten a lot farther. >There were two main points (1) Moose is stable, (2) it is modern. "And with modern, I mean the latest research papers". The papers he was talking about were likely the Traits papers. Traits were done first in Smalltalk and aren't needed in Lisp because CLOS has proper multiple inheritance. Moose does look ok though.
- berntb 16y ago
  >>problem with the scripting languages is that they don't have any need to exist. They usually copy features from existing languages that already did a better job. All I've read (and own experience), says that scripting languages are much faster to develop with? Do you have anything contradicting that? Edit: Grammar
  - masklinn 16y ago
    > All I've read (and own experience), says that scripting languages are much faster to develop with? Much faster to develop with than what is the question. Much faster to develop with than C++? Or Java? Sure, but that's not a very impressive benchmark is it?
    - berntb 16y ago
      The scripting languages are, in much, a reaction to the system level programming languages used at the time of their creation. A pity Lisp or some other existing neat envirnoments didn't fill that niche. It might have something to do with their community, I guess.
  - loewenskind 16y ago
    >All I've read (and own experience), says that scripting languages are much faster to develop with? Well, your throwing me an anecdote and asking me to contradict it so I guess I can do so with an anecdote as well? "Faster to develop with" isn't a sign of a properly designed language and it certainly doesn't justify the language existing. It only speaks to the packaging of said language. I think we can find a great example in PHP. I think we'd be hard pressed to find someone that would suggest PHP is a well designed language [1], yet it uprooted perl and took over the web. Why? Because it was less effort to go from zero to working web application than anything else. If the creator of PHP had, instead, created his platform on Lisp (and excluded the poisonous Lisp IRC community), who knows, he might have had even more success because Lisp is better designed, actually existed, etc. [2]. [1] But this is the Internet after all, so I'm sure you could find some one who would say that. [2] Of course you might say "yea, but it's hard to get Lisp running on new servers" and there is truth to that, but PHP didn't exist at all. Surely it would have been at least comparable effort to fork some Lisp project and create "PHP" from that.