PHP, JavaScript, Ruby, Perl, Python, and Tcl Today: The State of the Scripting Universe
Three years ago, Lynn Greiner at CIO Magazine, interviewed the big cheeses responsible for the popular scripting languages PHP, Perl, Tcl, Python, Ruby and JavaScript to find out where the languages were headed. In this follow-up discussion, she asks the dynamic language luminaries what has changed since then.
I started a new knowledge category today called CompuScriptology. So what is CompuScriptology? It’s basically the analysis, research, study and observation of dynamic computer languages, sometimes known as dynamic scripting languages (as compared to static or compiled languages). It involves the comparing and contrasting of various computer language functions and syntactical elements — for computer languages such as JavaScript, Perl, PHP, Python, Rebol, and Ruby (in my case).
I was thinking about using the word Scriptology, but a gentleman (Dr. Adam Blatner) was already using the word Scriptology to talk about the Lore of Writing Systems and Alphabets. Not to mention, that the FileMaker people have a website for FileMaker templates called Scriptology also.
Since I’m very interested in multiple computer languages, some people might call me a polyglot. I was thinking about calling the new knowledge category PolyCompuScriptology, but that failed my terse test.
Scenario: You are finally convinced that Ruby on Rails is a great platform for building web applications, and so you try it out and build this awesome new website in only 3 weeks of development. You launch version 0.99 beta and everyone thinks it’s cool. Maybe it’s something like Insoshi, or Twitter. (Insoshi is hot new social networking platform (FOSS) written in Ruby on Rails (RoR). Yes, they eat their own dog food.)
Scene 2: TechCrunch posts an article telling the world about your cool RoR Open Source Social Networking stuff. This is great free publicity, but can your application handle the TechCrunch effect? Will your RoR Social Networking application be able to handle the spike in traffic? Can you handle the success of becoming a very popular new application? (Rumor mill… Twitter is having scaling problems… said to be abandoning Ruby on Rails. However DHH, the master architect of RoR, joined Twitter as D2H on 29-Apr-2008, and instantly had over 1200 followers.)
Scene 3: Slashdot comes back online after being down for 5 hours, and someone posts an article about your hot beta site — sez its cool. Will it suffer from the Slashdot effect? How will your application perform under peak load? Does it scale up to handle thousands or millions of hits per hour?
Scene 4: You can’t handle the TechCrunch effect and Slashdot effect all on the same day. Your web site crashes and burns. Your dream, website, and reputation is ruined — all in one day.
Scene 5: You wake up from the nightmare. It was only dream. It’s morning. You make some coffee and read the technology news. You check out the new Ruby on Rails performance monitoring tool from New Relic, and you listen to the Mashable podcast interview of Lew Cirne, founder and CEO of New Relic. Lew says they wrote the New Relic performance monitoring tool using Ruby, so he’s proud to say they eat their own dog food.
Scene 6: You get back to work — a little wiser.
Gregg Pollack and Jason Seifer from RailsEnvy.com do some Ruby on Rails commercials in the same style of the Mac vs PC ads. Videos produced by Jason Hawkins of MakeFilmWork.com.
The video is kind of funny, and does reveal some tidbits of truth about the complexity of enterprise java development. But those who have been reading about Ruby and JRuby for a while realize that you can run Ruby and Ruby On Rails with Java.
But if you think about it… guess that goes to show you there’s a-lotta-truth here.