Through my whole career I was torn between what I like (Prolog and Caml) and what makes me marketable (Java, VB, Perl, C, Python, C#). Of course, the world is not black and white so, in the list of marketable languages there are some that more likeable to me than others.

Java is acceptable, but is too verbose and the libraries are grossly over engineered (with no apparent advantage), of course a DSL framework is nowhere to be seen. Python is also acceptable, but the lack of DSLs (and Guido explicitly stating that he is not going in that direction in Python 3000) makes it loose a lot of its sex appeal, also, less importantly, I have some bias towards strong typing.

Enter Ruby: DSLish, very pragmatic, a vibrant community, a fantastic JVM implementation, and one can $$$ on it… I am giving it a try.

Regarding platforms, a less important issue for me, I am quite happy working on top of the JVM: multi platform, stable, industry support, really open…

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Google
  • connotea
  • DZone
  • Reddit
  • Slashdot
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati

One Comment to "Programming languages and platforms: Existential doubts"

  • Pedro Beltrao said: On 06/30/2007 at 1:49 pm

    Hi .. ou talvez ola. From your connotea reading list I guess that you do work in some bioinformatic related environment. Thanks for the link and welcome to the neighborhood

Please share your thoughts