Slashdot Log In
The Year in Scripting Languages
Posted by
michael
on Tue Jan 14, 2003 04:32 PM
from the fun-for-the-whole-family dept.
from the fun-for-the-whole-family dept.
Mitchell writes "People from several language communities came together to create a
joint year-in-review
for Lua, Perl, Python, Ruby, and Tcl."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
What about... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:What about... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What about... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What about... (Score:2)
Re:What about... (Score:3, Interesting)
DOS scripting is no longer Microsoft's preferred scripting feature.
Windows batch files are a holdover from DOS. DOS as we know it originally ran on IBM PCs and early descendants, which were cheap, slow, 16-bit, underfeatured toy computers. At that same time, Unix was running on expensive, fast, 32-bit, featurful computers. Before that, Unix did run on 16-bit computers (various submodels of PDP-11), but PDP-11s were certainly more expensive and more featureful than 8086- and 80286-based PCs, and PDPs were most definitely not toys.
The point? Unix scripting was better than DOS scripting. Windows evolved from DOS, and as a result it got DOS's scripting capabilities. That evolution is only now reaching the stage where it can be said with any regularity that Windows is evolving from itself rather than from DOS. Win2K and (maybe) WinNT4 were the first incarnations of Windows with this property. It is a very slow process.
What we see now is Windows evolving its own scripting engines. I'm not savvy about some of these things, but I do know that there are VBScript or Windows Scripting Host for automating things in the OS, and VBA for scripting inside individual apps like Excel or Access. Granted, these are all based on VB, which is lacking when compared to Java or C++, but these are quite well-suited for scripting in a Windows environment.
Just yesterday, for example, I wrote a simple Windows script that renames files in a directory tree by doing regular expression search and replace. This clearly represents an improvement over the legacy DOS scripting capabilities.
Next year... Invite PHP (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Next year... Invite PHP (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
One important addition to perl (Score:3, Interesting)
From the website: "PerlQt-3 is Ashley Winters' full featured object oriented interface to Trolltech's C++ Qt toolkit v3.0. It is based on the SMOKE library, a language independent low-level wrapper generated from Qt headers by Richard Dale's kalyptus thanks to David Faure's module".
Another thing that's nice is that "All Qt classes are accessed through the prefix Qt::, which replaces the initial Q of Qt classes. When browsing the Qt documentation, you simply need to change the name of classes so that QFoo reads Qt::Foo". So, essentialy the API is similar to QT with reduces the learning curve quite a bit.
Missing (Score:4, Interesting)
Not really ports to the platform itself, but great productivity boosters regardless. I've used VisualPython with VS.NET 1.0 and it rocks.
Where is my... (Score:3, Interesting)
This [php.net] report shows how it is growing.
Re:Where is my... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Where is my... (Score:2)
But as far I can see, they are trying hard [php.net] to make it usable [php.net] as scripting language.
Re:Where is my... (Score:2, Insightful)
PHP is also for batch pre-processing (Score:3, Insightful)
PHP now has a batch mode intended for preprocessing. That is, periodically generating static HTML from PHP pages.
Re:Where is my... (Score:5, Informative)
For example, after your attempt to say that PHP only slightly resembles C, you try to point out weaknesses in PHP by mentioning functions that are direct equivalents of C functions (strlen, strchr, sprintf, etc.). Make up your mind.
Also, since it seems you suggest otherwise, there is a good reason why not every string manipulating function begins with str_. Do you think C should have used str_printf() and str_sprintf()? How about PHP's functions crypt(), echo(), explode(), md5(), trim(), soundex(), etc. Should these all be renamed? Bill Gates may agree with you, but I doubt you will find many open source developers who do.
In case it is helpful, strchr() and split() do not do the same thing. It sounds like you're heading for trouble there.
I guess my point is that your inexperience is not a valid complaint against PHP. Yes, it is not the perfect language, but it happens to work well for a lot of people. If you want to bash it, at least use valid reasons (which there are plenty) such as how mod_php is a content generation module and therefore unable to interact with other request phases within Apache (though I think this is being remedied in the apache_hooks API). Or, point to a benchmark showing how Perl parses large text files 20% faster in some cases. Or, show how Python's OO model is more advanced.
Sorry if this post comes off a bit strong, but I tire of seeing hollow rhetoric.
Parent
PHP 2003 year-in-review (Score:3, Informative)
BTW, PHP news is available in RDF format as a Slashbox. Go to your Slashdot "preferences" to add.
As for Language wars, no language is better, it's just a better tool for a particular job.
I try to only use a few scripting languages (Score:5, Informative)
The reason is simple: I need to use several non-scripting languages (Java, Smalltalk, etc.) and remembering the language syntax and class libraries for more than 4 or 5 programming languages is a hassle.
BTW, scripting languages are not necessarily horribly inefficient anymore.
A little off topic, but I compared the resources used for a small web app on the following platforms:
- Java servlets/JSPs - minimum memory footprint is about 75 megabytes
- Smalltalk servlets - mimimum memory footprint is about 20 megabytes
- Python Zope - minimum memory foortprint is about 11 megabytes
In all three cases, the server processes use negligible CPU time after startup (mostly waiting with select).Anyway, for lots of applications, Python is fast enough - no need for high performance compilers like Common Lisp, C++, Smalltalk, etc.
-Mark
Python best fits my needs (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I try to only use a few scripting languages (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I try to only use a few scripting languages (Score:5, Informative)
Just a few days ago, the "Minimalist Python" project was announced. Its goal is to two fold: reduce the distribution to a central core and to re-write as much of it as possible in Python. By doing so, and by including Psyco the Python specializing compiler [sourceforge.net] , the folks working on the Minimalist distribution hope to have a Python that outperforms C (initial tests show that Python+Psyco does outperform C code in many cases). I've used Psyco a bit, and it is a marvel. The idea of a Python compiler, written in Python, becomes possible, and has recently been discussed quite actively on comp.lang.python.
Even with the speed improvements, the Real Benefit(tm) of Python is in not saving machine time, it's in saving my time as a developer, because I'm far, far more expensive to employ than a server.
Parent
Re:I try to only use a few scripting languages (Score:4, Insightful)
There isn't much yet beyond a mailing list (here [codespeak.net]) and a lot of discussion on c.l.p, but the folks involved are notable Python contributors. I have no doubt the project will be successful.
Parent
Silly Rabbit (Score:4, Funny)
Script reviews and naked girls [google.com].
Or try Pajonet.com [pajonet.com]
Python to become dominate cross platform language (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Python to become dominate cross platform langua (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a complete bitch to debug your programs when the wxWindows library goes berserk, and it does, way too often.
Btw, I think there should be no GUI toolkit at all in Python as default.
Tcl? (Score:2, Insightful)
What a hideous language that is.. "Expect" is pretty cool but it gets lost under tcl sillyness.
Has anybody fixed the whitespace/quoting bogosity in that language? Can you say x++ instead of [incr x] yet?
Perl or Ruby or death!
Re:Tcl? (Score:3, Interesting)
and please do not put your own opionion as the opinion of the masses.
People who think in commands and strings choose TCL!
No Bourne? (Score:5, Insightful)
being developed anymore?
I'm a big fan of Python, but for every Python
script I write, I write dozens that start out
#!/bin/sh.
It may not be sexy, but it's maintainable (every
admin knows it), portable (any system that has
sh or bash), and dirt simple to write.
or awk (Score:4, Interesting)
you'll see it here used like
wget -O - http://domain/info.html | awk -f proc.awk | mysql -u news newsdb
rc shell [bell-labs.com] and it's unix implmentation [le.ac.uk]
Parent
Who is winning?: Let the porn industry decide! (Score:5, Funny)
- php [google.com] - 1.1 million hits
- perl [google.com] - 56,200 hits
- lua [google.com] - 478 hits
- python [google.com] - 27,800
- ruby [google.com] - 54,400 hits
- tcl [google.com] - 4,680 hits
And the winner is: PHP by a landslide!--naked [slashdot.org]
Re:Who is winning?: Let the porn industry decide! (Score:3, Funny)
Perl Data Language for scientific work (Score:5, Informative)
Perl Data Language (http://pdl.perl.org [perl.org]) is a set of C and FORTRAN bindings that make perl into a complete vectorized scientific-computing language that's useful for big tasks like inverting 1000x1000 matrices or fluid-dynamic simulation, but that can also be used interactively to work with image and spectral data.
That's neat because interactive data analysis is a pretty small niche market with a few proprietary (and, IMHO, seriously broken) languages dominating. With PDL, I can give fresh science data to high school students, straight from the spacecraft. Their L337 gaming machines are plenty powerful enough to run the tools they need, and perl is pretty much universal.
Re:Perl Data Language for scientific work (Score:3, Informative)
PDL has really excellent dimensional manipulation and slicing; and the PGPLOT output is very nice. For me, the main advantage over python is that, well, it's just perl -- so you have access to the whole CPAN library for (e.g.) database I/O, units conversion, uu{en|de}coding, and whatnot.
LUA getting some attention... (Score:3, Interesting)
Brian W. Kernighan's scripting language shootout (Score:5, Informative)
Although K [kx.com] really isn't a scripting langauge (neither is C), results [kx.com] were done for it, too (being faster and having less code). There is also a shallow introduction [kuro5hin.org] to K on Kuro5hin.org.
Rexx has no equal. (Score:3, Funny)
The programming language Rexx runs great as Regina on Linux/UNIX/NT, or Rexx under OS2 Warp or NT is cross platform with minimal changes.
Rexx http://www2.hursley.ibm.com/rexx/
Regina http://regina-rexx.sourceforge.net/
Can your scripting language do this out of the box:
-Wargames
Powers of 2:
say 2**100
1267650600228229401496703205376
say 2**150
14272476927059598810582859694494951363827
Ruby can... (Score:3, Funny)
2**1000
1071508607186267320948425049060001810561404811
Or when you say that 'Rexx has no equal' do you mean that you can't check for equality in Rexx?
They barely mentioned Parrot... (Score:4, Informative)
Seriously though. They barely mentioned Parrot and Parrot is coming along very nicely I think. Even with a Java to Parrot Bytecode program, Brainfuck, Jako, Befunge-93, cola, forth, miniperl, ook, (non-final) perl6 interpreters/compilers, as well as python, ruby and scheme interpreters/compilers coming. Of course it's not finished, so not all of the languages are either, but hey, it's getting there, and damn fast. There's even a Parrot Assembly Lange.
Parrot is definately not Perl6. It's much more. It's like java, but open source, and independent of Languages. They're hoping to have it compile on as many platforms as perl does now, unlike Java which is Windows, Mac, Linux, and some PDAs, end of story.
So everyone check it out and throw some patches in too! Of course, the only support I've given so far is moral support.
VBScript (Score:3, Informative)
Re:TCL????? (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:TCL????? (Score:5, Informative)
TCLs claim to fame is its small memory use. TCL can be included as a command interpreter in other programs easily and without much bloat. There are more embedded TCL applications than any one person knows about; both in hardware and software. TCL was also first with UTF-8 support in strings, around 1998 or before, way before Perl, so there are probably more TCL CGI scripts overseas than most English users think.
As for benchmarks, TCL is getting faster [mini.net], with a huge jump from v7 to v8 and about a 25% improvement from 8.0 to 8.4a3 (scroll down to bottom of linked page.)
Parent
Re:TCL????? (Score:2, Interesting)
I guess if I used it more it'd come easier, but I just never had the need nor desire to learn beyond what was required to get an A in the course I was taking.
Of course, there are those who believe that the more cryptic and confusing their code is, the more adept a coder it makes them; "credibility through obscurity". I never bought into that.
Re:TCL????? (Score:2)
think different!
It's much easier for me to think in terms
of commands , their arguments and strings
than in terms of functions and procedures.
I cannot really understand Perl code,
but TCL is easy for me.
Cryptic things like $_ in perl and enormous contexts are also really confusing.
In python I was astonished by the
requrement of strict tabbing. I am not a precious person and I found this requirement hard. But in other ways Python is great language, having a lot of libraries.
One word: Scotty (Score:2, Insightful)
No other comes close.
Seriously, tcl isn't that bad a language once
you get used to it. You get lists and associative
arrays and namespaces and pretty high-level libraries (one line TCP socket server setup).
Plus doing event-driven stuff is **REALLY* easy.
The event-handling is built in.
Having to do math in expr is a pain.
Plus pretty good cross-platform capability.
-- ac at work
Re:TCL????? (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean, going from "function(param1, param2)" to "function param1 param2" can't be all *that* hard.
Re:TCL????? (Score:3, Interesting)
Incidentally, for those 5 years, NBC has been using Tcl in mission critical, real time applications to stream video [usenix.org] to affiliates across the country.
I've been using tDOM [mini.net] lately, a Tcl interface to the DOM. It is, quite simply, the fastest XML parser I have found.
Re:IN SOVIET RUSSIA... (Score:2, Funny)
Nice try, but as I understand the form, you need to avoid the article "the" [insovietrussia.com] or Smirnoff will never option your screenplay. For example:
In Soviet Russia, article omits you!
Moderators: I am not trying to encourage the form, other than trying to bring it to a bearable levels of authenticity.
A few replies (Score:4, Informative)
After about a day I had an excellent understanding of both PHP and SQL.
I don't know PHP but you don't have an excellent understanding of SQL in one day. Its not a that hard but ain't that easy either. Rather what is probably true is that you have an excellent understanding of how to write SQL to get information from the types of simple database with simple underlying business rules.
The modern SQL spec runs 2000 pages you don't have an excellent understanding of 2% of that in one day.
This is because Perl isn't OO (so you can't create Node classes, for example, usefull in a linked list) and because it lacks pointers.
I don't know what you are talking about. If X is a type of object then X's are passed around as pointers (see bless). Arrays in Perl are linked lists so an array of X's is a linked list, that's why you use things like push, pop, shift, etc... on arrays in Perl.
As for graphics Perl libraries support a wide range of graphics formats.
There are some other things like your comments about the regex engine that I highly doubt. No regex engine has had the time, attention and work of Perl's, Its not Perl's strong suit because of some sort of myth, for example Perl's grep has outperformed the native grep on Solaris. My guess is that the failure lies with you on this one.
Parent
Re:Lua compared to Guile? (Score:3, Interesting)
My biggest complaints are with the pascal-style syntax: using begin
Re:Tcl has already seen it's day... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Programming down the toilet... (Score:3, Informative)