Dynamic languages are the future

[Jay Nelson]

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2009010,00.asp

A four page article which claims the next generation of programming will 
be with "dynamic languages" like Ruby, Python, Perl, .NET and others.



Some quotes:

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The appeal of dynamic languages is clear: As systems continue to grow 
more complex, developers seek simpler ways to get their work done.

...

And simpler code tends to attract developers. "I think that dynamic 
languages are really the next big thing," said John Lam, a principal 
consultant and partner at Toronto-based ObjectSharp Consulting.

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Meanwhile, Sun also is making changes to the JVM, so, in the future, it 
can bring over new languages, Hamilton said.

Gilad Bracha, a computational theologist at Sun, said the company is 
broadening its support for dynamic languages not only to satisfy user 
demand but also to help broaden the overall community of developers who 
use the Java platform.

Bracha noted that Sun currently offers support for some dynamic 
languages on the Java platform, including Jython, Kawa, Groovy and 
ECMA­Script.

"We're solidly committed" to providing enhanced support for dynamic 
languages by adding a bytecode called invokedynamic and adding 
hot-swapping support, Bracha said. Hot swapping is the ability to modify 
code on the fly. Both efforts are part of Java Specification Request 
292, the goal of which is to allow scripting languages to be implemented 
natively on the JVM, Bracha said.

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Meanwhile, Anders Hejlsberg, a Microsoft software architect in Redmond, 
Wash., and father of C#, said the days are numbered for imperative 
programming, which instructs the computer to make room for more 
declarative programming, which describes what something is like rather 
than how to create it. This style of programming is especially effective 
in helping developers take advantage of multicore CPUs, Hejlsberg said.

...

Although dynamic languages have momentum, Hejlsberg said they lack 
scale. "Dynamic typing only scales so far," he said. "When you get into 
really big projects, it's problematic."

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For his part, Lam said it's too early to know how dynamic languages will 
scale. "We just don't have enough experience in building large systems 
on these things," he said.

Cedric Beust, an engineer at Google, in Mountain View, Calif., said, 
"Dynamic languages suffer from some inherent limitations that make them 
inadequate for 'large software.' So I definitely see them as gaining 
momentum, but they will never displace 'enterprise' languages such as 
Java, C# or C++. Some of their features are slowly percolating into 
enterprise languages, though, which is a good thing."

Sridhar Iyengar, an IBM distinguished engineer, in Durham, N.C., offered 
more questions regarding large-scale deployment of applications built 
with dynamic languages.

"One of the challenges of dynamic languages is how do you test it, how 
do you debug it and how do you make sure that your application is 
secure," Iyengar said. "All of this is tough to do with static 
languages. It's incredibly harder in dynamic languages."


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