> Alright, I give up - why do fun languages like Python or more fun
> languages like Squeak get passed over in the market compared to
> rather annoying languages like Java? How come they haven't been as
> competitive as say Linux as a server OS platform? Why is C++ vs.
> Java still our fate in 2006? Is there no God? Have we been bad?
Well asked! Here are a few reasons:
1 - Languages are hard, especially the bad/verbose ones. So nobody
wants to learn one for prototyping, and another for deployment. Thus
they get stuck to their deployment language.
Example: We (Redfish) generally do a "level 0" model in a simple
environment like NetLogo, then implement a "level 1" model in
Processing, Blender, and others. When we tried to teach this to
another organization, they fought us to the end, only giving in on
the last day of our class!
2 - Performance, at least the myth of it. Good languages are slow,
lousy ones fast. Or at least faster.
Example: Java is considered slow, so many folks stick to C++, an
even less "good" environment. But many performance studies have
shown that Java really performs surprisingly well (at the cost of
greater memory use, but...).
3 - Interoperability: No one environment does it all. This means you
gotta hope for your language of choice to be able to do everything
from simple desktop prototyping to XML parsing to web servers to
scientific programming to plotting/graphing.
Example: Redfish's last project included NetLogo, Processing,
Python/Java, Blender and a huge render farm for final processing.
Very, very hard to get a single environment to do that.
4 - Deployability. As wonderful as Smalltalk is, it likely will not
support simple web deployability. Both NetLogo and Processing do.
Processing goes further: it builds apps for Mac, Windows, and Linux
desktops. Deployability proves to be a very important in the biz.
-- Owen
Owen Densmore 505-988-3787 http://backspaces.net
Redfish Group: 505-995-0206 http://redfish.com http://friam.org/
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