Best of Talkback: Language debate, burned-truck rebate
This week's top most-discussed stories are two hot-button issues (the second of which renders the phrase "hot-button issue" a real groaner of a pun). First, there was Andrew Binstock's article about IT managers embracing dynamic languages like PHP, Ruby, and Python in order to more quickly complete their ever-growing list of tasks. Second, Robert X. Cringely asked if Dell helped or hurt its reputation with how it handled the case of the man who claims his overheated Dell laptop made his truck catch fire.
Dynamic languages: More than just a quick fix
Dell's reputation: Up in smoke?
Dynamic languages Talkback highlights
Andrew's central thesis is that "by taking a measured approach to matching dynamic languages to the right kinds of projects, IT can tap the unique expressiveness of dynamic languages to create clean, reliable, and reusable code — and thereby realize productivity benefits without compromising the integrity of the enterprise."
You said:
adrocknaphobia 2007-04-17 16:18:36
Good read on dynamically-typed languages, although the half-million ColdFusion developers worldwide might be upset you forgot about them. They've been pioneering enterprise development with a dynamically-typed language for over a decade.
(In Talkback, Andrew later clarified why he didn't mention ColdFusion:
I didn't overlook ColdFusion. I thought it was fairly clear that single-vendor, closed-source scripting languages were not part of this article. Else, I would have discussed the many Microsoft languages as well, plus 4GLs, and so on ad infinitum. ColdFusion is fine as a tool but it's not in the same category as the products described here.)
david 2007-04-17 18:59:56
The TIOBE "rankings" are fundamentally flawed - to be clear, it doesn't rate the popularity of USAGE of a language, it rates how often they are MENTIONED in web searches. Some classic examples are glaring on this list: COBOL - I used to be a cobol programmer (back in the day) and I can tell you that there is no WAY a google search can account for the billions of lines of legacy COBOL code out there. Same with ColdFusion - how do you account for Intranet development done in this language with a google search? Any language, for that matter. Finally, to keep things fair - "VBScript" at #41, behind REXX. That's all I needed to hear! Really, this list is given FAR too much credibility when it comes to the "popularity" of development languages.
Trent 2007-04-18 07:21:29
