Executive Summary
I am a language agnostic journeyman programmer. I am not a fan of a particular language (I almost said 'fanboy') but thats a bit inflammatory). I just want to write useful programs and have fun doing it. I know C++ and Java pretty well. I did some beginner work in Python and Ruby. I then came up with the following conclusions. But before you flame, read the whole article.
Go right to the side-by-side comparison
I am a language agnostic journeyman programmer. I am not a fan of a particular language (I almost said 'fanboy') but thats a bit inflammatory). I just want to write useful programs and have fun doing it. I know C++ and Java pretty well. I did some beginner work in Python and Ruby. I then came up with the following conclusions. But before you flame, read the whole article.
Go right to the side-by-side comparison
- C++ vs Java
- Java garbage collection is the big productivity gain
- Java is significantly slower than C++
- C++ is (much) harder to code correctly than any of the others
- Java vs Python/Ruby
- Python/Ruby interpreted execution and dynamic typing are big productivity gains over Java.
- Python/Ruby are slower than Java
- Python/Ruby programs need less extraneous scaffolding (cleaner code)
- There are two important tradeoffs : [interpreted vs. compiled] and [static vs. dynamic typing]
- Python vs. Ruby
- nearly equivalent