> > Macromedia is implementing ECMAScript Edition 4, they are chairing the > > working group, and as far as i can see they do a pretty good job so > > far. For me, this adds more stability than any homebrew language (as > > great as it may become) will ever be able to provide. Having said > > that, imvho same applies to other homebrew languages, like for example > > Ruby. From a commercial standpoint, i'll never know where those > > language implementations will head at.
> I would much rather trust Matz with Ruby's future than a committee > anytime. Having programmed in many languages professionally I can > say that those languages led by a single language designer are > usually my favorites. I guess you would not use Perl, Python, Ruby > or PHP...those homebrew languages that no commercial entity would > ever be built upon. Oh, except folks like Google and Amazon ;-) > There are good reasons why Programming Ruby and Agile Web Development > with Rails are in the top 10 on Amazon's computer list. It wasn't my intention to start another pointless language war here. Let me make it more clear: My comment was a very personal one, related to the situation i (a commercial entity) am in at the moment. The question was, what language i should pick to write DENG2, an open source project that was about to start *next month*, where i am the only developer so far. There are two possible choices: - AS3, implementation of a standard, usable now (although still in alpha), big developer base, thus big chances to find contributors - *and* clients. - a yet to be designed, yet to be implemented language, zero developer base, thus next to zero chance to find contributors, little change to find clients. The choice i'm going to make is quite obvious. Again, the question is, how many developers are available for a given language, and how stable (future proof) is that language and it's implementation. If i had to make a choice between Ruby and something else, say, PHP, i would choose PHP, because i have access to a much bigger developer pool. I don't care too much about how sophisticated and elegant a language is, but i care a lot about getting a job done. Also, i'm neither Amazon nor Google, and don't have their budget and popularity to hire hordes of developers. This is my personal opinion, feel free to disagree. cheers, claus. _______________________________________________ osflash mailing list [email protected] http://osflash.org/mailman/listinfo/osflash_osflash.org
