Ted Leung - Sun - PyCon UK 2008 - Challenges for Dynamic Languages - Keynote
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Introduction
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Mr Apache XML

Notes
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Challenges for Dynamic Languages

- Ruby, python, PHP, JavaScript
- At the point of early adoption.  Alot of interest at conferences, but nothing
  compared to Java (for example).
- A little bit of controversy as the different communities start working together
  e.g. JRuby and Java.
- We are living in a world where we need more and more software.  We need every
  tool we can get which will help us build more reliable software.
- We are starting to get significant support from commercial companies e.g.
  Google, Microsoft, Sun.  We are starting to get jobs using these technologies.
- Java found a very good niche, for various reasons, including it was free and
  cross platform.  A big eco-system (training etc) made it acceptable for large
  companies.
- Features like closures are causing major problems for static languages.
- Major advantages of dynamic languages are construction of maps etc...
- Everybody hates PHP: loads of really good software is written in it.
  python: version 3, virtual machines - in pretty good shape.  perl: pretty much
  dead in the water.  JavaScript: the authors are big fans of python - many of the
  new features came from python.  ruby: is not that fast, fragmentation.  Lua:
  really big in gaming engines - essentially unknown.  Erland: great for concurrency,
  not good for anything else.  haskell:, scala and groovy: essentially targetted at
  Java programmers.  lisp: time has come and gone.  smalltalk: trying.

- Challenges:

  - There are three new JavaScript JITs in the world.  All competing these guys
    are getting very fast.
  - Tools: People coming from environments where the tool-sets are very good.
    They will expect the same.
  - Cross platform UI: Is never going to work.
  - www.medhelp.com, big challenge is deployment and management.  Perhaps
    JRuby deployment onto Java app servers will solve a problem.
  - We need to tell our story to more people.
  - Paid support.  Commercial companies want someone to sue!
  - Libraries: python is in pretty good shape.  One of the benefits of Java is
    the huge, huge range of libraries.
  - Package management: Sucks in python.

- Be careful about:

  - Over-hype: Ruby is probably doing too much, python, probably not enough.
  - We need to be honest about our weaknesses.
  - Big commercial companies wanting to *own* a language or web framework.

- How do we describe our language?  Scripting, modern, dynamic... none of these
  words describe what we have properly.