Bill Barr on dynamic languages:

When I need to run applications in crowded, power-constrained data centers, every CPU cycle counts. Supporting thousands of simultaneous users takes a lot of boxes, even more so when I have to consider performance numbers like these. Ruby zealots should be particularly embarrassed; the language has been out almost as long as Python and that's the best it can do? And as for Smalltalk, at least make a middle-aged language go as fast as that other middle-aged language: Lisp. I'd even be more confident recommending Smalltalk if it were as zippy as C# Mono. Sure, we enterprisey types are the target of a lot of cheap shots (and even get a rare chance to take one) but, when a new data center costs $25 million to build and we have to consider the cost of power in KWhs where pennies make a big difference, feature development time becomes irrelevant vs. the year-over-year operating cost of those apps on a large scale.

Simple question for Bill: Will your application have the kind of scaling needs that Twitter (written in Ruby) does? The answer is no, of course. Beyond the initial scaling issues they had, has Twitter stayed online? Why, yes. So are your issues above complete BS?

Why, yes....

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