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Gosling: Java vs PHP a Moot Debate

21 replies on 2 pages. Most recent reply: Mar 28, 2006 12:30 PM by Isaac Gouy

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Flat View: This topic has 21 replies on 2 pages [ « | 1 2 ]

Bill Venners

Posts: 2284
Nickname: bv
Registered: Jan, 2002

Re: Gosling: Java vs PHP a Moot Debate

Posted: Mar 17, 2006 11:12 AM

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OK, I just heard back from James Gosling. He said "The quote is accurate, but incomplete and missing context." and he's working on a blog entry to clarify. I'll link to that from here once it is published.

Devin Mullins

Posts: 7
Nickname: twifkak
Registered: Jan, 2006

Re: Gosling: Java vs PHP a Moot Debate

Posted: Mar 17, 2006 12:54 PM

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> I don't know which languages you assume I favour when you
> ask "Are you this critical of proponents of other
> languages?", which "other languages"?
"Languages other than our little red-headed friend Ruby," was what I was implying. But I don't have enough evidence even to hazard a guess, let alone make a claim, so consider it retracted. If you want to reply saying, "I don't hold any grudges against the Ruby community," then that would satisfy my curiosity, but don't consider this some sort of battle.

Isaac Gouy

Posts: 527
Nickname: igouy
Registered: Jul, 2003

Re: Gosling: Java vs PHP a Moot Debate

Posted: Mar 17, 2006 2:12 PM

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> > Are you this critical of proponents of other
> > languages?

> "Languages other than our little red-headed friend Ruby,"
> was what I was implying.

I don't look at many blogs - LtU, artima, Smalltalk tidbits - so that biases the sample of comments I see.

Mostly I'm responding to someone else's comments; when there are more frequent frothy comments about Ruby, that biases the sample of comments I see and respond to.

(And maybe your observations of my behaviour have as much to do with where you look as with my behaviour - more biased sampling.)

"this critical of proponents of ..."
I hope that sometimes I manage to be critical of claims that are made, without being critical of the proponents (without being critical of the people).

Yakov Fain

Posts: 2
Nickname: yfain11
Registered: Mar, 2006

Re: Gosling: Java vs PHP a Moot Debate

Posted: Mar 22, 2006 10:44 AM

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Here's the video (just fast forward about 33 min to hear my qst):

http://sys-con.tv/read/196169.htm

Regards,
Yakov Fain
yakovfain.javadevelopersjournal.com

Bill Venners

Posts: 2284
Nickname: bv
Registered: Jan, 2002

Re: Gosling: Java vs PHP a Moot Debate

Posted: Mar 22, 2006 3:40 PM

Reply

> Here's the video (just fast forward about 33 min to hear
> my qst):
>
> http://sys-con.tv/read/196169.htm
>
Thanks, Yakov.

I posted a transcript here:

http://www.artima.com/forums/flat.jsp?forum=276&thread=153221

Hervé Girod

Posts: 2
Nickname: magnum1
Registered: Mar, 2006

Re: Gosling: Java vs PHP a Moot Debate

Posted: Mar 25, 2006 4:56 AM

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First, I think that James Gosling was more careful in what he was saying that people that flame him for what he said.

Second, There's something I have great difficulty to understand : basically what people are saying (not only in this thread, but generally speaking) is contradictory :
- C# is moving on a virtuous way, Java begins to be bloated and difficult to use for beginners : not being specific, I don't know what's fundamentally better in C# compared to Java in this area. Beside, Java is designed from the ground up to be portable, not C# (even in the spec, or what is not in the spec, see Forms), even despite Mono
- Java fails to remain simple in Web applications : First there is not only Web apps in the world, second I think it depends on what you whant to do, even in this area.
- We hear that Java is slow compared with C / C++, and we hear that having decided to make Java a compiled language is a premature optimization (speed of Python, Ruby, PHP is really slow compared to Java even today, so it seems that this optimization is not -so- premature at the moment). Seems to me that we don't know what we whant.

Now if Java has failed, why it is now the prevalent language in Sourceforge, for example ?

Isaac Gouy

Posts: 527
Nickname: igouy
Registered: Jul, 2003

Re: Gosling: Java vs PHP a Moot Debate

Posted: Mar 28, 2006 12:30 PM

Reply

> First, I think that James Gosling was more careful in what
> he was saying that people that flame him for what he
> said.

Yes, I agree.

Bruce Eckel's judgement was that "Gosling Didn’t Get The Memo" was "the best response" to the initial JDJ story. Let's take a quick look at it, and take it on face value as though Mr Gosling had said exactly what was reported in the initial JDJ story.

1) Ryan accuses James Gosling of using the term scripting language to denigrate PHP and Ruby by associating them with more limited language implementations like bash.

And then Ryan uses the term dynamic language to hype PHP and Ruby by associating them with more powerful language implementations like Lisp and Smalltalk.

PHP and Ruby implementations are not as limited as bash, nor are they as powerful as Lisp and Smalltalk implementations.

Later Ryan makes favourable reference to George Schlossnagle's “Why PHP Scales - A Cranky, Snarky Answer” and Peter Yared's blog.

In that article, George Schlossnagle writes “PHP (and scripting languages in general)…”. In his blog, Peter Yared writes “…scripting languages like PHP and Ruby…”.

Somehow when George Schlossnagle and Peter Yared say "scripting language" it's simple description, but when James Gosling says "scripting language" it's misinformation.

2) Ryan accuses James Gosling of ignorance about dynamic languages and how they are being used - because JDJ wrote "PHP and Ruby ... they just generate web pages."

And then when Ryan provides favourable references "On Scaling and Performance" 13 of 15 are PHP / Ruby on Rails ‘generate web page’ examples.

There's no reason to think James Gosling has any special knowledge about PHP and Ruby, apart from the obvious use of PHP and the buzz about Ruby on Rails.

But we should wonder why Ryan, supposedly someone with special knowledge, provides so many ‘generate web page’ examples (maybe PHP and Ruby really are used for an awful lot of ‘generate web page’ software).

3) Ryan accuses James Gosling of spreading misinformation, lying and malice (that unpleasant personal attack is why I've made several comments).

And then when Ryan provides 5 favourable references on "Performance"
- one is a 6 year old comparison of miniscule Python programs to Blackdown JDK 1.1.7, rather than a comparison of standalone PHP or Ruby with Java HotSpot 1.5.
- one has PragDave eventually say "Clearly there’ll be times where you need to squeeze the most out of your CPU, where your application itself is the bottleneck and it’s CPU bound. In these cases, Ruby might be a bad choice."

JRuby implementor Charles Nutter blogs “…Ruby’s troubles with performance are fairly well-documented… Again, Ruby’s struggles with performance are widely known.”
http://headius.blogspot.com/2006/03/jruby-progress-updates-jruby-on-rails.html

Has Ryan been informative and honest about Ruby's performance?

Enough! There's only so much hype and hypocrisy I can stomach before lunch.

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