Programming Language Selection

Programming Language Selection Dhananjay Nene March 28, 2009 A PuneTech event

Why language selection ? There is no universally superior language  Language selection is fitment of language  strengths and weaknesses to a context Language selection often has long term  implications including those of business capability, cost and technology lock-in It is therefore a technology + management  decision

Dimensions of Selection Capability : What the languages can / cannot  do Productivity : How efficiently can one write  programs using the languge Ramp Up : How easily can you get online  Extraneous Factors  Costs : What are the costs of using the  language

Questions to be answered Can the language deliver on expectations ?  What is the cost of delivering on expectations How long does it take to write and debug  code ? If I don't already have the skill sets what is the  cost and time required to build them ? What is the support structure available from  community and corporate groups ? What are the hardware and deployment costs ? 

Capability Style Memory Usage   Object Orientation Performance   Function Orientation / Generic Classes   Higher Order Garbage Collection Functions  Typing Integration   Static Error Handling   Dynamic  Multi-threading  Reflection  Library coverage and  Metaprogramming support 

Object Orientation Encapsulation / Information Hiding  Inheritance  Polymorphism  Are all types objects ?  Are all operations performed by sending  messages to objects ? Are all user defined types objects ? 

Functional Programming Elements Higher Order Functions  Code Blocks  Generators (potentially infinite data, lazy  evaluation) List operations eg. map / reduce etc  Closures  Traditional : Haskell,Erlang  Upcoming : Scala, Clojure, F# 

Static or Dynamic Types ? In static typing, type is associated with a  variable, in case of dynamic typing, it is associated to the runtime value Thus dynamic typing cannot often infer type  until at runtime Static typing catches more errors at compile  time. Makes debugging easier Dynamic types allows more flexibilities (eg  metaprogramming) and lower compile idle times

Metaprogramming Inspect existing classes / methods  Instantiate classes / Invoke methods using  dynamic class / method structures Create new classes / functions / methods on  the fly ? Modify existing classes / methods on the fly ? 

Productivity Expressiveness  Eg Wikipedia : Comparison of Programming Langs  C / C++ =>1, JAVA => 1.5, Perl => 6, Python => 6.5  Speed of writing code  LOC per hour can also vary based on language  http://page.mi.fu-  berlin.de/prechelt/Biblio/jccpprt2_advances2003.pdf Compilation overheads  IDE speeds  Refactoring capability 

Performance / Scalability / Reliability Performance : How fast can the programs run  for given hardware Scalability : How easily / cost effectively can the  software be scaled to handle higher loads Reliability : How fault tolerant can the resultant  software be

Extraneous Factors These are very important factors  Customer Preferences  Architecture Standards  Frameworks and Libraries  Community 

Deployment characteristics Hardware Requirements  Ease of cloud / virtualised hosting  Hosting requirements for Small vs. Medium vs.  Big apps Clustering capabilities 

Adaptability / Agility How quickly can you change based on  changing requirements / objectives Language is only one part of the mix  Frameworks  Design  Processes 

Costs Training  Writing and Testing code  Development Infrastructure  Deployment Infrastructure 

Checklist What do my customers want  What does my architecture body state  Can I meet performance / memory / app  specific constraints ? What is the performance sensitivity  How critical is time to market  How critical is adaptability and agility  How critical are the budget constraints  How quickly can I ramp up  What is the available community 

My opinions on language futures These are my own  These are empirical  These are subjective  Languages under pressure :  Java under pressure due to productivity issues  PHP under pressure due to performance / hardware  / cormplex topologies Python / Ruby under pressure due to smaller  installed base and multicore concerns

Trends Innovation in Web development is maturing  Web and Pre-web architectures are both  starting to get used The VM is the new OS  CPUs/Disks/RAM/Networks have grown fast  enough for traditional transaction processing Service Integration becoming critical  Scaling, Multicore becoming important issue for  many apps

Java The big daddy - #1. But high entry barriers  Long time to train, high requirements to deploy  Low development productivity  Superb performance, scalability, community  Multi threading powerful but tough  Considerable risk from other languages on the  JVM eg. Jython, JRuby, Groovy, Scala, Clojure Likely to loose share to competition 

PHP Language with lowest entry barriers  Easy to learn, easy to train  Large community and supporters  Phenomenally wide libraries coverage  Scaling up is feasible but costs prohibitive  Tougher acceptance when web + non web are  used together Unlikely to change share much due to a defined  niche

Python / Ruby High productivity and capability languages  Have small but vibrant communities. Finding  trained people can be tougher Excellent Framework support  Current runtimes have difficulties in multi  threading Lot of investments still continuing in VM  development. Likely to continue to grab more share. 

Functional Programming Langs Lot of current interest. Am studying these with  great interest. Primarily useful for computation / algorithm  intensive apps. As yet am unable to find them useful for typical CRUD apps Maturing still in progress. Too much rethinking  and retraining required currently. Many items still unclear (eg. ORMs, state maintenance, performance) Invest in short term only if very obvious benefits  Suggest incremental FP usage to learn more 

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Programming Language Selection

by Dhananjay Nene on Mar 28, 2009

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Programming Language Selection — Presentation Transcript