Choice of languages

[Helana Neumann]

Hi, Bruce,

The title of your book sounds very exciting (yeah, I'm a geek). Which languages does it cover, and why did you choose those particular languages?

Thank you.

Best,
Helana Neumann

[Vyas Sanzgiri]

Ruby, Io, Prolog, Scala, Erlang, Clojure, Haskell

Its on the Amazon page : bookpage

[Christophe Verré]

"Why those seven" is explained here by the author.

[Bruce Tate]

I chose those languages based on a poll by my publisher, mostly. That gave me a list of a bunch of languages. I did have a couple of rules.

1) I wanted exactly one object oriented language. (Not counting prototype languages.) Ruby was the top one, so I struck Python. I replaced it with the next language on the list, Prolog.
2) I did not want to cover Java, JavaScript, C or C++ for a variety of reasons. Mostly, they are all too popular, so it seemed like a little bit of a cop out. Plus, JavaScript has a bunch of problems for a book like this one. So I struck JavaScript, which made the top 5. I replaced it with another prototype language, Io. I am very pleased with the choice, and so are most of the readers. It is one of the purest prototype languages you'll find. The other options were Lua and Self.

The rest of the story is covered in the post referenced above. Thanks for the question, and good luck!

[Bruce Tate]

Christophe Verré wrote:"Why those seven" is explained here by the author.

Thanks for the assist!

[Bruce Tate]

Vyas Sanzgiri wrote:Ruby, Io, Prolog, Scala, Erlang, Clojure, Haskell

Its on the Amazon page : bookpage

And it's here as well: http://pragprog.com/titles/btlang/seven-languages-in-seven-weeks

A little trivia. An author usually gets a slightly higher royalty at the publisher's site. Thanks also to you for the assist.

[Hussein Baghdadi]

May I ask you why you picked Scala?
Actors are covered in Erlang, a JVM language is included in the shape of Clojure.
Why you didn't nominate OCaml in place of Scala (assuming it was included in the poll)?

[Bruce Tate]

John Todd wrote:May I ask you why you picked Scala?
Actors are covered in Erlang, a JVM language is included in the shape of Clojure.
Why you didn't nominate OCaml in place of Scala (assuming it was included in the poll)?

I wish I had something more profound to say, but my readers just requested it more than the other object oriented/functional hybrid alternatives. That, and my good friends Ted Neward and Venkat Subramanyam (there's no way I spelled that right) had all dabbled in Scala, and made it sound interesting.

But yes, actors are covered in Io, Scala, and Erlang. There are also actor-like models in Clojure.

Good question.

[Mohamed Sanaulla]

Was Fantom programming language considered? I had started off learning that language- but after reading this thread I kind of backed off from Fantom and continued with Scala.

Any views on that?

[Campbell Ritchie]

Bruce Tate wrote: . . . Java, JavaScript, C or C++ for a variety of reasons. Mostly, they are all too popular, . . .

Agree: they are already well covered elsewhere. For that sort of book, it is better to go for less well-known languages.

[Bruce Tate]

Mohamed Sanaulla wrote:Was Fantom programming language considered? I had started off learning that language- but after reading this thread I kind of backed off from Fantom and continued with Scala.

Any views on that?

I didn't really consider Fantom (was fan). I didn't know much about it.

[Andy Bach]

Campbell Ritchie wrote:

Bruce Tate wrote: . . . Java, JavaScript, C or C++ for a variety of reasons. Mostly, they are all too popular, . . .

Agree: they are already well covered elsewhere. For that sort of book, it is better to go for less well-known languages.

Just a link - Steve Yegge has lots to say about languages in his various blogs (he's very smart and funny:
http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2010/12/haskell-researchers-announce-discovery.html

) one I remembered was sort of "7 languages in one page" - Tour De Babel:
http://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/tour-de-babel

[Bruce Tate]

Andy Bach wrote:

Campbell Ritchie wrote:

Bruce Tate wrote: . . . Java, JavaScript, C or C++ for a variety of reasons. Mostly, they are all too popular, . . .

Agree: they are already well covered elsewhere. For that sort of book, it is better to go for less well-known languages.

Just a link - Steve Yegge has lots to say about languages in his various blogs (he's very smart and funny:
http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2010/12/haskell-researchers-announce-discovery.html

) one I remembered was sort of "7 languages in one page" - Tour De Babel:
http://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/tour-de-babel

Yes! I remember that page. Steve was one of the guys who reviewed Beyond Java. We both liked Ruby, and both wanted a chance to be able to write it professionally. He's one of those guys who is just smarter than the rest of us. I have a tremendous amount of respect for what he was able to accomplish at Google.