Re: Ruby Before Perl? Nah.

[bart]

Ruby, Perl, Python...

Those are all the usual suspects.

And despite their differences, I still feel that they're actually more alike than different.

Are there any other languages, that are usable in the same way as Perl/Python/Ruby, that you consider interesting as alternatives, but that are not (constantly) in the spotlight, and that may be worth looking into?

[starX]

I've been meaning to take a look at Lua for a while now. It looks syntactically similar to Ruby, and is designed to be primarily an extension language for C/C++; but that's from a cursory examination of the manual. It's worth mentioning that there is also a Java interface available, and the same folks who produced that have developed a web application framework to support Lua. If it really is as fast as the hype indicates, maybe it's worth looking into. Otherwise, it's probably just another mouse trap.

[moritz]

I looked at lua a few months ago, and this is what I found:
• It's a neat, small language
• Variables are global by default (like in perl), but no use strict
• The "A hash and an array are the same thing" concept really needs some time to adapt
• Simple things aren't always easy, hard things not always possible

Especially the second and the last point of that list convinced me not to adapt it as a general purpose programming language.

However for the area it was designed for (being embedded in other applications) it sure is very cool and useful.