The state of the scripting universe

traditionally been created using dynamic languages, from Ajax on the client to server code written in PHP, Perl, Python and Ruby. Ruby on Rails in particular has driven a lot of interest towards Ruby, and is one of the preferred platforms to build Web 2.0 startups on.

Pall: In the last three years, we've seen the adoption of very fast CPUs, namely the Intel Core 2 line. Breaking the 3GHz barrier on this architecture-and now pushing 4GHz-has sped up dynamic language code to the point where many algorithms that simply weren't feasible to implement in PHP are now possible on commodity hardware.

In the last year, I've participated in writing text analysis software for auto-classifying documents. Our initial plan was to use C to do the heavy processing and PHP for the rest. As it turned out, on midrange commodity hardware, we were able to use PHP throughout and maintain solid performance. Web applications are commonly scripted, but in my experience, even internal processing-intensive applications are now commonly being implemented in modern, dynamic, scripting programming languages. The bulwarks have been breached and progress is now ushered in.

CIO.com: What changes are you seeing in attitudes towards scripting (dynamic) languages?

Boyd: The increased use of JavaScript for browser-based applications is sparking interest in JavaScript as a language for use outside the browser. I work on Mozilla Rhino, which is a JavaScript environment for Java, and we have seen a lot of people using Rhino on the server side to add scripting to their applications. It's a nice extension language for applications since it was designed from the start to run inside another application.

Dice: I'm noticing changing attitudes from several angles. As I mentioned before, Forrester Research released a Wave survey paper last year regarding dynamic languages. This was motivated by their noticing that their customers were using more dynamic languages and requesting information on the competitive landscape in the field of dynamic languages.

Tools companies, including Eclipse and ActiveState, are offering more and better products for working with dynamic languages.

A segment of Java programmers seem to be embracing Ruby (and Rails) in particular. A new dynamic language, Groovy, is capitalizing on this trend by providing a dynamic language on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) that incorporates elements of both Java and Ruby.

Support for independent software vendors (ISVs) with dynamic languages is also improving. The Linux Foundation's recently-released LSB 3.2 spec includes Perl and Python as first-class supported languages within the spec, so ISVs who target this spec for their software can depend on Perl and Python being present in regularized configurations.

Hobbs: The dynamic languages are becoming more accepted. This is in part through more acceptance of open-source software, which all the dominant dynamic languages are (versus Java and .Net, which are questionably open in their process and/or sources). It is also due to good frameworks being developed using newer languages such as Ruby on Rails. You also see larger organizations fostering support for the languages, such as Google's support of Python, which was made their primary development language for Google App Engine.

Holden: People seem more positive towards scripting languages. They have, over time, come to realize that their performance is such that they work for most problems and have also learned that the compilation step can be heavy-handed and a huge time sink in the development cycle.

There is now a more general appreciation of the advantages of dynamic languages, whose characteristics are well-suited to Agile test-driven development techniques that have also become more popular in the same time frame.

The last three years have seen increased uptake in dynamic languages in many application areas. For Python in particular, the IronPython (now a Microsoft open-source project) and Jython (whose primary developer was recently hired by Sun Microsystems) implementations have had a positive impact.

Lam: Compilation is orthogonal to static/dynamic. IronRuby is a compiled language (and an interpreted one too- we