Quote:
Originally Posted by popper
[SNIP]
its tiny, its stand alone, it's covered all the tcp:ip/udp/uncasting/ and even multicasting in a 600k xp(or many other OS) app, what more could you want ...  |
Binaries for starters
Im personaly not a fan of interpreted languages, id rather just stick to tried and tested c/c++ to get things done, sure its not "hip" like Haskel its not "cool" like Ruby on the rails, its also not a toy fad language.
I feel i may be a little close minded on the subject of languages but im old, and grouchy and know that id rather have something tried and tested and supplied with an optional knees deep documentation to rummage through and the reassurance that there will be a variety of newsgroup/irc channel/webpage resources with answers to quirky problems that i may stumble upon.
The only time i use interpreted languages is during the conceptual stage because without the need to continualy recompile i can test things faster before porting it to a real language as a release build.
and i dont feel im biased because of the fact its "ZOMG FASTAR", or has a "smaller footprint" or anything quite as convolouted as that. Ive written some code in c thats been highly unoptimised and hasnt performed nearly as well as the interpreted build, although that can be improved upon by making the code a little less clunky and a little more elegant.
My reason for favoring a compiled language over interpreted is simple. Its far easier for the end user to use and understand, and in this respect it is entirely faster. Click on a binary and go, no messing around with interpreters, configuring an environment or any of that nonsense (unless of course your running a linux/unix/bsd system in which case setting additional bumph is a way of life regardless)
The point is, if i give my brother a binary, he can use it. If i was to give him say a python script he would be essentialy clueless and take a few hours trying to figure out how to use it.
Rebol however looks like a nice language to tinker around with in my spare time, the fact remains however that interpreted languages are only easier for the programmer, and its the end user whos needs you need to cater for.