Away from Java, PHP: 7 languages techies prefer

By siliconindia   |   Thursday, 28 October 2010, 04:49 IST   |    47 Comments
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Away from Java, PHP: 7 languages techies prefer
Bangalore: If you are a programmer, you would not take the risk of not knowing the popular programming languages like Java or say PHP. By this it does not mean that these are the only languages on which every programmer or coder would depend to provide solutions to increasingly common problems. If one would think out of the box, there are several programming languages that have proved themselves capable to solve the common problems in programming, reports Peter Wayner of InfoWorld. Variety is the spice of life and this also applies to programming languages too. And why shouldn't programmers opt for newer languages to adopt new and various other features which the dominant languages do not offer? The fact is, programmers depend heavily on popularly used languages to exist in the dominant paradigm. Now let's take a look at some of the niche languages on which the enterprises are depending. The seven programming languages that are being adopted by enterprises are enlisted below: 1) PYTHON: Now when organizations are in plans to shift their applications to the cloud, Python could be the niche language they were longing for. Python has the kind of structure that is easily scalable in the cloud. Python is supposed to be the most preferred programming language for two kinds of people-one who hate using brackets and those who hate scientists. Brackets helped in the creation of Python by building a version of Perl, that is easier to read as it does not involve many opening and closing of brackets.This language never offered any data structures or elements explicitly tuned to meet the needs of scientists. 2) RUBY: Like Python, Ruby is another promising tool often pushed to the margin despite many arguing about Ruby and Python not being niche languages.Ruby is becoming popular for prototyping.Its entrance was marked with the Web 2.0 explosion and during this time many websites experimented on Ruby. Ruby on Rails sites are devoted to cataloging data that can be stored in tables. Well-known examples include Web applications like Basecamp, Backcamp, and Campfire from 37Signals, a collection of websites that knits together group discussions, debates, and schedules. 3) MATLAB: Due to the large volumes of data which the organizations need to analyze, Matlab which has been built for mathematicians to solve systems of linear equations, has found rising interest in the enterprise . Many of the more sophisticated statistical techniques that match people with advertisements, songs, or Web pages depend upon the power of algorithms like those solved by Matlab. MathWorks, the company behind Matlab, offers a diverse set of whitepapers showing how engineers are searching for statistical answers. 4) JAVA SCRIPT: Java is supposed to be the most compiled language on Earth. Every browser downloads the code and recompiles it every time someone loads a Web page. The increasing dominance of AJAX-savvy Web pages, JavaScript is rarely thought of as a language that runs on the big iron. Netscape tried to make JavaScript the common language on its server platform back in 1996, but ended up establishing it only in the browser. 5) ERLANG: Erlang is an an open source language first created by scientists at Ericsson Computing Laboratory, excels at various tasks like responding to different independent messages concurrently and it addresses the most difficult part of enterprise computing. The niche language mixes traditional facets of functional programming with a virtual machine that compiles down to machine code. Through this language, the programmer is compelled to build something that is easier to spread across multiple cores and multiple machines. 6) COBOL: It once used to be a dominant language in almost every enterprise and so it would not be fair to tag it as a niche language.This language has been enhanced hundreds of times since its inception. Cobol jockeys get to play with object-oriented extensions, self-modifying code, and practically every other gimmick. Cobol has got a programmer friendly syntax that is more similar to actual nouns and verbs that form clauses and sentences. 7) CUDA EXTENSIONS: CUDA extensions are not technically a language they are just extensions to C. CUDA extensions include machine vision, massive simulations, and huge statistical computations. Many problems of data analysis are naturally massively parallel, making GPU processors worth a look. To adopt some variety in programming, programmers are adopting many other niche programming languages that offer unique features those are not found in the any other programming language. As days will advance, programmers will have variety programming languages which will help them to deal with some of the common problems faced by enterprises.