On Tue, Sep 20, 2005, at 07:59 PDT, Brian Chrisman wrote: > Another obvious difference between C++ and these languages is the > ability to execute dynamic code.. ie, you could generate perl code in a > string, within a perl program, and call 'eval' on it to have it > executed. With C++, you'd have to compile it first... similarly for > python and php.
Wait, you can eval in python. I think in php too. Unless that's not what you meant. > Another "advantage" would be 'dynamic typing'.. many scripting languages > effectively infer datatypes, rather than forcing you to declare them > explicitly. Some people really don't like this though... but it's > really difficult to do such a thing with C/C++. I don't think inference is the right word here. Dynamic typing is more like you don't worry about what type something is until you use it wrong. Hmm, I don't think what I said is 100% right either though. > As for being cross platform, I think you'll find perl and python are > pretty flexible in terms of platform portability.... unless you are > talking about working with those embedded java-only processor applications. Most programming languages now are cross platform. Sometimes the real question is can you access system abstractions (directory names, network sockets, POSIXish) in a uniform manner across all platforms. > In general, I would agree that the other languages you mention do not > include notably different concepts in programming, they are just > implementations that are better for certain purposes. But if you look > at ocaml, mercury, lisp*, xslt or haskell, there are definitely > different programming concepts at play there which may be of use to you > and are fairly difficult to replicate in other languages. In a different vein also check out forth and prolog. Also (much differently) javascript seems to be much more enjoyable to program in now that there are more tools to work with it in. Specifically firefox, venkman (http://www.mozilla.org/projects/venkman/), and rhino (http://www.mozilla.org/js/). -- Sam Phillips <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.dasbistro.com/~sam/ San Francisco California _______________________________________________ RLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.rlug.org/mailman/listinfo/rlug
