Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Polyglot Programming?

Neal Ford argues for understanding and utilizing various languages based on business need. a.k.a. Use the right tool for the job!

When discussing using multiple languages many would say, "That's crazy talk!" However, Ford points out that we are already polyglot programming. We are using Java, XML, SQL, and JavaScript. Moreover, the learning of different languages help us think more broad about business problems.

Will have more coming on dynamic languages such as Groovy, which runs on the JVM. In a recent post I show a test drive of pre-alpha release of IronRuby (Ruby on the .Net CLR).

If we can dispel the delusion that learning about computers should be an activity of fiddling with array indexes and worrying whether X is an integer or a real number, we can begin to focus on programming as a source of ideas.
Harold Abelson