JVM language shootout

Originally published October 8, 2013

I played with Java 8 over the weekend using IntelliJ which has editing support for Lambdas and other Java 8 features. I think that Java 8 will be a very nice update for the language when it becomes widely used. Will the new features be enough to keep from loosing developer mind share to other JVM languages like Scala, JRuby, and Clojure? I really like Scala but the language requires a large learning curve and the compiler is a little slow. Ruby is a great language and the JRuby implementation is very well done, is a pleasure to use, but there is a real performance penalty. Clojure is a lot of fun to use but I don't think it will ever be very widely used even though the development tools and available libraries keep getting better - it is a great language for those of us who love Lisp languages. Other languages like Kotlin are also worth keeping an eye on. Kotlin and Clojure get extra points for also compiling to Javascript.

I was joking about the 'shootout' title of this blog post. You should use a programming language that you enjoy programming in and that meets the requirements of your projects :-)

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