Are there cases where a scripting language is more advisable than using Java for both speed of development and performance? How can you identify them? What are the performance implications?

I implemented a small part of SQL to see how close I could match it within Scala.

GNU Octave "is a high-level language, primarily intended for numerical computations. It provides a convenient command line interface for solving linear and nonlinear problems numerically, and for performing other numerical experiments using a language that is mostly compatible with Matlab. It may also be used as a batch-oriented language. " In numerical calculations speed is very important. I remember that Octave 2.x, although very useful, used to be slow. What about now when there is Octave 3.2? To answer to this question I decided to compare the time performance of this new Octave release with the performances of versions 3.0 and 2.9 using custom made benchmark script. The tests were run on Intel Mac OS X 10.4.11 (Intel Core Duo 2GHz, 2GB RAM).

Not too long ago Google announced their new experimental, open source, system language which was said to be a mix of Python and C called Go. Immediately the internet super highway’s lights lit up and the news spread like wild fire. Comments came from all over and besides the news that another language with the same name already existed, the enthusiasm did not let up. Writing the odd ‘Hello Go’ program or dabbling with the syntax is all well and good but, until you sit down and write something a tad more useful, you do not really get to know whether a new language holds any promise. I learned about a Twitter client written in Go and asked it’s author Dmitry Chestnykh to share his experience.

This edition of Discoveries This Week includes both the very best of what I saw at PDC 2009 and the most outstanding things I’ve glimpsed going on in the F# community. Please do enjoy.