From Newsgroup: comp.lang.misc

This article <https://www.infoworld.com/article/4069133/the-top-4-jvm-languages-and-why-developers-love-them.html>
gives an intro to 4 languages all implemented on top of the Java
byte-code interpreter (called a “VM” for some reason): Kotlin, Scala, Groovy and Clojure.

Kotlin, of course, has won support from Google as the preferred
development language for Android, as a raised middle finger to Oracle
over its absolutely stupid and vindictive lawsuit over Java.

According to the article, Scala “differentiates itself from other JVM languages by making functional programming foundational and
implementing it rigorously”. But I see the example Scala code has “println” in it, which is a procedural, not functional, construct. It
is simply not possible to create a language that implements the
pure-functional concept “rigorously”, as otherwise I/O becomes
impossible.

Groovy I find interesting, because I discovered that it combines
custom operator overloads with making parentheses optional around
arguments to method calls in many situations, to allow you to create a “DSL” -- a language customized for a particular application domain,
with its own custom-looking syntactic constructs.

Metaprogramming in Groovy ... I followed the link to the intro
article, but didn’t see anything in there to match the power of
Python’s metaclasses. Prove me wrong, I guess ...

Clojure -- yeah, it’s another Lisp dialect. What special features
could it possibly offer that could not be retrofitted in the form of
library function/macro calls to an existing Lisp or Scheme dialect?
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From Newsgroup: comp.lang.misc

On 01/11/2025 07:10, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:

This article <https://www.infoworld.com/article/4069133/the-top-4-jvm-languages-and-why-developers-love-them.html>
gives an intro to 4 languages all implemented on top of the Java
byte-code interpreter (called a “VM” for some reason): Kotlin, Scala, Groovy and Clojure.

Kotlin, of course, has won support from Google as the preferred
development language for Android, as a raised middle finger to Oracle
over its absolutely stupid and vindictive lawsuit over Java.

According to the article, Scala “differentiates itself from other JVM languages by making functional programming foundational and
implementing it rigorously”. But I see the example Scala code has “println” in it, which is a procedural, not functional, construct. It
is simply not possible to create a language that implements the pure-functional concept “rigorously”, as otherwise I/O becomes impossible.

It is possible to have IO in very pure functional programming languages,
but it is quite awkward. You can imagine a function taking "the world
before the printf output" as a parameter, and returning "the world after
the printf output" as the result. In practice, monads are used as a
sort of gateway between the functional world and the concepts of "side effects" and "observable behaviour" known from imperative programming.
But if you want to know how monads do this, I hope someone else can give
you an explanation!

Scala is, however, not a pure functional programming language. I
haven't really tried it as yet, but it seems to me that it is one of
many modern languages that combines functional and object oriented
imperative constructs. Unlike, say, C++, the functional programming
aspect is fundamental to Scala - but it is not limited to functional programming.

Groovy I find interesting, because I discovered that it combines
custom operator overloads with making parentheses optional around
arguments to method calls in many situations, to allow you to create a “DSL” -- a language customized for a particular application domain,
with its own custom-looking syntactic constructs.

Scala is regularly used for DSLs. I know of a number of hardware
development languages in Scala DSLs (Chisel is popular, and there's a
fine RISC-V core written in SpinalHDL). I can't say how Scala and
Groovy compare for DSLs.

Metaprogramming in Groovy ... I followed the link to the intro
article, but didn’t see anything in there to match the power of
Python’s metaclasses. Prove me wrong, I guess ...

Clojure -- yeah, it’s another Lisp dialect. What special features
could it possibly offer that could not be retrofitted in the form of
library function/macro calls to an existing Lisp or Scheme dialect?

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