Put another two eggs in the basket

If you are a loyal reader of programming.reddit.com, you may consider Java is dying dead, and only very few developers are using .NET, most programmers in the world either use Haskell or ErLang, some die-hard old school may stick to their list, scheme. Period.

I am one of the readers. Programming Haskell demonstrates the beauty of the function language, and Glasgow Haskell Compiler (GHC) from Microsoft Research is able to generate native machine code to compete with native C program!

Erlang on the other hand is a dynamic language, so it pay off this flexibility by performance. I think this thread in Erlang mailing list is the best head to head of Haskell vs Erlang. Here is my summary:

• Haskell runs fast due to its native code compiler with full static typing
• Haskell’s laziness make it difficult to estimate the preformance
• Erlang is reliable(proved by Ericsson) and shines on con-currency programming, for example Apache vs. Yaws

But language is not only factor that matters the success, the platform and library are. That is the reason most companies build their applications on Java or .NET as the ecosystem would not allow the two platforms fail. But quite a few start-up companies prefer PHP, Python or Ruby for their agility(is PHP an exception?) before the scalability point is hit.

As personal interest, I would rather put both two eggs in my basket, just for fun.