My main development platform is Java (JVM) and in 2008 I started looking at alternative languages more seriously for deliverable application development. My first candidates were languages that I was using for in-house scripts: Ruby, Groovy. I was aware that these languages were much slower than Java but I really liked the dynamic aspects. I also knew that performance was improving for both these languages. However, I still feel that both languages should be faster. File processing for my in-house scripts for example is often very slow compare to what I am used too with Java.
Recently I started looking at faster alternatives (one alternative is Scala because it has performances comparable to Java). But I keep looking back at Groovy and Ruby (JRuby in my case) because the dynamic aspect of those languages is so incredibly powerful. The testing aspect is of special interest for me and being able to use things like easyb and the out of the box mocking capability of those languages is just incredibly atractive. I find myself thinking that a language (JRuby, Groovy) that executes millions of lines of code per seconds on a standard PC is fast enough.
Have some of you been through this kind of dilemma and how do you feel about those issues ?
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