Lambda the Ultimate

The paper is built around three examples of varying complexity. Each example is solved using each language, so you can make up your own mind.

This is how the paper summarizes the different language philosophies:

Perl creator Larry Wall says that he designed Perl to make the easy things easy while making the difficult things possible. By contrast, PHP makes some of the easy things even easier and still gets the harder ones done. Java makes the big things more scalable and makes everything more object-centered.

On the other hand, Perl makes a lot of things weirder. It's a simple language to learn, once you can get past the culture shock. PHP has removed much of the quirkiness from Perl, but in the process it has lost just a little of the power. Java makes the hard things easier, especially since a lot of them have already been done and can be included or inherited efficiently. But it also makes some of the easy things a bit harder than perhaps they should be.

Posted to critiques by Ehud Lamm on 4/20/01; 8:06:46 AM