Computer languages reflect the goals, target audiences, and to
some degree the personalities of their creators and their
communities. As a result, even languages that are created with
similar goals in mind may yield highly disparate final results,
depending on how their communities understand those goals. Ruby,
Clojure, and Ceylon are three such languages. Ruby is the oldest
of the three. Created in the mid-1990s, it didn't achieve
widespread popularity until the 2000s. One reason for Ruby's
growth is the work of Charles Nutter, who created jRuby, a port
of Ruby to the Java virtual machine (JVM). Ruby is a dynamic,
object-oriented language, whereas Clojure and Ceylon use a
functional programming approach. [ InfoWorld's Paul Krill has
interviewed the fathers of 9 modern programming languages; read
the key excerpts from each. | Follow the latest issues in
software development with InfoWorld's Developer World
newsletter, and get Java users' tips from JavaWorld.com. ]
Clojure appeared in 2007, created by Rich Hic