Java, C#, PHP or Ruby?
My presentation at tekzone went well. I found it very difficult to introduce this panel discussion in just 15 minutes. Based on the comments I got, I seem to have succeeded… The presentation will be available for download. I tried to show that there were a lot of languages before Java that have a strong influence on the languages that will come after Java (Lisp, Smalltalk, Haskell were the prototypical examples). The key point (one I also tried to bring up in the discussion) is that programmers should always look beyond the language they currently are using.
The panel discussion with a Java, a C# and a PHP proponent went equally well. I don’t know how much insight the audience got, and if I was indeed able to bring home the point, that Ruby (and Rails) is a so much better development environment. I found the discussion quite tame, I had expected more strong reactions to Rails. Maybe they were overwhelmed? :-)
Anyone from the audience reading this and want to give feedback?