May be it’s a silly question. Is there an alternative to Java and .NET platform?
Which:
- Is a programming language itself. Language ports unless they become dominant are not really successfull IMO.
- May have it’s own execution platform like JVM, which is a big plus. But interpreter is also ok.
- Is statically typed.
- Is open source and developed by open community.
- Is cross platform like Java: compile once, run everywhere.
- Is modern: multiparadigm (OOP and generic, functional is a plus), concurrent (at least allowing to write concurrently), garbage collection is a plus, reflection is a plus.
I’d be glad to know about unpopular or experimental languages which satisfy this criteria too. Dead languages are not ok.
A language for which all of the above (subjective) conditions is true probably falls in one of two categories
- Statically typed interpreted language project. Which would provide cross platform interpreter and library.
- Java-like language but with two distinctions: not being Java port and developed by community.
May be scala. It runs on JVM, it’s statically typed. Lift is web framework developed in scala. I heard IDE support is not good. IntelliJ IDE may be best one to consider.