Ask HN: What's the equivalent to Python, Compiled?

3 points·huyegn··4 comments

Setting aside the obvious grandaddy of cross-platform compiled languages, C, what would you use if you had to quickly create a suite of commandline utilities that had to work on several platforms (mac, windows, *nix)?

The main criteria is that the final binaries must start fast and the programming language must have good libraries for HTTP/Web io

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C or C++ are probably the best choice since they allow for high performance, low memory footprint, and easy creation of binary packages suitable for distribution.

Java is also an option and Java programs can be compiled down to machine code with the GNU Compiler for Java, which removes Java's dependency on the JRE and allows binaries to start faster than if they had to load the JVM.

In fact, you could even "compile" Python programs into a binary package suitable for distributing via the cx_Freeze tool. This will still be interpreted, though it might feel more like a compiled language. You might want to look into Cython, which I believe allows for pseudo-compiled Python.

I initially looked at languages like clojure, but the slow load times of the JVM put me off. Now that you mentioned gcj, I found this note from Rich Hickey: http://groups.google.com/group/clojure/msg/58e3f8e5dfb876c9 which makes it sound like one could compile clojure => java => native binaries.

The load times are an issue, check out nailgun, -Xbootclasspath , java -client, javaRebel. There's a few other tricks i've seen mentioned, anybody else?

http://blog.headius.com/2009/01/my-favorite-hotspot-jvm-flag...

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1316056/how-to-reduce-sca...

http://groups.google.com/group/clojure/browse_frm/thread/33f...

http://groups.google.com/group/leiningen/browse_thread/threa...

I find brace most alluring: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=929645

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