if ( !useJVM() ) { thenWhat(); } by Russel Winder

One hears rumours that the JVM is not quite as liked in the modern "Cloud" environment as it was in the pre-"Cloud" one. There are rumours that people are using the programming language Go in preference to Java, Kotlin, Groovy, Clojure, JRuby, etc. for their "Cloud" based applications. But is Go the right choice? The switch appears to be from a virtual machine based platform to a native code platform. This would seem to rule out Python as a replacement for Java. One might suspect Go got chosen as it has mind share and traction in the Web milieu, but not perhaps because it is the best choice. What are the choices, there is such a plethora of native code languages to choose from: C, C++, D, Go, Rust, Haskell, Crystal, Pony, Nim, Common Lisp, Fortran, to name just a few. In the end, programming language choice for a project is often based on prejudice rather than facts, but it helps to know something of the facts when decisions are being made. In this session, we will take a very quick tour of a number of programming languages, and then a second look at some of the more likely options. But it will still have to be quick. We may uncover an interesting option as yet unmentioned.