[cloud] Which programming language for cloud computing?

Now that the new cloud computing-era is coming, and I am going to learn to program, I don't know which programming language the clouds support.

I think what the support Java, ASP.NET, PHP, Python, Ruby, Perl etc. and not the low-end languages, like C, C++ etc... Or am I wrong? If that is so software companies will have to re-develop their software. Is this the time you can start a project, and you have no big software company as a competitor?

I want to know which language I should focus on learning, so that I can develop for the cloud.

Of the languages you mention Java, PHP, Python, Ruby, Perl are certainly more platform independent than C/C++ (and ASP.NET).

Lots of platform-specific differences also come from what libraries are available for a given platform.

In practice however, I think you will always develop on the same or at least very similar platform (operating system flavour) as the system where your code will run, i.e. the cloud will not take source code and compile it for you before running it.

Personally I would go for Java or Python (probably also Ruby) as they have a vast number of libraries available for all kinds of tasks and are very platform independent.

This is always fascinating. I am not a cloud developer, but based on my research there is nothing significantly different than what many of us have been doing off and on for decades. The server is platform specific. If you want to write platform agnostic code for your server that is fine, but unnecessary based on whoever your cloud server provider is. I think the biggest difference I've seen so far is the concept of providing a large set of services for the front end client to process. the front end, I'm assuming is predominantly web or web app development. As most browsers can handle LAMP vs Microsoft stack well enough, then you are still back to whatever your flavor of the month is. The only difference I truly am seeing from what I did 20 years ago in a highly distributed network environment are higher level protocol (HTTP vs. TCP/UDP). Maybe I am wrong and would welcome the education, but then again I've been doing this a long time and still have not seen anything I would consider revolutionary or significantly different, though languages like Java, C#, Python, Ruby, etc are significantly simpler to program in which is a mixed bag as the bar is lowered for those are are not familiar with writing optimized code. PAAS and SAAS to me seem to be some of the keys in the new technology, but been doing some of this to off and on for 20 years :)

As for what programming languages, any browser-based or server-based language is likely to be used. Javascript, PHP, ASP, AJAX, Perl, Java, SQL.

Let's say you need to implement a new programming language and BCL designed specifically for operating in the cloud (it won't be used on client machines ever). It should be optimized for cloud computing; easy to learn, fast, efficient, powerful, modern.

The biggest way i’ve seen cloud hosting products help out developers is the ability to launch and increase the size of a server, without having any kind of delay. Developers are able to create the application in a completely customized environment, and then expand it into a production machine with a significant hassle. If things don’t work as wanted, they can then destroy that machine with relative ease.

Most of the Cloud Computing Providers used JAVA and C-Sharp, to make cloud server.

Obviously there is no "better" -- or more worth learning -- language at all. Which language you use is is just a matter of what you like AND what your server supports. You should not learn a language that wouldn't be supported by any server or is said to be dying in the near future. On the other hand it is obvious too that there will be even better languages in the future and that those will be more useful. So learn one that is fast, convenient and that you like and where learning it wouldn't be a too big effort because, as said, you're likely to change in less than 3 years.

I, personally would be considering an "open-source" (not proprietary) one, because the web is open to everyone and open-source is more likely to be supported by every-one. (Which means PHP in this case)

Your question is a bit vague about what you are actually thinking about doing. "Cloud computing" can mean almost anything. If you're looking for languages with specific cloud computing advantages, Java has several because it's a compiled language that compiles to operating-system independent byte code.

I also chime in with the others about C++ being a low-level language. Yes, it is. But you're always going to have more than just the C++ language. If you separate both Java and C++ from the classes that come with them, Java and C++ are extremely similar. You have to adopt some rigid criterion like "pointers = low-level, garbage collection = high-level" to make the distinction stick. (And, of course, you can make pointers smart and invisible in C++ and you can use garbage collection in C++ too if you want to.)

Depends on which "cloud" you would want to use. If it is Google App Engine, you can use Java or Python. Groovy too is supported on Google App Engine which runs on jvm. If you are going with Amazon, you can pretty much install any OS (Amazon Machine Images) you would like with any application server and use any language depending on the application servers support for the language. But doing something like that would mean a lot of technical understanding of scalability concepts. Some of the services might be provided off the shelf like DB services, storage etc. I heard about ruby and Heroku (another cloud application platform). But dont have experience with it.

Personally I prefer Java/Groovy for such things because of the vast libraries and tools available.

That is a very interesting question.

On the Lang.Next conference there was a very interesting discussion about this topic, in which authors of several programming languages participate (Scala, Dart, C#). There was not a clear consensus at the end, but from my point of view there is one message:

The ideal language for this "cloud age" should be object oriented (because that is how we understand and are able to model the world) and also embrace functional programming.

The code in "cloud age" is almost always distributed: running on several cores/machines (in the cloud center) or just the client/server separation. And it is also asynchronous. We do not block the code when waiting for WS response. The callbacks come in any time.

When using standard imperative programming languages, handling the asynchrony and the distribution really complicated. You have to always take care of the "current state" and when the callbacks come in, you have to decide what to do, in dependences of this state.

Functional programming helps to eliminate the "state" and is much better suited for this new situation.

So I would say: In cloud computing the code is distributed, state-less, asynchronous. Functional programming can help you with that. Object oriented is almost a must to be able to model the world.

I have wrote a blog post about it, if you are interested. I like C#, but actually I would say Scala, Clojure, F# might fit even better.

On the other hand C++ will always be there, and lately is being modernized and getting more attention.

"Cloud computing" is more of an operating-system-level concept than a language concept.

Let's say you want to host an application on Amazon's EC2 cloud computing service -- you can develop it in any language you like, on any operating system supported by EC2 (several flavors of Linux, Solaris, and Windows), then install and run it "in the cloud" on one or more virtual machines, much as you would do on a dedicated physical server.