Have scripting languages peaked?

A recent study from Evans Data Corp. casts doubt on enterprise software vendors' moves to warm up to scripting development languages.

The study, published on Thursday, found that the number of people using PHP for development in Europe, Middle East and Africa fell by over 25% last year and that the number of developers who would not evaluate PHP for future product grew by almost 40 percent. Similarly, Perl and Python also saw significant drop-offs in usage and planned usage.

"PHP, Perl and Python use on a global basis peaked one to two years ago and has started to decline based on a number of factors. This decline is more exaggerated in EMEA and APAC than in North America," said John Andrews, Evans Data's Chief Operating Officer, in a release. "One of the key factors to this loss of developer mindshare has been the inability of these languages to penetrate the enterprise space."

Yet judging from many vendors' plans, scripting is down-right trendy compared to, say, Java. Long-time Java devotees IBM and Oracle have both partnered with Zend Technologies to make a PHP work better with their respective databases. Microsoft and BEA Systems are also reaching out to scripting developers

Indeed, for many people, choosing a scripting language over Java, for example, is a no-brainer.

"Why should you try to build a Web site with other languages when it's much more appropriate to use PHP, Perl or Python?" said Anne Thomas Manes, an analyst at the Burton Group. Java Enterprise Edition, by contrast, should be used for complex algorithms and other back-end programs, she said.

Phil Wainewright, too, in his Loosely Coupled blog argues that light-weight development techniques other than Java Enterprise Edition are "a sign of things to come.

Not surprisingly, executives at Zend technologies took issue with the Evans Data study, according to an article and The Register.