How did Ruby and Python prevent fragmentation while ML and Lisp did not?

Re:How did Ruby and Python prevent fragmentation while ML an... by swah on Sunday May 06, 2012 @02:01PM (#3935749)

Are multiple implementations beneficial to the community?

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Re:How did Ruby and Python prevent fragmentation while ML an... by dons on Sunday May 06, 2012 @02:52PM (#3935919)

Yes and no.

Yes.

* they encourage competition, which leads to better implementations

* they help the language reach new niches (e.g. on the web; in embedded systems; ...)

* they encourage language standardization, which reduces risk to users.

* they dilute community effort -- only so many people can write good compilers and runtimes

* they can lead to fragmentation and incompatible code as languages diverge, increasing risk to the success of the language overall.

* they confuse users, further hurting adoption. Particularly beginners have trouble knowing which implementation is a good choice.

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