About PayPal's Node vs Java “fight”

Post by res0nat0r » Fri, Dec 13, 2013, 8:34 PM UTC

fecak wrote: post #84

pron wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even putting aside my great dislike for Scala (which I discussed on HN ad nauseam :)), I think everyone would agree that Scala has a very different philosophy from Java. Java has been designed as a "blue-collar" language, with maintenance of a large project with possibly hundreds of developers as a central guiding principle. C#, Go, Dart, Kotlin, Fantom etc., have a similar philosophy. But Scala is a different beast…

I wouldn't say that Java is extremely popular by any stretch. It's ubiquitous, but people aren't falling over themselves to become Java programmers anymore. I'd say Java is much less popular than it used to be (and I've run a Java Users' Group for 13 years). The JVM is still popular, but Java the language's popularity is arguably at a low point.

Post by eddflrs » Fri, Dec 13, 2013, 8:36 PM UTC

Post by dragontamer » Fri, Dec 13, 2013, 8:47 PM UTC

Iftheshoefits wrote: post #90

gngeal wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that of all the things you've named, dynamically typed languages are hardly "a fad". It's surprising (?), though, that the lousy ones are the most popular ones.

I take a very cynical view of these things, and from that perspective it doesn't surprise me at all, really. My cynical view is that the "lousy" ones are popular because they are easy even for non-technical people to learn well enough to be useful in the majority of business settings. This sets up a kind of feedback loop: there is an abundant supply of "cheap" labor who can use these languages, which companies love,…

Post by hansjorg » Fri, Dec 13, 2013, 8:59 PM UTC

radicalbyte wrote: post #44

ebiester wrote: post #28

I fantasize about rebuilding the java ecosystem. Create "JPM", don't allow anything from the old Maven system in it. Create a new "hip" minimalist framework that ignores everything about java and its notions of OOP. Basic dependency management handled NPM-style. Developers encourage to put everything in the same package for their own stuff, and everything is package level. Getters and setters and encapsulation and ja…

You've basically described C#: Getters, setters fixed? Check. Functional features? Check. Most crappy OO features fixed? Check. Trendy package system inspired by npm/apt-get/gems? Check. Healthy community with libraries replacing frameworks? Check. I'd recommend checking it out if you haven't already.

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Dec 13, 2013, 9:01 PM UTC

Iftheshoefits wrote: post #90

gngeal wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that of all the things you've named, dynamically typed languages are hardly "a fad". It's surprising (?), though, that the lousy ones are the most popular ones.

I take a very cynical view of these things, and from that perspective it doesn't surprise me at all, really. My cynical view is that the "lousy" ones are popular because they are easy even for non-technical people to learn well enough to be useful in the majority of business settings. This sets up a kind of feedback loop: there is an abundant supply of "cheap" labor who can use these languages, which companies love,…