6 ms·

I'm going to say something that'll probably be controversial, but screw it. I think it's a subtle manifestation of ageism in startup culture. From my experienc

I'm going to say something that'll probably be controversial, but screw it. I think it's a subtle manifestation of ageism in startup culture. From my experience, most Java developers started with the language, community, and ecosystem when it was young, vibrant, and new. Those programmers (like me) are now in their 40s. A lot of them now work in beige cubicles for larger, more family-friendly firms (many by choice, so perhaps "ageism" is unfair). Early in your career, you see opportunity in new ecosystems. You see other people like you taking risks and experimenting with shiny new stuff and all the hype around it (hey look, now I'm the one being ageist!). The more mature you get, the more fads come and go, and some of us are a lot more cynical about whatever johnny-come-lately is being blogged about. Rails, Django, even PHP, and newer technologies like Elixir and Golang - they're all new and fun. Younger people have the time, risk tolerance, and predilection to hype for the latest fads. There are opportunities to "make your mark" as an expert by contributing to FOSS projects and writing the next Rails in the next new language. And startups like young people. Google Silicon Valley Ageism. Read pg's tweets (https://mobile.twitter.com/paulg/status/655490006216146944 https://mobile.twitter.com/paulg/status/655490006216146944). And young people like startups - they still see glory in working 60 hour weeks and sleeping at their desks. I recognize that there are obviously lots of exceptions to all of this, and I'm probably being a bit dangerous speaking in generalities with my personal experience. So tying back to the original question: Java and .Net were hip in the 90s and early 00s. In those eras, the people who worked with those exciting new architectures were the people in their twenties in those eras. They're older now, and startups tend to attract younger employees (call it ageism or call it "startups aren't attractive to older people." It happens). You don't see a lot of twentysomethings looking at the JVM and thinking there's a lot of opportunity there to make their mark as an expert. It's not the latest fad to be posted on Hacker News every other day. You don't see posts titled "A ___, but written in Kotlin"on what is (ostensibly) a site about startups. You see a lot of "A ___, but written in Go." Having said that, I'm a forty-something Rails dev who's learning Elixir as we speak. So perhaps I have no idea what I'm talking about. ^_^

dandrick 11y ago
There's something to what you're saying. Our industry is a big lover of the next big thing. We collectively waste so much time and productivity by constantly changing the rules of the game.
notacoward 11y ago
> You don't see a lot of twentysomethings ... thinking there's a lot of opportunity there to make their mark This is a too-common syndrome, and not just with respect to the JVM. Some people are genuinely in love with anything new. Some people just get bored easily. Those might not be the best motivations, but they're not the worst. The worst is the people who jump all over a new language or technology because they know peers are unfamiliar with it. They're insecure. They're not confident in their ability to master the standards and best practices that are already established for an older technology, so they try to get in first on a new technology where those things haven't evolved yet. No rules to violate. Then their arrogance as kings of the new hill, combined with their obvious cluelessness about the broader context, puts everyone off what might have been a true advance in the state of the art. That's the worst. This is way more common than you'd think. There's a guy on my project, who works around the edges in Go because he can't handle the C that most of the code is written in. I've felt tempted to do similar things myself, writing some bit of code in Lua or something just so others won't be able to review what I've done and say it's wrong. I resisted. Too many don't.

dandrick 11y ago

There's something to what you're saying. Our industry is a big lover of the next big thing. We collectively waste so much time and productivity by constantly changing the rules of the game.

notacoward 11y ago

> You don't see a lot of twentysomethings ... thinking there's a lot of opportunity there to make their mark This is a too-common syndrome, and not just with respect to the JVM. Some people are genuinely in love with anything new. Some people just get bored easily. Those might not be the best motivations, but they're not the worst. The worst is the people who jump all over a new language or technology because they know peers are unfamiliar with it. They're insecure. They're not confident in their ability to master the standards and best practices that are already established for an older technology, so they try to get in first on a new technology where those things haven't evolved yet. No rules to violate. Then their arrogance as kings of the new hill, combined with their obvious cluelessness about the broader context, puts everyone off what might have been a true advance in the state of the art. That's the worst. This is way more common than you'd think. There's a guy on my project, who works around the edges in Go because he can't handle the C that most of the code is written in. I've felt tempted to do similar things myself, writing some bit of code in Lua or something just so others won't be able to review what I've done and say it's wrong. I resisted. Too many don't.