4 ms·

I'm skeptical of the strategic advantage of being backed by a tooling company, because of the fact that tooling is often a preference that comes with holy wars

I'm skeptical of the strategic advantage of being backed by a tooling company, because of the fact that tooling is often a preference that comes with holy wars attached. If Emacs sponsored a language, how many Vim users would jump ship? I know plenty of Java devs that actually prefer Eclipse (WTF?!?!?). Good luck getting an entire team onboard with a single IDE. Throw in the fact that their IDE software is open source only until you need the most advanced features, and I can imagine Kotlin never picking up as much steam as Rust or Swift with their comparably inferior tooling ecosystems. I can imagine C# taking over java before Kotlin does.

geodel 10y ago
Absolutely. I think Kotlin might settle in a specific Java platform tooling category where a bunch of code in Java can be concisely expressed in Kotlin. With Scala being more than a decade old, its most popular usage is Apache Spark project which is not saying much. Kotlin would first have to reach beyond Scala which itself is small percentage point of Java.
true_religion 10y ago
> Good luck getting an entire team onboard with a single IDE. Many companies mandate that you use Visual Studio to develop with because their entire toolchain is setup to build the project via VS tools. Deviating from that means that no one can help you, and you're probably polluting the repo with your own ad-hoc tooling.
pjmlp 10y ago
> Good luck getting an entire team onboard with a single IDE. Actually that is how many enterprise companies work. I usually get to use what the IT department from our customers has decided as IDE for a specific project. Anything else usually requires a change request with the necessary approvals at all levels, which means very few people ever bother to go through that pain, assuming that it will be approved in the end, because "I don't like X" won't work as reason.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >assuming that it will be approved in the end, because "I don't like X" won't work as reason. How well does "else I quit, my code, my tools" works as a reason?
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    Good luck when you have a family and don't happen to live in places like Silicon Valley. We are talking about enterprise here, there are plenty of people for that position, specially external consultants, no one would be stopping you from leaving. In fact they might even help you taking your things out.
    - coldtea 10y ago
      >We are talking about enterprise here, there are plenty of people for that position, specially external consultants, no one would be stopping you from leaving. Well, if you're an external consultant, it's they that called you to get them out of some mess in the first place. You didn't knock on their door to ask for work.
      - pjmlp 10y ago
        I always had this kind of experience even as internal dev. The only time I had some kind of freedom, away from what IT says how things should be, was at a few startups. Once those startups grew, the big boys from IT started to create a standard development environment.
fasquoika 10y ago
>If Emacs sponsored a language Emacs does sponsor a language (elisp), and it's most people's reason for using it.
jorgemf 10y ago
backed by a tooling company means that the language was designed with tooling in mind and that there are going to be quality tools for the language. It doesn't mean there is only going to be one alternative. Intellij Idea as IDE is a great choice. Android developers were forced to move from Eclipse to Idea and I haven't seen any resistance to avoid it. I have heard iOS developers complaning about tooling around swift. So, I think it is a strong point.
acchow 10y ago
> If Emacs sponsored a language I think you've missed something here...

geodel 10y ago

Absolutely. I think Kotlin might settle in a specific Java platform tooling category where a bunch of code in Java can be concisely expressed in Kotlin. With Scala being more than a decade old, its most popular usage is Apache Spark project which is not saying much. Kotlin would first have to reach beyond Scala which itself is small percentage point of Java.

true_religion 10y ago

> Good luck getting an entire team onboard with a single IDE. Many companies mandate that you use Visual Studio to develop with because their entire toolchain is setup to build the project via VS tools. Deviating from that means that no one can help you, and you're probably polluting the repo with your own ad-hoc tooling.

pjmlp 10y ago

> Good luck getting an entire team onboard with a single IDE. Actually that is how many enterprise companies work. I usually get to use what the IT department from our customers has decided as IDE for a specific project. Anything else usually requires a change request with the necessary approvals at all levels, which means very few people ever bother to go through that pain, assuming that it will be approved in the end, because "I don't like X" won't work as reason.

coldtea 10y ago
>assuming that it will be approved in the end, because "I don't like X" won't work as reason. How well does "else I quit, my code, my tools" works as a reason?
- pjmlp 10y ago
  Good luck when you have a family and don't happen to live in places like Silicon Valley. We are talking about enterprise here, there are plenty of people for that position, specially external consultants, no one would be stopping you from leaving. In fact they might even help you taking your things out.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >We are talking about enterprise here, there are plenty of people for that position, specially external consultants, no one would be stopping you from leaving. Well, if you're an external consultant, it's they that called you to get them out of some mess in the first place. You didn't knock on their door to ask for work.
    - pjmlp 10y ago
      I always had this kind of experience even as internal dev. The only time I had some kind of freedom, away from what IT says how things should be, was at a few startups. Once those startups grew, the big boys from IT started to create a standard development environment.

fasquoika 10y ago

>If Emacs sponsored a language Emacs does sponsor a language (elisp), and it's most people's reason for using it.

jorgemf 10y ago

backed by a tooling company means that the language was designed with tooling in mind and that there are going to be quality tools for the language. It doesn't mean there is only going to be one alternative. Intellij Idea as IDE is a great choice. Android developers were forced to move from Eclipse to Idea and I haven't seen any resistance to avoid it. I have heard iOS developers complaning about tooling around swift. So, I think it is a strong point.

acchow 10y ago

> If Emacs sponsored a language I think you've missed something here...