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Buying in to Java is also buying in to the JVM -- you can interop easily with languages like Clojure, Kotlin, or Scala, which lets you write some of your code i

Buying in to Java is also buying in to the JVM -- you can interop easily with languages like Clojure, Kotlin, or Scala, which lets you write some of your code in sexy languages while other parts are holding down the fort using boring, but battle tested ecosystem. (C# and F# are a similar combo.) There are also some high profile pieces of technology written in Java, so if you want to leverage them, having JVM expertise is a bonus. You may even get better bindings for JVM languages than others and since many are open source, having Java expertise allows you to work on them. I find it a little odd you'd buy in to the CLR family (C#, F#, etc), but say the JVM family has nothing to offer. They're not really substantially different in my experience -- both are sort of staid enterprise-y ecosystems. (But maybe I'm missing something really cool in CLR land besides good MS product support -- please let me know! It's one of my language blindspots.)

jhall1468 9y ago
> I find it a little odd you'd buy in to the CLR family (C#, F#, etc), but say the JVM family has nothing to offer. I just find C# to be a better language. It has its youth to thank for that. I have no issues with JVM. Hell, if I were to start a project today Kotlin and Scala would also be very real possibilities. They are both amazing languages. C# probably shouldn't have made my list, but I threw it in there to cover OOP where the other languages were decidedly not. At the end of the day, language choices for a start up largely reflect it's goals. If I want to do statistical modeling, I'm going to use R. For ML, probably Python. For a systems program, likely Rust. The bottom line with Java is that it can do any of those things. But the languages I mentioned do their specific job better. And that's the thing with a startup. You don't need a great general purpose language, you need whatever language suits your niche. But at Amazon/Google scale, Java is an absolute beast, largely because it can do everything.

jhall1468 9y ago

> I find it a little odd you'd buy in to the CLR family (C#, F#, etc), but say the JVM family has nothing to offer. I just find C# to be a better language. It has its youth to thank for that. I have no issues with JVM. Hell, if I were to start a project today Kotlin and Scala would also be very real possibilities. They are both amazing languages. C# probably shouldn't have made my list, but I threw it in there to cover OOP where the other languages were decidedly not. At the end of the day, language choices for a start up largely reflect it's goals. If I want to do statistical modeling, I'm going to use R. For ML, probably Python. For a systems program, likely Rust. The bottom line with Java is that it can do any of those things. But the languages I mentioned do their specific job better. And that's the thing with a startup. You don't need a great general purpose language, you need whatever language suits your niche. But at Amazon/Google scale, Java is an absolute beast, largely because it can do everything.