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Guy's words: We were not out to win over the Lisp programmers; we were after the C++ programmers. We managed to drag a lot of them about halfway to Lisp.

by tjr 16y ago

blub 16y ago
In 1996 C++ was much more difficult and fragmented, but that quote is from 2003. Today C++ has (much) more abstraction power than Java. On the other hand, almost every programming language has more abstraction power than Java, which knows only about classes, XML and design patterns.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  > Today C++ has (much) more abstraction power than Java. > almost every programming language has more abstraction power than Java Just curious: how does that make C++ stack up against other "fashionable" languages?
  - blub 16y ago
    Lots of languages are fashionable today, but most of them don't overlap with the use cases that are traditionally handled by C++. Even so, it fares pretty good. What it lacks in expressive power it makes up in speed, libraries and industry support. C# is in my opinion a realistic C++ alternative or complement.
- etal 16y ago
  We might be agreeing here already, but my understanding was that the mindset Java fought against -- and finally won -- was: Interpreted, garbage-collected languages, or basically anything with a substantial runtime component, will be too slow and unpredictable to use in serious production environments. So Java went all-out with (1) a static type system and basic language features that C++ coders could respect, (2) a level of hype and corporate sponsorship/support that PHBs could respect, (3) a portable, eventually fast VM, opening up some nice deployment options. There was no need to introduce really exciting language features, only to keep promoting the OOP concepts that C++ thought-leaders were so enthusiastic about at the time.
nocman 16y ago
I think it is also important to remember something else here. Guy Steele certainly had significant influence on Java, but he was far from the final decision maker. I'm sure there are tons of things he would have wished Java to have (or not have) but they weren't his call to make. If anything people should be grateful that he was involved at all, since Java would probably have been a lot worse off it he hadn't been. And to top it off, Guy seems to have that rare combination of being simultaneously super smart and reasonably humble. I have never read anything he's written or listened to any talk he's given where I was not greatly impressed by him and what he had to say. I don't think I've ever seen him comment on Hacker News. I wish we could get him to comment regularly here, as his knowledge and insight would be of great value.
- tjr 16y ago
  Well said. I discovered Guy's work early in my programming career, and am very glad I did.

Guy's words: We were not out to win over the Lisp programmers; we were after the C++ programmers. We managed to drag a lot of them about halfway to Lisp.

by tjr 16y ago

Guy's words: We were not out to win over the Lisp programmers; we were after the C++ programmers. We managed to drag a lot of them about halfway to Lisp.

blub 16y ago

In 1996 C++ was much more difficult and fragmented, but that quote is from 2003. Today C++ has (much) more abstraction power than Java. On the other hand, almost every programming language has more abstraction power than Java, which knows only about classes, XML and design patterns.

rbanffy 16y ago
> Today C++ has (much) more abstraction power than Java. > almost every programming language has more abstraction power than Java Just curious: how does that make C++ stack up against other "fashionable" languages?
- blub 16y ago
  Lots of languages are fashionable today, but most of them don't overlap with the use cases that are traditionally handled by C++. Even so, it fares pretty good. What it lacks in expressive power it makes up in speed, libraries and industry support. C# is in my opinion a realistic C++ alternative or complement.
etal 16y ago
We might be agreeing here already, but my understanding was that the mindset Java fought against -- and finally won -- was: Interpreted, garbage-collected languages, or basically anything with a substantial runtime component, will be too slow and unpredictable to use in serious production environments. So Java went all-out with (1) a static type system and basic language features that C++ coders could respect, (2) a level of hype and corporate sponsorship/support that PHBs could respect, (3) a portable, eventually fast VM, opening up some nice deployment options. There was no need to introduce really exciting language features, only to keep promoting the OOP concepts that C++ thought-leaders were so enthusiastic about at the time.

nocman 16y ago

I think it is also important to remember something else here. Guy Steele certainly had significant influence on Java, but he was far from the final decision maker. I'm sure there are tons of things he would have wished Java to have (or not have) but they weren't his call to make. If anything people should be grateful that he was involved at all, since Java would probably have been a lot worse off it he hadn't been. And to top it off, Guy seems to have that rare combination of being simultaneously super smart and reasonably humble. I have never read anything he's written or listened to any talk he's given where I was not greatly impressed by him and what he had to say. I don't think I've ever seen him comment on Hacker News. I wish we could get him to comment regularly here, as his knowledge and insight would be of great value.

tjr 16y ago
Well said. I discovered Guy's work early in my programming career, and am very glad I did.