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This is a very solid point. Having an internally developed language like Go (which is, according to Rob Pike, being used "for real stuff" inside of Google), the
by joshes 16y ago
This is a very solid point. Having an internally developed language like Go (which is, according to Rob Pike, being used "for real stuff" inside of Google), the creator of Python (one of the most widely used languages in recent years) and the creator of Java (one of the most widely used languages for at least a decade now) under one roof has to be an embarrassment of riches for any group intending to innovate in the programming language space.
- neilk 16y agoNah, that's too many cooks. They all want different things. Guido is interested primarily in usability, and Python is notoriously poor in performance. Rob Pike writes systems languages. With Java, Gosling has written a very enterprise-friendly language, that drags C++ halfway to Lisp.
- crux_ 16y agoNit: Halfway to somewhere, but that somewhere ain't Lisp. I'm under-rested and under-caffeinated, but the only thing I can think of that I'd call an intentional similarity between the two languages is the fact they're both garbage collected.
- wtracy 16y agoCobol? :-P
- crux_ 16y agoSmalltalk would be a good non-snarky answer and one with some basis in history, although Smalltalk seems to have been a much stronger influence over the JVM than the Java language.
- froydnj 16y agoFWIW, none other than Guy Steele has cited Java as dragging C++ programmers halfway to Lisp: http://people.csail.mit.edu/gregs/ll1-discuss-archive-html/msg04045.html http://people.csail.mit.edu/gregs/ll1-discuss-archive-html/m...
- crux_ 16y agoI'd agree with him, given that this statement was about programmers and Java really did open the floodgates for a diversity of programming languages to become accepted, or at least tolerated. The Java language itself, however, is not very close to Lisp at all.
- Stormbringer 16y agoI think that Guido probably has his plate full with the open revolt over the transition to version 3. Javascript is much closer to a halfway point to Lisp than Java. I don't really see Java as being at all similar to Lisp... witness the 3-4 year (possibly longer) debacle trying to get closures into the language. Talk about banging a square rhinoceros into a round hole. Java's point of greatest similarity to C++ is undoubtedly Generics, which has all the syntactic disadvantages of C++ templates, but none of the meta-programming advantages. But one of the ways of seeing that C++ and Java are quite dissimilar is to first grok Java Interfaces, and then read through the smalltalk/C++ version of the GoF book Design Patterns, with a view to how many of the Patterns don't even make sense in Java or are obsolete in Java because of Interfaces.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- woan 16y agoThought I should point out MS also has quite a concentration of languages folks that were famous before joining MS: Butler Lampson, Erik Meijer, Herb Sutter, Burton Smith, Anders Hejlsberg
- statictype 16y ago+1 for Anders Hejlsberg. He created Turbo Pascal, Delphi and C# - that's 3 very successful languages/development platforms.
- mihaelamj 16y agoHe created Turbo Pascal and Delphi when he was young and hungry. C# when he was well-fed and older. Not hungry in any way. Thus the over-engineering and bloat-ware.
- jeberle 16y ago... and Simon Peyton-Jones (Haskell)