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Languages are more than just syntax and ideology. The entire ecosystem of the language and how it interacts with surrounding software is important. You can hav
by grandinj 6y ago
Languages are more than just syntax and ideology. The entire ecosystem of the language and how it interacts with surrounding software is important.
You can have an awesome language with lousy interaction, and it's dead in the water.
Conversely, you can have a mediocre language with a great ecosystem, and it takes over the world.
- leoc 6y agoBut Smalltalk was likely the king of language ecosystem, and even more so of language interaction, at around the time when Java first appeared. And probably its only serious rivals for that crown were even more high-end and even more now-dead, like Lisp-machine Lisps. It didn't have great integration with native OS environments, but early Java wasn't spectacular in that department either.