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Java's Cover – Why Java will not be successful (2001)

5 points by rrampage 4y ago

cratermoon 4y ago
That aged like a fine glass of milk.
- mindcrime 4y ago
  The thing is, I believe that everything (or very nearly everything) that pg said about Java in this essay is correct. So why was he so wrong in terms of saying that Java would not be successful? I'd posit that it's because of the one thing that Java got oh-so-right compared to most other languages that were around near its inception. And that one thing is object compatibility, and enabling library based development using binary libraries (as opposed to having to pull library code into your project and compile it alongside your own code). The cross-platform compatibility stuff, while not quite the "write once, run anywhere" dream was also close enough to be a useful factor. I remember building Java code on a Windows machine and deploying it to AIX systems circa 2001-2003 or so and just being amazed at how seamless it was. And for an "honourable mention" one might throw in the JDWP/JPDA stuff[1]. Java made it really easy to connect a symbolic debugger to a running (remote) server and step through code line by line. No, it wasn't the first environment that could do that, but I think that taken together these three things went a long way towards offsetting the various negatives of Java and helping to gain so much traction.
  - cratermoon 4y ago
    Most of what he said was opinion, so there's no correct or incorrect, just whether or not you agree with him. The interesting aspect of this and why it's aged so poorly is that almost none of the things mentioned ended up being a factor in the adoption of Java or, really, any other language popular today. Java is currently #3 on the Tiobe index, behind C. C++ and C# are right behind Java. Javascript is #7, PHP is #9.
jfengel 4y ago
PG's argument must have seemed surreal even at the time. Java was already entrenched by 2001. His argument seems to be "large corporations never do anything good, all innovation comes from individual hackers". So he hadn't just missed the point on Java, but on where the entire world was going. Users want products, not code. The hackers may be able to use low-level code to make hardware do unexpected things, but it turns out that there wasn't much utility in that. New capabilities came from new hardware, not clever exploits of existing hardware. Smartphones opened up whole new universes. But nobody cared what language the software was written in, and the crucial ability was to get the software solid, not clever. People may not love Java; it may not be "fun". But it gets the job done, in ways that "fun" projects don't. When I wrote C I spent most of my time running down difficult errors that simply weren't necessary. The minute I saw a NullPointerException stack trace I knew I wasn't going to be writing C any more. That's not about Java per se. It's about PG missing why programmers get paid to program. The hackers may not like it, and maybe that was PG's target audience for that essay. But the rest of the world just wants the code done, and they're the ones paying the bills.

5 points by rrampage 4y ago

cratermoon 4y ago

That aged like a fine glass of milk.

mindcrime 4y ago
The thing is, I believe that everything (or very nearly everything) that pg said about Java in this essay is correct. So why was he so wrong in terms of saying that Java would not be successful? I'd posit that it's because of the one thing that Java got oh-so-right compared to most other languages that were around near its inception. And that one thing is object compatibility, and enabling library based development using binary libraries (as opposed to having to pull library code into your project and compile it alongside your own code). The cross-platform compatibility stuff, while not quite the "write once, run anywhere" dream was also close enough to be a useful factor. I remember building Java code on a Windows machine and deploying it to AIX systems circa 2001-2003 or so and just being amazed at how seamless it was. And for an "honourable mention" one might throw in the JDWP/JPDA stuff[1]. Java made it really easy to connect a symbolic debugger to a running (remote) server and step through code line by line. No, it wasn't the first environment that could do that, but I think that taken together these three things went a long way towards offsetting the various negatives of Java and helping to gain so much traction.
- cratermoon 4y ago
  Most of what he said was opinion, so there's no correct or incorrect, just whether or not you agree with him. The interesting aspect of this and why it's aged so poorly is that almost none of the things mentioned ended up being a factor in the adoption of Java or, really, any other language popular today. Java is currently #3 on the Tiobe index, behind C. C++ and C# are right behind Java. Javascript is #7, PHP is #9.

jfengel 4y ago

PG's argument must have seemed surreal even at the time. Java was already entrenched by 2001. His argument seems to be "large corporations never do anything good, all innovation comes from individual hackers". So he hadn't just missed the point on Java, but on where the entire world was going. Users want products, not code. The hackers may be able to use low-level code to make hardware do unexpected things, but it turns out that there wasn't much utility in that. New capabilities came from new hardware, not clever exploits of existing hardware. Smartphones opened up whole new universes. But nobody cared what language the software was written in, and the crucial ability was to get the software solid, not clever. People may not love Java; it may not be "fun". But it gets the job done, in ways that "fun" projects don't. When I wrote C I spent most of my time running down difficult errors that simply weren't necessary. The minute I saw a NullPointerException stack trace I knew I wasn't going to be writing C any more. That's not about Java per se. It's about PG missing why programmers get paid to program. The hackers may not like it, and maybe that was PG's target audience for that essay. But the rest of the world just wants the code done, and they're the ones paying the bills.