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Has the buzz for Java ever come from Hot New Features? As I recall that buzz was 80% marketing budget from Sun then Oracle, the stability of the platform and th
by roenxi 3y ago
Has the buzz for Java ever come from Hot New Features? As I recall that buzz was 80% marketing budget from Sun then Oracle, the stability of the platform and the ready availability of programmers.
If anyone ever picked Java for its features, their judgement should be questioned. The thinking might well withstand that questioning, but it isn't an obvious choice on the basis of features. I mean, Java itself is an obvious choice - but not because of its features. You can show me languages with much better feature-sets and I'll nod, agree then recommend Java for production use. The features just aren't the selling point.
- TheCoelacanth 3y agoNo, but new features have staved off competitors from taking over Java's buzz. If Java still had the feature set of Java 8, it would have lost a lot more market share to other JVM languages like Kotlin, Scala, Groovy, Clojure, etc.
- mason55 3y agoJava was in real danger in the seven years that it took to go from 5 to 7. Very little of substance was added and it didn't appear like there was a path forward to get any real new features added to the language. Yes, Java is not the language to use if you want the hot new PL ideas in your language. But languages need to continue to move forward because it's not like PL research is dead either. I think Java does a really good job now at being conservative with what they add while still keeping things modern enough that people aren't abandoning the language. Once features have proved themselves in other, less conservative languages, the Java team can add them, with the benefit of seeing what sorts of problems might arise.