About 10 years ago, at a Q&A session with the almost-CTO of a Fortune 100 enterprise: carlsborg: how much java does your company use compared to c++, and where

About 10 years ago, at a Q&A session with the almost-CTO of a Fortune 100 enterprise: carlsborg: how much java does your company use compared to c++, and where do you see that going? cto: we're at about 50% java - 50% c++, and we want to go to 90-10 carlsborg: why? cto: its costs less to do it in java (While this math might not hold true today, at the time it did - java 1.4 was relatively easy to master in its entirety, and universities were adopting it as the de facto programming language) I think what he meant was that it cost less to develop java applications compared to C++ ones, in the fairly common situation where you didn't need the low level power and performance of C++. Personally, I think what helped adoption was the boatloads of high quality middleware, multiple vendor support, and a relatively fast moving and open standards process. The latter playing an important role - when a language/technology stack stagnates, early adopters tend to go elsewhere looking for an "edge" and take their allegiance with them.