Languages cannot get better, only bigger, without dropping backwards compatibility. This is why Java needs to die. Not because it's particularly horrible, but because we can do better now.
Yes, I get to use mature libraries for everything without having to spend development time redoing them, and can focus on business code instead.
Imagine you updated your pom file and bunch of stuff stopped working. If it's easy enough to fix you do it, if not you might just revert pom changes and stay with older version of the language, module or whatever. That wouldn't happen with versioned specification languages.
> I see no particular advantage in specifying the language version in each and every file
You obviously stuck with this mindset and not thinking about it hard enough.
In many languages there is already a mechanism for specifying that kind of info, like pragmas or CDATA in SGML descended markup languages. And it's not hard to introduce either way. Javascript borrowed 'use strict' from Perl 5, for example.
In the end you write something in a language. What language you use to write that isn't defined in some external file, it's an inherent property of the text. You can't write a note in Ye Olde English and expect it to be understood by modern people without issues.
Dropping some backwards compatibility which impacts performance the most is sensible and I wish java would do some of that but this is a long way from killing java.
Java runs the world, you will have to work very hard and long to produce the same Ecosystem around something else.
When you see someone say let's kill Java what does that mean for the JVM? Because Oracle will not say ya cool let's just focus on other languages running on the JVM like kotlin and Scala and drop java all together.
Java is more optimized performance wise than Scala and Kotlin and performance is important not just cool syntax.
I think it's good that we have other implementations that allows the JVM to be pushed further and make Java compete with them, it's a win-win for the languages that run on the JVM and Java itself.
Not true. You're running bytecode, not Java. Compiled JVM languages benefit from JVM optimizations all the same.
No one will actually 'kill' Java, it's about mindset of the users and companies. Kill Java = Give another JVM language a try.
Oracle JVM isn't the only JVM implementation.
Quite true, but from Azul, IBM, HP, Jamaica, Aonix, Excelsior, Gamato,CodenameOne, ... who is interested in replacing Java (the language)?
All in all I'm for interoperation. "And", not "or". No one is forcing you to rewrite existing Java code.
Sure you can have other languages running there, but unless their is first tier support for those languages, most customers won't care and will only allow for first tier programming languages.
Once you go deep with Scala magic it goes downhill, but prob. 80% as fast.
I think Java and other JVM languages can co-exist nicely, depending on the task at hand, there is no "need" to kill anything, I wish you could mix and match code from different JVM languages easily.
Completely agree. Dropping backwards compatibility, if you have serious users, really isn't an option either. Just look at Python 2/3.
You can deprecate stuff and very very very very slowly remove it, but it really is a slow process if you want to keep your existing users happy.
That makes it easier to self select jobs and to recruit =)
A win win.