Hacker News Reader

Comment by paulsutter | Hacker News Reader

pg never said Java would be unpopular. He dismissed it much as he dismissed Cobol and Visual Basic. In 1990 Cobol was the most popular programming language in the world [1]. And in 2000 Visual Basic was the most popular programming language in the world [2].

The essay is about hacker's radar, not Java, anyway. Personally I loved his list of other technologies he has ignored.

[1] http://archive.adaic.com/docs/reports/lawlis/m.htm

[2] http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Visual+Basic+Programmers+Journ...

View on HN

From the article: "So far, Java seems like a stinker to me. I've never written a Java program, never more than glanced over reference books about it, but I have a hunch that it won't be a very successful language."

I think that pretty clearly says that (at that time) he didn't think it'd be very popular.

So, you think popularity is success? I think that when Paul says "success", he means "winning" in an old sense that "those who adopt X have a better chance at winning" whatever it is. Just because the language is widely used doesn't mean it's contributing to the success of the adopters.

So how would you propose measuring "contributing to the success of the adopters" ? It seems that there is no way to either prove or disprove the statement hence any statement about the "success" of a language could be claimed as valid/true.

>pg never said Java would be unpopular

He did:

>So far, Java seems like a stinker to me. I've never written a Java program, never more than glanced over reference books about it, but I have a hunch that it won't be a very successful language.

Popular and successful are not the same thing.

I could go through and dispute his points one by one in traditional internet style but to do so would be to miss the fundamental difference in viewpoint. A piece of art can be considered aesthetically unsuccessful while still being a massive commercial hit.

The liberal hacker will generally consider Java (if not the JVM) a failure.

The conservative software developer will generally consider Java (and the JVM) massively successful.

See Yegge on the liberal/conservative distinction: https://plus.google.com/110981030061712822816/posts/KaSKeg4v...

So if PG was considering the market success of this "stinker" then no, his prediction was clearly a failure. But if you consider the aesthetic success? Well, Java certainly isn't cool in certain circles.

Personally I like Java and consider it successful - but I don't think PG's article is prima facie a prophetic failure.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com