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Java at 30: Interview with James Gosling

(thenewstack.io)
176 points chhum | 4 comments | 16 May 25 13:05 UTC | HN request time: 0.661s | source
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nelup20 ◴[16 May 25 21:01 UTC] No.44009800[source]▶
I personally appreciate Java (and the JVM) much more after having tried other languages/ecosystems that people kept saying were so much better than Java. Instead, I just felt like it was a "the grass is greener" every time. The only other language that I felt was an actual massive improvement is Rust (which so far has been a joy to work with).

It's a shame imo that it's not seen as a "cool" option for startups, because at this point, the productivity gap compared to other languages is small, if nonexistent.

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kllrnohj ◴[16 May 25 22:21 UTC] No.44010282[source]▶
Personally I think C# is miles ahead of Java and in meaningful ways (like a drastically better implementation of generics, not to mention value types have existed for eons at this point and an FFI system that doesn't hate you for using it)

But nobody seems to talk about or care about C# except for Unity. Microsoft really missed the boat on getting mindshare for it back in the day.

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1. echelon ◴[16 May 25 22:25 UTC] No.44010302[source]▶
That's because the Microsoft of 2000 - 2014, the Ballmer era, was Microsoft-first. It didn't care about other platforms, it didn't care about the web, and it didn't care about open source. C# could be great, but it existed in a bubble.

Java kept growing and wound up everywhere. It played nice with Linux. Enterprise Mac developers didn't have trouble writing it with IntelliJ. It spread faster because it was open.

Satya Nadella fixed a lot of Microsoft's ills, but it was too late for C# to rise to prominence. It's now the Github / TypeScript / AI era, and Satya is killing it.

The one good thing to say about Ballmer is that he kicked off Azure. Microsoft grew from strength to strength after that.

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2. ◴[16 May 25 22:31 UTC] No.44010348[source]▶
3. fuzztester ◴[17 May 25 02:18 UTC] No.44011550[source]▶
>Satya Nadella fixed a lot of Microsoft's ills,

which ones?

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4. echelon ◴[17 May 25 02:51 UTC] No.44011676[source]▶
So many.

Microsoft isn't thought of as evil anymore, but is open source and Linux friendly. GitHub, VScode, Typescript. Azure is booming, ...

But the big one: stock price.