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Java at 30: Interview with James Gosling

(thenewstack.io)
187 points chhum | 2 comments | 16 May 25 13:05 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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cloudking ◴[16 May 25 14:43 UTC] No.44006117[source]▶
Why is Java so popular in enterprise?
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hackthemack ◴[16 May 25 14:51 UTC] No.44006195[source]▶
I worked in IT from the 90s to today. My perspective is it grew and grew because Sun supported it, then IBM supported it, RedHat supported it. It had the glimmer that it was the "Enterprise Way" of doing "Real IT" programming for "Real Businesses". I am not saying any of that is the "Truth", just the perception that was held by the majority of people who could choose what to write enterprise code in.
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fidotron ◴[16 May 25 15:06 UTC] No.44006392{3}[source]▶
What was the viable alternative?

Microsoft had C#, at one point IBM pushed SmallTalk. C++ for these environments is doable but going to slow you down at development a lot, as well as being much harder to secure.

At that time the dynamic alternative was Perl, and that remained true basically until Rails came along.

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1. SoftTalker ◴[16 May 25 22:37 UTC] No.44010398{4}[source]▶
C++ or maybe Objective-C.

Of course those were much more hazardous languages than Java.

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2. fidotron ◴[16 May 25 23:14 UTC] No.44010638[source]▶
Oh yeah, WebObjects! I had forgotten that entirely, and it then transitioned to Java itself.