←back to thread

Java at 30: Interview with James Gosling

(thenewstack.io)
253 points chhum | 4 comments | 16 May 25 13:05 UTC | HN request time: 0.834s | source
Show context
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.

replies(6): >>44009912 #>>44009928 #>>44009952 #>>44010109 #>>44010282 #>>44010468 #
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.

replies(12): >>44010302 #>>44010329 #>>44010450 #>>44010481 #>>44010493 #>>44010636 #>>44010692 #>>44010825 #>>44010902 #>>44011079 #>>44011124 #>>44012556 #
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.

replies(2): >>44010348 #>>44011550 #
1. fuzztester ◴[17 May 25 02:18 UTC] No.44011550[source]▶
>Satya Nadella fixed a lot of Microsoft's ills,

which ones?

replies(1): >>44011676 #
2. 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.

replies(2): >>44014257 #>>44020211 #
3. Squeeeez ◴[17 May 25 13:39 UTC] No.44014257[source]▶
> Microsoft isn't thought of as evil anymore

Maybe you don't think of it like that, but please remember that, especially with some decisions made in the past months, more and more people are turning away from everything Microsoft.

4. int_19h ◴[18 May 25 09:56 UTC] No.44020211[source]▶
Funny you should mention open source and VSCode.

VSCode itself, for all the promotional materials about how it's open source, is officially "a distribution of the Code - OSS repository with Microsoft-specific customizations released under a traditional Microsoft product license".

But wait, you might say, it's just like Chrome vs Chromium - so long as we have the OSS edition, it's all good! But, unless you're writing JS or TS, you need extensions to do anything useful. Python is an extension. So is C#, and C++. And all of these are partially closed source - e.g. code completion for all three, or debugging for both C# and C++.

Worse yet, the licenses for those closed source parts specifically prohibit their installation and use in anything other than the official closed source VSCode distro. And this isn't just verbiage - there are actual runtime checks in all these products that block attempts to use them in VSCodium, Cursor etc.

The same goes for the official VSCode extension gallery / marketplace - you can't legally use it from anything other than the official VSCode. Enforcing that is trickier, but even here Microsoft managed to find a way to frustrate its users: it used to be possible to download a .vsix from the Marketplace, but that feature has been removed recently, precisely because people were using that in conjunction with Cursor etc.

Much open source, indeed.