On Sun, 2017-12-24 at 16:51 +0000, Patrick Schluter via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> 
[…]
> The big issues with Java and C# are the required infrastructure for deployment. They could be the best languages since sliced bread, they would still be annoying to deploy as the runtime is an emulator.
> 
> I ported 1 app from Java to D. It was so unspectacular (or better said it was spectacularly easy) that you're probably right. Reaching to Java devs is a good idea. The advantage of Java though, is not the language but the huge, huge, huge existing libraries and packages and know how. This will be difficult to overcome  for any language.
> 

But unless people submit proposals showing how D beats Java in direct
competition, the JVM focused people will never know. Take DevoxxUK and
JAXLondon the two primary JVM-related conferences in London. No mention
of Go or Rust, let alone D. Single language conferences are tools for
retaining people within the language, ditto programs such as Java
Champions.

-- 
Russel.
===========================================
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk

On Sunday, 24 December 2017 at 17:08:26 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:
> On Sun, 2017-12-24 at 16:51 +0000, Patrick Schluter via Digitalmars-d wrote:
>> 
> […]
>> The big issues with Java and C# are the required infrastructure for deployment. They could be the best languages since sliced bread, they would still be annoying to deploy as the runtime is an emulator.
>> 
>> I ported 1 app from Java to D. It was so unspectacular (or better said it was spectacularly easy) that you're probably right. Reaching to Java devs is a good idea. The advantage of Java though, is not the language but the huge, huge, huge existing libraries and packages and know how. This will be difficult to overcome  for any language.
>> 
>
> But unless people submit proposals showing how D beats Java in direct
> competition, the JVM focused people will never know. Take DevoxxUK and
> JAXLondon the two primary JVM-related conferences in London. No mention
> of Go or Rust, let alone D. Single language conferences are tools for
> retaining people within the language, ditto programs such as Java
> Champions.

New things grow at the fringes.  See the work of Clayton Christensen and his book the Innovator's Dilemma.  A head-on assault is ill-advised.  People looking for salvation are easier to talk to than those who don't see anything wrong with what they're doing currently.

On Sun, 2017-12-24 at 17:13 +0000, Laeeth Isharc via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> […]
> 
> New things grow at the fringes.  See the work of Clayton Christensen and his book the Innovator's Dilemma.  A head-on assault is ill-advised.  People looking for salvation are easier to talk to than those who don't see anything wrong with what they're doing currently.

Not my experience in the JVM-related community, and to an extent the Python community, at least in the UK. Head on collisions create debate, and get you remembered. The debate generally leads to change, even if not the change initially envisaged. At least the status quo gets perturbed.

Just dealing with the fringes and solving their problems rarely get serious traction. cf. Golo, Gosu, Fantom, Crystal, Pony, all of which solve definite problems but none of which have any serious traction to move programming on.

-- 
Russel.
===========================================
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk

On Sun, 2017-12-24 at 16:58 +0000, Laeeth Isharc via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> Programming languages are tools for solving problems, and people face different problems and they also have different capabilities and tastes, which means even for people facing identical problems, the right tool for the job may not be the same because they aren't identical as groups and as individuals.

Thinking of a programming language as a domain specific language for solving problems in a domain helps with this. Along with can a language enable creation of a DSL for solving my problems. Creating functions is creating a DSL in any language.

> Languages are also about much more than syntax; they are also about communities, ecosystems, and values.  In the beginning people generally join a community because they admire the values and capabilities of those prominent in the community.  Prestige often has a lot to do with that.

The issue of communities, aka tribes, cannot be underestimated. The sense of belonging, and us vs. them, are very, very powerful in determining success and failure for any programming language.

> How does prestige develop?  From tangible consequences produced by able and virtuous people acting together to create something. There's a long lead time on that one, but it's not something that can be rushed.

And sales and marketing. Arguably C was the last language that got
traction based solely on technical benefit and tribalism. All other
languages with traction since have had serious marketing behind them.


-- 
Russel.
===========================================
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk

On Sunday, 24 December 2017 at 21:27:12 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:
>
> And sales and marketing. Arguably C was the last language that got
> traction based solely on technical benefit and tribalism. All other
> languages with traction since have had serious marketing behind them.

1995. A dark year. Two of the crappiest language ever devised by man arrived. Both gained traction. Java, through marketing. PhP though tribalism.

On Sunday, 24 December 2017 at 22:04:00 UTC, Dan Partelly wrote:

>
> 1995. A dark year. Two of the crappiest language ever devised by man arrived. Both gained traction. Java, through marketing. PhP though tribalism.

What makes Java a "crappy" language?

I think PHP's success is due to its ability to integrate HTML statements. Also, it was often the only option back in the day from cheap web hosting services. And it seemed like on those cheap web hosts, when offered, Python and Perl were accessed via CGI, while PHP used via an Apache module which I think gave it a speed/resource utilization advantage.

On Sunday, 24 December 2017 at 22:21:28 UTC, Tony wrote:
> On Sunday, 24 December 2017 at 22:04:00 UTC, Dan Partelly wrote:
>
>>
>> 1995. A dark year. Two of the crappiest language ever devised by man arrived. Both gained traction. Java, through marketing. PhP though tribalism.
>
> What makes Java a "crappy" language?
>

It starts with "everything must be a class". An die hard OOP language with little support for anything else. And to put it in the words of the great Alex Stepanov:


Yes. STL is not object oriented. I think that object orientedness is almost as much of a hoax as Artificial Intelligence. I have yet to see an interesting piece of code that comes from these OO people. [1]

The second big issue this language caused is social in nature - the intellectual eclipse in schools and the programmers it created. See "The Perils of Java schools"[2].

It beget some horrific software, bloated to hell. I recall seeing desktop financial apps which spawned web servers on desktop and had the UI in browser. Starting slow, big, the Java mentality beget those horrors. You could see Wirth's law [3] in every almost every program.

[1] http://www.stlport.org/resources/StepanovUSA.html
[2] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/12/29/the-perils-of-javaschools-2/
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law

On Sunday, 24 December 2017 at 22:21:28 UTC, Tony wrote:
> On Sunday, 24 December 2017 at 22:04:00 UTC, Dan Partelly wrote:
>
>>
>> 1995. A dark year. Two of the crappiest language ever devised by man arrived. Both gained traction. Java, through marketing. PhP though tribalism.
>
> What makes Java a "crappy" language?
>
> I think PHP's success is due to its ability to integrate HTML statements. Also, it was often the only option back in the day from cheap web hosting services. And it seemed like on those cheap web hosts, when offered, Python and Perl were accessed via CGI, while PHP used via an Apache module which I think gave it a speed/resource utilization advantage.

PHP's success came from the fact that it was free (like in beer) and free (like in open source). All other webserver languages were at that time either brittle and  difficult (cgi+perl) or high cost solutions like ColdFusion. PHP had the advantage that providers could install them on their server farms without breaking the bank and also with a semblence of performance and security.
LAMP could only become what it is because of the free/free aspect of its component.

On Sun, 2017-12-24 at 22:04 +0000, Dan Partelly via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> […]
> 
> 1995. A dark year. Two of the crappiest language ever devised by man arrived. Both gained traction. Java, through marketing. PhP though tribalism.

I thought 1995 was a good year (*). I have no idea about PHP, but the Java bubble was interesting, especially having watching it evolve alongside Self in the 1990 to 1994 period.

"Crappy" is a subjective thing with no objective usefulness. There was, and still is, a lot wrong with Java, and indeed the whole OO obsession (**), but it caused a very useful revolution in 1994. It remains arguably the single most important programming language in 2017, whether a liked state or not.


(*) Mostly because I got a Chair of Computing Science at KCL.

(**) There is a lot wrong with the functional obsession as well.

-- 
Russel.
===========================================
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk

On Mon, 2017-12-25 at 08:12 +0000, Dan Partelly via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> 
[…]
> It starts with "everything must be a class". An die hard OOP language with little support for anything else. And to put it in the words of the great Alex Stepanov:
> 
> 
> Yes. STL is not object oriented. I think that object orientedness is almost as much of a hoax as Artificial Intelligence. I have yet to see an interesting piece of code that comes from these OO people. [1]

Very much the same could be, and indeed has been, said of the STL. i.e. that there is no interesting piece of software using it. Having said that it also caused a useful revolution in programming in the area where C++ was, and is, used.

One persons opinion is irrelevant, unless you believe in advocacy research.

> The second big issue this language caused is social in nature - the intellectual eclipse in schools and the programmers it created. See "The Perils of Java schools"[2].

There were problem with the Java revolution in university education in 1994, but there was also a lot of good stuff that came out of it. Without a proper historical analysis, all that is left is (non- constructive) prejudice.

> It beget some horrific software, bloated to hell. I recall seeing desktop financial apps which spawned web servers on desktop and had the UI in browser. Starting slow, big, the Java mentality beget those horrors. You could see Wirth's law [3] in every almost every program.

There is no doubt that software bloat has been a problem over the years. Much of it is centred on Java, but then there is a lot in all software. But then C and C++ brought us buffer overruns. All programming languages bring awfulness as well as some goodness.

-- 
Russel.
===========================================
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk