On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 3:06 PM, Casper Bang <[email protected]> wrote:
> These aspect has probably been > most prominently covered by Paul Graham's essays "Java's cover", > "Great hackers" and "Hackers and Painters": > > The funny thing about "Java's cover" essay is how right he is about Java's "cover" but how wrong he got his conclusion "I have a hunch that [Java] won't be a very successful language" > Most of the critiques he puts on Java in that essay and others are true to some extent or another. Yet it has been by any reasonable measure one of the most spectacularly successful languages in the history of languages. Partly it's because PG sees the world through PG colored glasses. "Historically, languages designed for large organizations (PL/I, Ada) have > lost, while hacker languages (C, Perl) have won." > See? PG colored glasses. He ignores the massive success of languages like COBOL and RPG. He also ignores the distinct lack of broad success (at least by C and Perl standards) of his favorite family of hacker languages : Lisp and Scheme. Then from this incorrect assumption he draws a totally incorrect conclusion about the future of Java. In fact, by the date of the article Java was already a huge success, so he was not just predicting wrong he was almost willfully ignoring the world around him. Either that, or he's got a peculiarly non-obvious definition of "success." Don't get me wrong: everybody should read PG. He's a great writer and if nothing else you will learn much about the art of the essay. He's also quite often thought provoking. But when you read him be sure to keep your critcal thinking skills in tact. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
