What's confusing about that? Folks switched from C to java in fairly large droves, and my entire argument is that this happened not because java was C with nicer syntax, but because java was very much not C at all: It did NOT let you program to the bare metal and give you entirely different features instead.
Scala lets you do everything java does, with slightly nicer syntax. I'm trying to explain that this is historically not a formula for creating the next big thing programming language. Scala could of course be the first language in history to become a 15%er based on only nice syntax, but that would be rather surprising. (15%er = a language which, at some point in time, was being used for at least 15% of all coding going on worldwide. Only a select few languages can make this claim, and there are usually only 2 at a time. Right now this is C and java, and you'd have to go back more than a decade to find another). On Aug 26, 5:51 am, Josh Berry <[email protected]> wrote: > On Aug 25, 6:56 pm, Reinier Zwitserloot <[email protected]> wrote: > > > NB: Also worth considering: No language EVER has become truly gigantic > > by offering nice syntax. Instead, the languages that won tended to > > offer really crappy syntax but provided something else, not related to > > syntax, that caused mass conversion. C did not attempt to abstract > > away the bare metal too much but did offer standardization across > > platforms. Java brought the garbage collector, very nice (at the time, > > at any rate) portable multithreading, and seamless freedom of moving > > to different hardware, "seamless" defined as relative to your options > > before it came out, all WITHOUT a radical new syntax. > > I think it is disingenuous to compare languages today with the likes > of C. Especially when your argument is "C did not attempt to abstract > away the bare metal" and then go to use this to somehow argue for a > language that completely abstracted away the "bare metal" by being a > VM targeted language. (There is something rather amusing about > claiming that Java is somehow the first language that offered portable > anything. Hell, I think SCUMM succeeds at that goal.) > > I find it a much more compelling story to say that Java managed to > take the familiarity with C and expose people to non "bare metal" > programming. Once there, people should start to wonder what other ill > conceived notions they could drop, such as "all languages should be > closer to c." -- 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.
