> > How can that sound like a Java fan? Doesn't even compare to the heralding > going on in the Scala camp. All I'm saying is that there are millions of > Java developers who can't change, and should not be made to feel bad for not > having done so. No one wants to be left behind. There are still millions of > programs and billions of lines of code written in Java that have to be > maintained. Aren't there still Cobol, Fortran, C, C++ and Lisp developers > out there maintaining and upgrading systems? I don't see them getting a > bunch of grief because they haven't switched. They are necessary and useful > developers and should not be looked down on just because they do not have a > job using the latest development language. >
There's two categories here. Those who think they can't change language because the decision was forced upon them. Especially for junior developers this often is the case. But... As developers we're paid to solve problems. If a team were to approach their manager and state their belief that a particular tool or language is the best way for them to solve problems, then it's a bad manager who wouldn't listen to them and at least consider the idea seriously. There's also nothing to stop you learning a language outside of the office. It can't hurt your CV, can it? There's also the category who feel Java is perfect, it can never be improved upon, it's a waste of time to even consider looking at alternatives, and other languages are nothing but an irritating distraction. There's many reasons someone may feel like this. Sometimes it's managers who don't do much coding but feel the extra boilerplate offers a safety net (it doesn't). Sometimes it's folk who are dependent on their IDE and can't bear the thought of being separated from it (you don't need to be). Sometimes it's 9-5ers who just want to pay their mortgage and spend time with their family. Sometimes people are scared of learning and believe they genuinely wouldn't be able to understand a new language (they would). Whatever the reason, there's a sizeable number of people who are able to change language if they wanted to, which they don't. This second group is almost the most worrying. There's a very human tendency to rationalize why we don't want to do things. Without due care, such rationalization can easily take such forms as "it's too complex", "my junior colleagues wouldn't be able to understand it", "it has nothing of value to add to Java" or "It's too risky because..." > > That companies decide and not the developers. There are RPG programs > running on AS400 systems that were created back when I was a freshman in > college. They are still running, doing their job, and someone has to > maintain them. Until it is more expensive to maintain than to replace, these > languages and systems will be maintained. There will need to be people to do > the work, and that means there will be Cobol programmers still working well > into the future. It is all about business, not technology. > Office Depot did it. They had some business-critical software running on massively expensive AS400 hardware. Their developers decided on a language they felt was productive enough and safe enough that a strategic team could use the language for rewriting this system. It does happen. So what if there are half the lines of code. Ever try reading a Perl > program? > why must "fewer lines" always be taken to mean "more like Perl". Try spending a few hours writing Java on a whiteboard with a colleague. See how frustrating it gets. After a while you'll find yourself leaving out things like duplicate types and equals methods and using pseudo-code like "convert the entire list to lower case" because both of the *humans* involved understand exactly what it means. Those bits you leave out and abbreviate... don't you want your programming language to do the same? > What makes you think that Scala is so much more elegant. 5 years from now > there may be an even better language than Scala. Humans improve things > incrementally. Our goal is perfection but I'm not naive enough to believe > that we can reach it in my lifetime. > Isn't it enough to strive for it? If the goal is perfection and the road is improvement, then should we remain standing still because the goal seems too far away? -- Kevin Wright mail / gtalk / msn : [email protected] pulse / skype: kev.lee.wright twitter: @thecoda -- 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.
