Re: Some Laws
Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 08:59:10 -0400
Message-ID: <c7OdnW_jhfckVc_cRVn-iw_at_comcast.com>
"Marshall Spight" <mspight_at_dnai.com> wrote in message
news:I5k4d.91137$D%.72678_at_attbi_s51...
> "robert" <gnuoytr_at_rcn.com> wrote in message
news:da3c2186.0409211922.21e7ea7f_at_posting.google.com...
> >
> > the java twinks are a herd of lemmings. who happen to be convinced
> > that any thought they have must be profound and original.
>
> That's just rude and uncalled for, and dead wrong to boot.
It's not dead wrong, in my experience. If you include people whose cultural memory extends back only about 6 years, there are a great many of them who claim originality in Java for language features that data back as far as Smalltalk, Simula, or Lisp.
There are a lot of 25 year olds whose cultural memory only goes back that far.
YMVV.
> Java has been and continues to be an extraordinary success,
> both in terms of popularity and in terms of getting work done.
Agreed.
> This popularity engenders an enormous amount of hostility
> and resentment for reasons I don't entirely understand. What's
> the opposite of shadenfreude?
>
Part of this is fear of change. Part of it is the overselling of Java. Part of it is the claim made that old COBOL programmers or old PL/1 programmers or old anybody "can't learn Java" bacause, well, because they are too OLD to learn. And part of it is just plain envy.
> At the same time, I've never heard anyone in the Java camp
> claim any particular profundity or orginality. It's just a damn
> useful language is all. If you don't like it, that's fine, but to
> make up fake attributions for the Java camp and then lambaste
> them for it is the worst kind of rhetoric.
>
As long as to consider Java to be mostly the consolidation of ideas that
have been around for a while, and not a radical departure, I have to
agree. What you've been exposed to seems to back up your claim that our
attributions are fabrications.
In my own case, it's mostly things I heard people say, not things I read
in print. So I can't refute your claim. But I still think that your claim
is not true, in my experience.
Received on Thu Sep 23 2004 - 14:59:10 CEST