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June 21, 2003

Java as a language for the masses

Carlos Perez: Java Is a Language for the Masses. Fascinating. With Java, there's apparently been a conscious design decision to reduce language malleability. (And the same would apply to .NET: the namespace becomes a shared vocabulary). Quotes Willam Grosso saying

The single best measure of whether a programming language is worth using is: how well does it support communities. The social aspects of the language dominate the technological aspects of the language
If "worth using" equates to "widely deployed", that would be likely true. Certainly "worth learning" does correlate with "being the default programming language", if only for economic reasons.

Do download Grosso's presentation for some more arguments.

On some level I totally, completely agree: when I'm thinking about building a "platform" level of APIs (which isn't really part of my day job, but I kinda stray onto that territory sometimes). If you're building a platform, the only sensible thing is to build it for the greatest possible, longest lived, most approachable developer familiarity (above, say, performance). One of the reasons that Web Services APIs are a Good Thing.