Java's cover (2001)

Java must be the best example I know of a technology that is so solid that it has survived every kind of adversity and ill-conceived marketing, eventually finding a niche anywhere but where it was intended to go.

Paul's, and most other criticisms, tend to address everything but Java the language: the hype, the enterprise technology stack, the suited masses of consultants and 'architects', the bandwagon effect.

It is a strong testament to Gosling's work, that something that was primarily intended for embedded systems and browser objects, then co-opted for enterprise sales to fat cat corporate clients, all the while trying and failing to be a desktop platform, eventually found success as a server-side language for web applications and playing host to a plethora of hip scripting engines running off the VM.

You know you have a strong product when not even the people who own it can kill it off despite their best efforts.

Ok, I'm a little intrigued.

Does pg still think that way about Java today ? Or does he think Java proved him wrong and turned out to be more successful (different?) ?

What about all the other hackers here?

I, for one, have used Java extensively. And, lately I am back in last couple of months, in using Java. I am actually thinking about taking it more seriously this time. (Although last time I used it for around 2 years on and off alongside Prolog and C#). But more and more it feels like, it might be worth it to go back to Java, instead of doing everything in PHP/HTML/CSS way.

Now, mind it, I realise there's always a lot of learning curve in Java towards the beginning, and I am not the best guy in Java web programming still, but I am pleasantly surprised the way people have used it.

Also, it seems like it might be a good investment of time, since everything is so Object Oriented, and once you get the basics covered, you can use Java pretty much on anything now.

To make an android app, to make blazing fast, best practices driven Google Web toolkit apps, to use the vast majority of libraries and snippets available, and to use the Best design patterns.

It seems like a good choice that way.

Also, it helps in being organised, and so the transition of people joining might be easier.

On other hand, younger developers, especially web developers kinda seem to like the whole <insert your favourite scripting language here> (PHP, Ruby) world better, my guess is because deploying is so much easier and the learning curve is much smaller in the beginning. I wonder how bad the learning curve is for bigger PHP projects, when you bring in new developers to the team, since there is no particular pattern and people design the app according to their coding style too much. Again, I am quite ignorant here, and would love to know about some organised ways to PHP, pretty much OOP programming in PHP :) , that sounds weird though. That's like saying I want to do procedural programming in Prolog/ LISP.

Now, just like pg was in 2001, I am not used to programming in PHP and the likes....although I have made my basic web app in that (click here for a crappy looking demo www.skejulers.com/demoing)

would love to know other's perspectives on this.