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Comment by typicalrunt | Hacker News Reader

I get the feeling he is making the common mistake of comparing Java with JVM. Java, as a language, is fine but many other languages (Ruby, Python) run on top of the JVM and have very good execution times (plus multi-core support).

...languages like Ruby. These are slow as molasses (though now our CPUs are much faster) but easy to program for a broader, younger, and maybe less experienced crowd of developers.

Something about this rubs me the wrong way, and smacks of elitism. I've seen some amazing code from the Ruby community yet I feel he is confusing a language's learning curve with the experience of its development community.

Under Ruby, we put C++. On top of Ruby we put the Rails web framework. It’s not very common to actually code anything in Ruby.

Wow. I completely disagree with this. I stopped reading after that.

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I have to correct a few other things in his post.

a) There are shittons of frameworks for Ruby. Rails is definitely not the only one, its just most popular. Most good libraries are framework indepenedent and have plugins into that framework. One example is Guard or CarrierWave. The elegance of it all is what separates it from java.

b) Much easier and faster to develop for. allows for rapid prototyping and mutations. Writing front-end servers in ruby > writing front-end servers in java as ruby can do things in 1 line that take 50 in java.

c) As we see with facebook, sometimes a "slow" front-end written in a prototyping language is better, but the back-end is written in a performant language.

d) The power of ruby/rails is the community. That is it's number one source of power and without it, rails is crap. There is a lot of Java developers, yet the awesome java frameworks are things like hadoop, meant for data processing.

I don't think there will be a "second coming" of java. I think Java will die, but the JVM (will probably) live on. Either that or the JVM will die to be replaced by something the community makes, if oracle has any say in the matter, knowing how oracle is doing everything possible to alienate java.

However there will be no second coming of java because it never left. Java is still going strong within the rails community as most are fully aware that you write your application in ruby, and anything important that has to be performant will be written in java. There's just no alternative.

Who says the performant code has to be written in Java? It could be another JVM language (Twitter is using Scala for this), or it could be some other non-JVM language if that language better fits the situation's needs.

Cringely's post is pure link bait (or even flame bait). I feel sorry for those who read the post as if the author is knowledgable about this subject matter. Picture the IT manager or CIO who reads that and thinks their continued investment in Java as the "one language to rule them all" was a good decision. That person would be better served reading Steve Yegge's platform rant from earlier today.

No one language is equally great at solving every foreseeable problem. The only good answer is not to be afraid of using multiple languages/technology stacks and be prepared to replace existing pieces with ones that are better when the time comes.

>> knowing how oracle is doing everything possible to alienate java

I'm an optimist, I think I'm seeing indications that Oracle might back off and give this thing the room it needs to grow. Larry Ellison is growing older and though it's not always the case, he may be growing a bit wiser.

Easy code is easy, but intricate Ruby code is way way more complex and hard to write and understand than intricate Java code is. I reject the notion that Ruby, is in any way easier than Java.

Actually, I think the ease with which you can learn and code Java is one of the reasons for its success. The idea that Java programmers, by and large, are more experienced and skilled than those who use dynamic languages is preposterous, imho.

For years now, Java has been the first language you learn in academic settings. It's certainly isn't true that Java is something you only learn a few years into your career.

Cringely simply doesn't know his ass from his face on this topic. Who would'a thunk it.

On top of Ruby we put the Rails web framework. It’s not very common to actually code anything in Ruby.

Is he really confusing programming languages with frameworks? I can't take anything serious that he writes anyways but that's pretty ignorant.

Even if it weren't an absurd statement you could say the same thing about Java, "on top of Java we put the Struts web framework. It's not very common to code anything in Java."

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