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Comment by resonious | Hacker News Reader

> First, the excitement is overblown - at least from a business perspective. At the moment Java is expanding into a vacuum. It allows you to make cool web pages, and that is a very attractive thing for people. It gives programmers something new to learn, book people something new to sell books on, software tool companies a way to issue new development tools etc.

This is a pretty interesting take, and it feels relevant to this day with respect to both frontend and backend frameworks. I always thought of frameworks as just fads where people simply enjoy to try new ideas and are just having fun. I've always agreed with the overall sentiment that, for example, no one will be going out of business just because their frontend isn't React, but it's interesting to consider that people also profit off of these "fads" by selling books and tools, resulting in a sort of perpetual motion machine.

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> no one will be going out of business just because their frontend isn't React

Yes.

But one is more likely to go out of business if their frontend is still using JQuery. It's harder to maintain and iterate, harder to recruite good engineers.

I would ask for more money if the company hiring me uses JQuery and doesn't use TypeScript/React. And if the company somehow hires me, I would be less productive because I can't use TypeScript and a modern framework.

I’ll take jquery over react any day of the week and ask for less money because it’s more productive

It depends what you're building.

Glad I'm not the only one that thinks this

It really depends what you're doing, and with how many people you're doing it.

What if they use typescript/Vue? I work for a fortune 100 company that uses Vue. We have found that people familiar with react can pick up Vue very quickly. That hardly seems like a reason to ask for more money.

Vue is good. jQuery sucks.

I will accept the job. React and Vue are not that different.

My experience with True React Frontenders is opposite, except for more money nuance. I don’t even feel that “no one will be going out of business” vibe, really (but that must depend on a type of a business).

> it's interesting to consider that people also profit off of these "fads" by selling books and tools, resulting in a sort of perpetual motion machine.

The machine is called IT.

He’s right.. this is what BASIC used to be

> It allows you to make cool web pages, and that is a very attractive thing for people

This is the most misinformed take on what Java is used for I have seen on HN. Today Java is used by FAANG and other tech shops. It's employed in the enterprise, science and finance. What it is almost never used for is creating "cool web pages"

Besides the point that it is 1996 and probably talking about applets, wouldn't spring boot backends fall into the modern interpretation of "mak[ing] cool web pages"? Sure, java is used for more, but the number of job ads led me to believe it is quite a substantial part of java development.

It’s a quote from 1996.

FAANG is basically just creating cool web apps, no? Point taken on science though. Also I think Java was dog slow at the time. Eventually hardware caught up.

I was also puzzled by this one. Does he mean Java applets maybe?

Yes, they were a really big deal at the time, before security concerns came along and sunk them.

I remember applets being used for roll-over buttons on web pages and always knowing that an applet was being used because Internet Explorer 4 hung when loading the page, waiting for the JVM to fire up (with much disk churning).

Kind of nostalgic for it!

There was nothing inherently unsafe about Java Applets that could not have been fixed, security was simply not that important in the era for browsers.

Browsers didn't even have sandboxes then: fixing would have taken decades, and we still get sandbox escape vulns.

That’s exactly it, and led to activex in response.

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