Comment by chc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chc | Hacker News Reader

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Erlang may as well not exist for the vast majority of developers. I like Erlang, but a lot of people don't get it, and even more are completely unaware that it exists. Meanwhile, JavaScript is already one of the biggest languages on the Web. This is actually one of Node.js's intended strengths.

The JVM is really mature, but its primary language is one many people hate, so people would complain about choice of platform even if they had gone that way. You may as well ask why Ruby on Rails wasn't Java on Rails. The answer is that 37signals didn't like Java.

And V8 and JavaScript already existed when Node was created, so they were building in an existing ecosystem. Again, JavaScript was already one of the dominant languages on the Web. That's a big argument in its favor.

To my understanding, JavaScript had one more advantage that put it over the top: what didn't exist in its ecosystem — namely, a culture of synchronous development. This meant Node wasn't fighting against the idiomatic way to do things. JavaScript was already highly async, and since this was the whole idea behind Node, it made JavaScript a less-bad fit than most other languages. Other languages were considered, but the fact that libraries for those languages were largely synchronous was viewed as a downside.

Since when did people do not like Java? And still it is the most widely used computer language? And how many people like Ruby, Python by the way? Hype is indeed stranger than reality.

You should choose languages and platforms that fit the task at hand. Every language is as good as the programmer who wields it as long as it suits the purpose. Hating a language is hardly the way to get things done. After learning and working on dozens of languages I am very language agnostic - a new language takes at most a week to get to moderate proficiency now. Make systems that work rather than bitching about your new pantyhose.

Java is the most widely used computer language because it's the lingua franca of the enterprise. That doesn't reflect the programming community's love — it reflects the approval of big business executives. Some programmers genuinely love Java, but I'm pretty sure it's a much smaller number. In the startup scene, where technical founders pick the stack, Ruby is actually more widely used. Take a look at the HN Jobs category (linked at the top of the page) and count the number of Ruby web dev listings, then count the Java web dev listings.

(Cheat sheet in case you didn't feel like counting: There are zero listings for server-side Java. The only Java listings are for Android.)

You can argue that it shouldn't be this way, but that is how it is. A lot of people hate Java. Rails' whole initial marketing campaign was essentially "Java sucks — we do everything opposite of them."

And you think HN is the horizon of entire programming world? Hope that is a self fulfilling prophecy. If you believe HN, Ruby is taking over the world - but in reality, Ruby use is going down (http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index....). If you really want to know which language is gaining popularity fast - it is a pretty old language called Objective-C! Recheck the reality distortion field.

And about love - I have a family to love - programming languages are tools - hardly objects to love or hate.

I own tools that I love and tools that I hate.

I would believe it on the basis that every programmer I've talked to, from a couple of years after Java was introduced, until today, didn't really like Java. Things became very complex very fast for the language that gave birth to FactoryFactoryPattern.

You seem to be disagreeing very strongly with a bunch of things I didn't say. Let me clear up a few misconceptions:

1. I don't believe Ruby is taking over the world. Six years ago it was, but now it's fairly mature and stable. I do believe that Ruby is better-loved overall than Java. (Incidentally, you'll notice Java is dropping two orders of magnitude faster than Ruby on TIOBE's chart.)

2. I have been programming Objective-C since 2001 when OS X came out. I'm pretty familiar with it.

3. HN is not "the horizon of the entire programming world," but it is pretty well-embedded in the Silicon Valley startup scene, which is what I was discussing at the time. My point is this: Take a look at any area where passionate coders get to choose any technology stack they want and you will find Ruby is generally more popular than Java. If HN's job listing isn't convincing to you, let's take a look at another place where coders choose their own language — open source. On Github's ranking of most popular languages, Ruby is #2 and Java is #5.

4. I am not trying to convince you that you should love or hate any languages. I am saying that many people do, and their feelings towards these languages affect how they behave.

As a side note, I agree that programming languages are tools, but honestly, most artists and craftsmen I know do have favorite tools — a favorite violin, a favorite kind of film, etc. Heck, many people have a favorite chair. It's OK if you don't, but it's not that weird.

I'll toss my two cents in.

Java is one of the few languages in existence that I actively avoid (Symbian's particular flavor of C++ is the other).

I've heard it best described as being a very "bureaucratic" language and I think that sums it up perfectly. Checked exception and the rigid language rules just make Java really painful to develop with.

For a long time folks went with Java by default. Usually tossing around something about how impressive the standard libraries are. That's an advantage that doesn't really hold today. Python and Ruby (in particular) have developed amazingly strong third party and standard libraries that allow you to accomplish almost anything, and do it with way less pain than Java insists on inflicting.

Amazing things have been accomplished with Java. Hell there are immensely talented programmers who prefer Java. I'm just not sure that's really that common anymore.

I agree with your post, but wanted to pick up on one point:

Erlang may as well not exist for the vast majority of developers. I like Erlang, but a lot of people don't get it, and even more are completely unaware that it exists.

This was also true of Ruby pre 2005. I'm not an Erlang developer but it clearly has some natural advantages in the increasingly important world of parallelism and maybe it just needs its own "Rails" as a catalyst for its take off? (And by "its own Rails" I don't mean a Web framework but just a MacGuffin that lures people in to trying it.)

Half of it was true for Ruby — many people were unaware. What they don't have in common is people's immediate reaction upon discovering the language.

Common first exposure to Ruby: "Oh, wow, that's cool. It looks pretty easy."

Common first exposure to Erlang: "Oh, wow, I didn't know you could code in Klingon."

I do agree, though, that Erlang could probably gain a lot more popularity if somebody introduced a framework that really showed what it could do. The most popular web framework right now (at least I think it's the most popular — there aren't any official polls or anything) is MochiWeb, which kindasorta doesn't have any documentation.

Given the visceral reactions to the syntax, perhaps Erlang could be boosted via a CoffeeScript-esque language that compiles down to it? No idea how practical that is with Erlang's idioms but CS helped some previously JS-shy folks get on board.

There already is one: Elixir (http://elixir-lang.org). It's created by Jose Valim, who (as you probably know) is also a member of the Rails core team. It's a very interesting language.

Ah, cool! I knew he'd gone off to build something new but hadn't realize it was Erlang based. Thanks.

MochiWeb is a web server, not a web framework. People use nitrogen(1) and webmachine(2) over it. Nitrogen is a pretty fully featured framework, and webmachine is a really light layer that bakes in http/REST semantics.

I pretty much exclusively use webmachine with ErlyDTL (an implementation of the Django templating system) on top.

There's also erlangweb, and a few others. Both nitrogen and webmachine are pretty well documented. I think it's still all of the periods and arrows that are scaring people off.

(1) http://nitrogenproject.com/ (2) http://wiki.basho.com/Webmachine.html

A web framework built on top of Elixir would do it.

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