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Comment by rs186 | Hacker News Reader

Anecdotally I don't know anyone who cares in the slightest bit about that. It's a name that has been used for a long time, and there have been lots of weird, strange name out there for software, but people just use it and move on.

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I think there's some bias at play here. I'd wager that most of management still thinks JavaScript and Java are the same thing, and can't understand why their new frontend hire doesn't know how to work on their Java backend.

No, it still causes confusion from new programmers, HR, execs who thinks JavaScript === writing Java Scripts.

We're all in on TypeScript now and I don't think they're teaching Java much in university or boot camps anymore so it doesn't matter much anyway. But when every other intern came in thinking programming WAS Java.... Not great. Having to never utter "JavaScript" again wasn't the primary motivation to move to TS, but it is a nice side benefit.

NB: But I had an intern say to me one day "did you know TypeScript is just JavaScript with types and a linter?" And I just smiled.

> No, it still causes confusion from new programmers, HR, execs who thinks JavaScript === writing Java Scripts.

Anyone that stupid in 2025 is hopeless.

Intelligence has nothing to do with it. You can’t deduce JavaScript and Java aren’t related, you have to be told/read that.

Neither you can deduce that car and carpet aren't related. For god's sake, even cars have carpets inside to add to the confusion!

Please don’t strawman. It’s that kind of exaggerated bad faith argument that propagates anti-intellectualism in society.

I can’t believe I’m having to explain this, but you can show people a car and a carpet and they’ll understand how they differ. But if you show them two different programming languages, most people won’t be able to tell the difference. Just like most people see Chinese and Japanese, Swedish and Finnish, Portuguese and Spanish, and don’t know enough to distinguish one from the other, despite them having different names. They’re just similar-looking symbols organised in different ways.

> Please don’t strawman. It’s that kind of exaggerated bad faith argument that propagates anti-intellectualism in society.

Sure. Now I'm guilty of all the anti-intellectualism we are seeing, and the propagandists get to walk free, but ok.

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and

> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

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Why is someone who has no understanding of anything related to the material running HR at this fictional company?

You can if you work in this industry and care about anything you do.

It takes 30 seconds to learn it for life

And yet they are everywhere. I really wish I was allowed to do my own resume screening. Instead HR tells me who to interview.

> I don't think they're teaching Java much in university or boot camps anymore so it doesn't matter much anyway

That might just be the bubble you are in. Java is still one of the biggest languages used in corporations across the globes for anything backend related. If it is because it is a modern COBOL or because it actually is a stable language with a solid ecosystem might be a matter of some debate.

In the circles I navigate it is still heavily featured in various bootcamps.

Sure, some recruiters don't know the difference between Java and JavaScript and have no idea of what those job requirements mean. But it looks like a competency issue to me. Have you ever seen a Google opening that confuses Java and JavaScript?

What are they teaching then? I mean, if you're doing a backend - and I don't mean tiny wrapper that wraps user input into queries, I mean the database engine itself - it's Java/Scala or C++ (hopefully not C)? Maybe Go? What else do they choose to teach for heavy industrial backend use?

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