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Comment by ruudud | Hacker News Reader

Interesting numbers. Why do you think that Java developers are the most likely to look for other languages?

Java wants everything done in its way, and its way is painfully, needlessly verbose, and weak at expressing algorithms in a way that encourages bugs. Also Java's conventions and culture magnify its verbosity, it's popular libraries and extensions are over-engineered, and its package file format lacks versions and versioned dependencies, producing inevitable conflicts. It's slow to start up and a memory hog. Really the only advantage is that it's fast.

The other JVM languages reduce some of its flaws. Go, I have found, avoids them all.

Mostly because the Java syntax has remained (mostly) unchanged since September 2004. Java 8 will change that, but it's still a far cry from what's available in Scala.

Most probably because Java is verbose and does not support some simple concepts like functions.

Thats does not sound like the whole truth. I would guess that Java long ago lost its sexiness - now everybody and everything uses Java. The other problem is that now there is vast amount of legacy code. By choosing Scala you are actually eliminating that from the equation.

The fact that it failed to evolve for so long, unlike c#, doesn't help.

I disagree with the other responses at the basic level. I think this is a simple supply/demand response. There is an over supply of Java developers. This means that many of them are looking to alternative languages to differentiate their own skills for others. This is particularly true among Java "leadership." Where the heads of the languages have been increasingly visible in other languages.

That's an interesting reversal of the logic in the paper. I assumed that the programmers looking for the next cool languages were doing so in pursuit of novelty and not doing it for economic reasons. I wonder how you could empirically support one or the other hypothesis.

Well, sadly, I basically have no idea on how to explore my thought here. Really, all I have are some platitudes. "Go where the money is," combined with "Don't go where everyone else is going."

So, yeah, I would be curious on how to support either hypothesis, as well. Best I could think would be to track job listings. While I think you will get a few folks doing things for the novelty and to make it work. I think the majority entering an industry are chasing the buck the last success made.

Because the ubiquity of Java means people are forced to use it.

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