Item — HN Reader

Let's talk a bit more about #2 then.

As I mentioned elsewhere, most of pg's observations still hold in 2012. But, he clearly missed the implication, as you mentioned in point 1. I believe Java is still going strong precisely because of the attributes he regards as weaknesses (that it appeals to suits and programmers in suits; that large businesses like to use it; that its syntax doesn't try to be revolutionary)

Based on this, I will boldly make the following prediction: in 10 years' time, the most popular languages will still be some variant of Java and C#.

3 comments

> in 10 years' time, the most popular languages will still be some variant of Java and C#.

Well... I'll probably have to open a restaurant somewhere...

> Based on this, I will boldly make the following prediction: in 10 years' time, the most popular languages will still be some variant of Java and C#.

Your conclusion may very well come to pass. This reminds me of another article, Beating the Averages, in which pg writes: "And so the median language, meaning whatever language the median programmer uses, moves as slow as an iceberg."

http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html

"in 10 years' time, the most popular languages will still be some variant of Java and C#"

thats because in 10 years, 99.9% of folks out there will be still be dumb

1980 "You use C? You suck. Real programmers use Assembler." 1990 "You use C++? You suck. Real programmers use C." 2000 "You use Java? You suck. Real programmers use C++." 20xx "You use ...? You suck. Real programmers use ..."

Same story, different times. At least try to provide an argument for your position, instead of "(...) will be still be dumb". Thanks.

Intelligence (at least IQ-measured intelligence) is normally distributed with 100 at the median. Some people equate "dumb" with "dumber than them". If such a person is 1 or 2 standard deviations above the median (as I'd assume the population of HN is), then most people could be considered "dumb".

Before the assembly line, workers had to be skilled, had to really understand what they were building and how and why all its pieces fit together. With the advent of the assembly line, workers were only required to learn one specific, usually very simple, skill. That made them cheaper to train and cheaper to replace and made the outcome of their work less important to the end product. That also made them easier to manage by people who were not skilled artisans, giving rise to the "generic" manager, who only needs to know how to manage. Java is a very good "assembly line language" and it's no coincidence it's popular with businesses that don't value elegant code as much as code that gets the job done cheaply.

I'm not saying it's impossible to write elegant Java code. I'm only saying it's cheap to write business-y Java code and that accounts for a substantial part of its popularity.

At the other end of spectrum, you have projects like GNU/Hurd, which are extremely idealistic and hence barely ever ship. The accounts department is not going to like it very much when you tell them your new Lisp DSL variant with metaprogramming is delayed for half a year due to technical difficulties in getting it right. The VP/Director/Team Lead(and whoever else okayed Lisp) will get a pink slip and the replacement(s) will build the application in Java.

Even if it works, good luck finding any Lisp hackers to hire in your local area. Who is 'dumb' and 'smart' in this scenario? Is it just IQ levels that matter? What about getting the job done quickly and cheaply which is very important to the business? Do you get a big competitive advantage over your rivals by having your accounting system run on elegant Lisp vs. Java or PHP?

We techies, especially academics tend to carried away easily and want functional or otherwise idealistic languages replace other 'dumb' languages, but the corporate world works in a very different way. Throwing around phrases like dumb, and IQ levels actually degrades the argument to 'we are superior than them' and nothing else. Characterizing people trying to be practical and put food on the table and take care of their families as 'dumb' is just douchebaggery.

> With the advent of the assembly line, workers were only required to learn one specific, usually very simple, skill.

I think a lot of the benefits came from automation. An artisan working alone cannot afford the machine tools and jigs to accelerate his work. The assembly line is actually about the centralization of capital and economies of scale, not the deskilling of the workers. In fact, modern First World manufacturing suceeds by firing as many unskilled workers as possible and replacing them with engineers and skilled technicians.

I would say that Java shops value elegant code very highly—in the tools and frameworks and OSes. The front line Java coders are business software's version of sheet metal and rivets.

P.S. No offense intended to the sheet metal and rivets. ;-)

There are programmers using Java and C# than can run circles around your programming skills -- whatever those skills might be.

Your comment is a fine example of the Dunning-Krueger effect...