From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,5cb36983754f64da X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2004-04-07 02:35:00 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news2.google.com!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!dialin-145-254-036-136.arcor-ip.NET!not-for-mail From: "Dmitry A. Kazakov" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: No call for Ada (was Re: Announcing new scripting/prototyping language) Date: Wed, 07 Apr 2004 11:34:46 +0200 Organization: At home Message-ID: References: Reply-To: mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de NNTP-Posting-Host: dialin-145-254-036-136.arcor-ip.net (145.254.36.136) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7Bit X-Trace: news.uni-berlin.de 1081330499 92351081 I 145.254.36.136 ([77047]) User-Agent: KNode/0.7.2 Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:6803 Date: 2004-04-07T11:34:46+02:00 List-Id: Alexander E. Kopilovich wrote: > Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote: > >> > In the case of Java the most significant reason for that skyrocketed >> > success was (I think) not just luck and aggressive marketing, but very >> > high level of professional traitorousness among CS teachers in American >> > universities. In late 90th they massively adopted Java for their >> > courses despite obvious defects of the language (the most beautiful >> > example is absence of enumerations in Java - before appearance of Java >> > those academic people always claimed that enumerations are very >> > important and necessary, but no one them said a word about their >> > absence in Java - they were too busy in praising Java to notice such a >> > tiny detail). >> >> But why they adopted Java? It was the same combination of luck and >> marketing Randy Brukardt wrote about. > > Why you, not being an American, use this luck-based theory, which is > proprietary American? -:) I lost my faith in Karl Marx long time ago! (:-)) BTW, there is no big difference between the "luck-based" theory and one of Marin. Both agree that technical issues are irrelevant. The "luck-based" theory stops here. Marin and you continue that probably managers have some other [supreme, unknowable] reasons for their choices. Maybe. But this changes nothing. And nothing techincal can be made about Ada to change that. Because see above, technical issues are irrelevant. > Do you really think that Sun, when investing not small > money in that Java move, did so just in adventurous hope of meeting luck > on the road? Yes. > Didn't you noticed how IBM pushed Java all the way - was it > just luck for Sun? Yes. >> That time many of them had Sun worstations >>avaiable. Nobody ever liked Microsoft. End of story. > > I don't think that availability of Sun workstations played significant > role there - nobody liked Sun workstations too much (except of those who > used multiprocessors, which couldn't be widely available in > universities)... some liked SGIs, some Alphas, but I never heard of anyone > being particularly fond of uniprocessor Sun workstation. I didn't say they were popular. I said they were avaialble. They were the core of LANs. They were attached to the Internet. So Java was in the right time at the right place. > And frowning at the Microsoft played no role there - in fact, Microsoft > readily produced their JVM and equipped IE accordingly (the fact that MS > "tried to poison" Java is immaterial here as we talk about skyrocketed > adoption of Java language). Microsoft tried to spoil it and so to get the control over it. They always do things like that. > There was real matter that time - dot-coms were booming and there was > widespread strong feeling about the need of easily distributable > specialized clients for online shopping. Mmm, that was 3 years or so later. As for "easily distributable specialized clients", well, that existed for years before, though under other name: "virus". > And this was the trampoline for > Java - applets. Then, after several years, dot-com bubble bursted, > applets faded, And of course, we do not ask ourselves, why. Because that would lead us to those unloved technical issues... > but critical mass for the language was already reached - thanks to > conformant university CS teachers in big part. Huh, those conformant teachers already switched C#. Isn't it mysterious, how universities are promoting bad technologies? It was C and UNIX before Java. -- Regards, Dmitry A. Kazakov www.dmitry-kazakov.de