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by throw0101a
2092 days ago
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Guy Steele,[1] Java spec co-author, LL1 Mailing list (2003-08-21): > And you're right: we were not out to win over the Lisp programmers; we were after the C++ programmers. We managed to drag a lot of them about halfway to Lisp. Aren't you happy? * https://people.csail.mit.edu/gregs/ll1-discuss-archive-html/... A follow-up noted: > Yes! Java broke C++'s monopoly, and now C# is breaking Java's, and this sequence of broken monopolies dispelled the belief that have to use "the standard language", and now I code in Python for a living. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_L._Steele_Jr%2e Steele is/was well-acquainted with the bad parts of Java—he helped design Scheme after all. But in the alternative timeline where Java was not created, Java (and other machine-independent runtimes) would have not have become popular, and everyone would still be statically compiling C++. |
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I don’t know if that’s actually true. Computers were getting more and more powerful in the 90s, and hence more capable of supporting memory-managed and dynamic languages. Had Java not existed, I think that there’d be a very good change that Smalltalk or Lisp would have taken off instead. Indeed, looking at the late 90s, I think that there’s a good chance that the world would have gone with Smalltalk, and the computing industry would actually be light years ahead of where we are now.