[adam_arthur]

You need to separate the language from the ecosystem. Yes, network effects will cause many languages to drag on in use, but that doesn't mean they're going to live in perpetuity.

COBOL was used for a long time for various business backends... did that mean it was a great language that was going to be used in perpetuity? no. And I assume the majority of those don't exist anymore, despite existing as recently as the 2010s

[PuppyTailWags]

I just think it's weird to say Java's time is gone when Java is still the language du jour in a major employment field of programming. Maybe Java's time is waning but I wouldn't call it gone. New payments/fintech startups and greenfield projects are still choosing Java. I don't know a significant field whose new companies are still going with COBOL from greenfield.

Additionally, what is replacing Java in the finance space? Genuinely asking, because I have no idea, and can you point me to some companies using the stuff that's replacing Java for banking/finance/etc?

[adam_arthur]

Yes, there was a time that C was used for pretty much every app. That time has come and gone as higher level languages became more popular.

So too will Java's. The language itself is objectively more verbose than many modern equivalents. Network effects and existing libraries aren't facets of the language and over time the gap will narrow

[kaba0]

That assumes that that minuscule time being spent on writing 3 more characters+ is actually a productivity hit (it is not).

+ I am actually not sure whether even that is true. With how great intellij is, I would honestly wouldn’t be surprised if writing a java program would come out as less keystrokes than the equivalent program in a less verbose language.

[PuppyTailWags]

Can you please educate me on what are the languages and frameworks that enterprise-level finance and banking are going into in replace of Java? I'm good-faith asking.

Additionally, "the gap will narrow" is not the same as "Java's time is over", which is the only thing I'm having an issue with. Over implies that the gap is already closed, but I don't think it is, and if I'm wrong I sincerely want to know about what the new language du jour of a major employment field is.

[Gibbon1]

If those guys are going to replace Java with anything it ain't going to be go or rust it'll be C#

[kaba0]

C never had the insane hype that Java once did - at the height of its popularity it had an insane amount of mindshare, and probably no language will achieve such ever again. It was literally the only PL that was/is known by laymen.

If anything, the field will fragment a bit more, but java likely never gonna die — cobol and fortran often run in VMs due to the hardware not being as long-lived as them, due to the JVM model, java is not even weak to that.

[ivanche]

Don't forget that new release of Java is coming out every 6 months and that (almost) every one of them brings some core language improvement aimed at reducing verbosity. New long-term release is out every 2 years. How many C releases were there in the last 10 years?