Re:Ask HN: Has anyone here programmed in Kotlin? What do you...
by pron on Tuesday July 28, 2015 @10:11AM
(#9961573)
> Typesafe does the marketing, and as a business they'll never sell their technology short, even if what you say is closer to the truth wrt to specialization.
I don't think that's selling it short. Accurately describing your product only prevents people who aren't really your target -- like me -- from being disappointed and telling the world about it, while it helps attract precisely those people who would be most excited about it.
Also, I think Typesafe realize now that there is not much money to be made in developing and supporting a programming language (ironically, there is some to be made -- though not too much -- supporting specialist languages; see Ada and Matlab). That's why they want to change their name, right?
> no users = no dice; doubt either will grab much mindshare in the near-term.
That's splitting hairs a bit; Scala doesn't exactly have mass appeal either. We're talking about the difference between tiny and small.
> I doubt Kotlin will be able to deliver the same guarantees, but if it can, watch out Oracle.
I know they're trying to. Also, I know Oracle actively encourages alternative JVM languages. Their product is the Java platform, which currently -- to be honest -- is not too far from being the same as Java the language (all alternative JVM languages combined don't amount to 10%, or possibly even 5% of the JVM ecosystem). But they wouldn't mind if that changes. Their research team working on Graal, HotSpot's next-gen JIT, coming to OpenJDK in Java 9, spends as much time on making sure it runs Ruby, R, C, Python, and JavaScript well as it does on making sure it runs Java well. I know Oracle's Java team isn't all too happy about it, but I also know that that's what Oracle wants.
I don't think that's selling it short. Accurately describing your product only prevents people who aren't really your target -- like me -- from being disappointed and telling the world about it, while it helps attract precisely those people who would be most excited about it.
Also, I think Typesafe realize now that there is not much money to be made in developing and supporting a programming language (ironically, there is some to be made -- though not too much -- supporting specialist languages; see Ada and Matlab). That's why they want to change their name, right?
> no users = no dice; doubt either will grab much mindshare in the near-term.
That's splitting hairs a bit; Scala doesn't exactly have mass appeal either. We're talking about the difference between tiny and small.
> I doubt Kotlin will be able to deliver the same guarantees, but if it can, watch out Oracle.
I know they're trying to. Also, I know Oracle actively encourages alternative JVM languages. Their product is the Java platform, which currently -- to be honest -- is not too far from being the same as Java the language (all alternative JVM languages combined don't amount to 10%, or possibly even 5% of the JVM ecosystem). But they wouldn't mind if that changes. Their research team working on Graal, HotSpot's next-gen JIT, coming to OpenJDK in Java 9, spends as much time on making sure it runs Ruby, R, C, Python, and JavaScript well as it does on making sure it runs Java well. I know Oracle's Java team isn't all too happy about it, but I also know that that's what Oracle wants.