steel-wool panty liners = Java?

[beach at verinet.com (David J. C. Beach)]

On Tue, 2004-08-03 at 23:23, David Kramer wrote:
> I suppose you would have to ask Crash[0].  But some people feel that Sun tried 
> to make a safer language, but the things they had to put in there so 
> programmers could get their work done make it more complicated.
> 
> On top of that, some feel the whole "java certification" program became more 
> politics than technical merit.
> 
> On top of that, the fact that Sun runs around talking about Java is open and 
> ..NET is closed, but actually keep the java spec closed, bothers some.

I'm an avid Python programmer, and went to the PyCON DC in March of this
year for the first time.  One of the keynote speakers was Bruce Eckel
(author of the "Thinking in ..." series of programming books; and
usually considered an active member of the Java community).  At the
Python conference, he [after promising us that he would continue to work
on his "Thinking in Python" book] explained some of his thoughts on the
new Java (1.5) language features.

In the past year, he has become more critical of Java, pointing out
several design shortcomings, places where the language forces you into
unnecessary syntax, etc.  He doesn't go as far as Crash[0] does in
criticizing Java (neither would I), but he does point out some
limitations which Java developers don't frequently acknowledge.  Some of
these criticisms can be found in his weblog: 
http://www.mindview.net/WebLog

There is a sort of mentality from some Java programmers that the
language is near perfect, overshadowing everything else from the last 50
years of computer programming history.  IMO, the developers who exhibit
this degree of fanaticism about Java are typically the ones who have the
least experience with software development in other languages.

Dave

-- 
David J. C. Beach
<beach at verinet.com>
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