I was talking to a recruiter the other day, and mentioned that I’d like an environment where people don’t use Java as the default implementation language. I feel that a company full of “Java programmers” are more likely to be less intelligent and proficient programmers and designers compared to a developers at a company that makes use of Python or Ruby or any other scripting languages (as well as more mainstream tech) would be more likely full of intelligent, intellectually curious people, because those people took the time to go and learn those new languages on their own.
While computer languages really are just a way to tell a machine what to do, making the “what to do” the most important piece of the design, I think learning several different languages makes one look at problems from different angles and come up with more elegant (and perhaps robust?) solutions. Perhaps the same way learning eskimo with its twenty something words for different types of snow would change how one would look at the weather?
Anyways having split my time recently between javascript and java, I’m frequently annoyed by the lack of first class functions and closures in Java. On the other hand Java provides a lot more API, so you win some and you lose some.
To wrap up the recruiter story, she said she doesn’t think she ever hears about jobs with python or ruby etc. There’s got to be some people out there using this stuff, but how to find them?
work for a big blue company, I guess. I hear they have tons of people expirimenting with that shit. I also hear that it doesn’t nec. make them more intelligent, tolerant, or free thinking.
First of all I know the big blue company doesn’t have a “ton” of people doing non java development.
Secondly I didn’t assert that it makes them smarter, I’m asserting that it is to me an indicator that the people are already smarter and intellectually curious. A self-selecting population, sort of like how magnet schools work partially because the kids there who have parents who are involved enough in their child’s education to get them into that school, thereby creating a self-selecting population of kids who would do better than average in any school.
Thanks for stopping by!
take it easy, dude — maybe read what I wrote with a smile before you firstly and secondly me to death.
I’m going to stop assuming you still can laugh.
I agree with you, James. Having the possibility to choose a language gives you a broader view over the current problem. Anyhow, supporting multiple languages is no easy task for a company and I realize that usually management has to narrow the field to contain the costs.
I think the cuestion should be what kind of companies get the best programers and keeps them happy using the default environment 🙂
Firstly, it appears that Google employs a great deal of Java developers. I wouldn’t mind going to work for them.
Secondly, you should read Jamie Zawinski’s “Java Sucks” article.
“I think Java is the best language going today, which is to say, it’s the marginally acceptable one among the set of complete bagbiting loser languages that we have to work with out here in the real world.”
http://www.jwz.org/doc/java.html
Thirdly, I’m a big fan of Assembly. Every other language is cake.
There’s something nasty about java. It desperately needs operator overloading, first class functions, closures, some way to fix its broken 1980s “I’ll do what i want” numeric operations (especially when overflowing, etc) and a simple way to express data structures that doesn’t rely on XML.
“I’m a big fan of Assembly. Every other language is cake” -> have you learned nothing in 30 years of computing? Hey, here, have these punched cards 🙂
No, Java is not the best language going today. It’s probably the most overrated language going today.