> I think you're kidding yourselves if you think you can make a bullet > list that will explain the next big language.
I'm not sure the discussion here is trying to do that although I agree with your point. > At best, you can make > one that explains what you would like to see. Unless you have the > power of someone like Jobs, than getting the rest of the world to > agree is a non-starter. Where do languages come from? Thinking of Occam and Ada, they were languages crafted to serve specific purposes. If a language is well crafted for its intended purpose you don't need to get people to agree. Over time people will gravitate towards the 'successful' language as it proves itself, leaving the unsuccessful to wither on the vine, in a somewhat Darwinian fashion. I think pulling Jobs in to the discussion is at best a bit misleading and at worst a red herring. After all, even Apple have produced duff products (buttonless iPod Shuffle for one, underwhelming and overly restricting AppleTV - both versions - for another). Further, Apple have *not* been successful in getting the world to agree. I give you FireWire. An excellent tech that people not using Apple hardware rarely come into contact with. I love it for its ability to sustain consistently high data transfer speeds (as opposed to USB's 'best effort') and choose FireWire plus USB over USB only external hard drives every time. In short, the rest of the world will agree with Apple when it is in their interest to do so. If objectives don't align, it isn't going to happen, regardless of the company, unless a true monopoly exists and is being abused. > (That is to say, I hear more interest in > obj-c than I do in any of the languages that have ever been mentioned > here as "the next big thing.") That's because Objective C is earning people money and this is an entirely reasonable position. It doesn't make discussions of new languages invalid, any more than it makes the creation of new languages invalid. Many will be created, most will fall quickly by the wayside, and those that can be quickly and cheaply applied to bring commercial advantage will gain traction quicker than those that can't. I've heard enough to know that Scala will fit well in certain niches, especially on the computation side (time to throw out the Fortran compiler!). As far as this thread goes I'd have to say that my current view is "functional is definitely a good thing" whilst remaining unconvinced that "Scala will be the one". But I'll still take a look - just not a £500-a-day training course. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to javaposse@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to javaposse+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
