
In Support of Oracle and Java - fogus
http://jasonvictordartmouth.blogspot.com/2010/08/in-support-of-oracle-and-java.html
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spooneybarger
_"But there is immense value in an open source-friendly yet commercially
backed platform upon which to build our projects. Anybody functioning within
the four walls of a company knows that, when it comes to big decisions, the
executives tend to want to invest in a platform that isn't going anywhere --
and that means, backed by a big bad company."_

Not going anywhere? So does that mean that Python or Perl because it isn't
backed by a big company is going somewhere? That Linux would go away before
Solaris?

If there is a company backing it, it will go away when they no longer find
value in supporting it. If a community backs it, it will go away when the
community no longer finds value in it.

I have never understood the security that people find in technologies backed
by a single company.

~~~
vetinari
For a platform backed by big bad company, that is not going anywhere, see what
happened to Visual Basic (6).

Yeah, right. I'm sure that were great many decisions by many executives.

~~~
spooneybarger
My knowledge of the history of VB is basically non-existent. So, what happened
with VB6?

~~~
vetinari
It was big, supported platform supported by big company. Until it was not.
Overnight, you were told to rewrite all your sources to new, shiny language,
also called VB.

Basically, VB1-VB6 were compatible. You made app in any of them, it required
only small changes to build with never version, no big deal.

However, 2000 called and Microsoft came with new version, Visual Basic Net. It
changed syntax, class libraries, everything. With the old VB, it had only name
in common. It looked similar only on the surface (both are Basics, anyway).
Sure, they fixed lot of warts, but broke many existing apps, that were in the
maintenance mode for the time. If you relied on VB6 apps, and VB6 runtime had
problem with new version of your OS, you just could not upgrade without
expensive rewrite.

The message is: just because the language or platform is supported by big
company, does not mean, that it is safe for your business to build your apps
on it. On the other hand, ten years ago I took the risk to build an app in
Python. At the time, it was little, unknown language (especially in the MS
world). The app still works reliably today and is buildable (only .pycs were
deployed) by modern Python.

------
tzs
_"Every wonder why "Droid Does"? Because Android code is written in Java, the
most popular and most commonly taught programming language in the world. That
means every coder and his grandmother can write code for an Android phone,
since they already know the language, and they can likely write the majority
of their app without even getting the Android developer tools (everything
except the graphical components)."_

So then wouldn't we expect to find very little code written for iPhone? At the
time the iPhone SDK launched, pretty much the only people using Objective-C
and Cocoa were Mac programmers. The fast majority of people who went on the
produce iPhone apps had to start by learning a new language--one very
different from any language they were likely to already know.

