

If not Java, why not then go with Lisp? - yarek

Given that the current Oracle lawsuit is seriously denting Jave's image, and given that one of the early intention for Java was to drag C++ developers half way to Lisp, do you think now would be a good time to consider Lisp on earnest? 
BTW, how does the lawsuit affect Clojure?
======
kevbin
Swap Oracle for Sun, Google for Microsoft, Dalvik for the Microsoft Java
Virtual Machine, 2010 for 1997 and I don't see the difference: one big-ass
company with a lot of money going after another big-ass company with a lot of
money. After a bunch of feisty lawyering, one will pay the other and they'll
swap pieces of paper allowing them to go on as before: getting you to write
software for their technology stack so they can brag about adoption,
penetration, and the unparalleled quality of freely-available libraries for
their platform; lather, rinse, repeat.

Regardless, Clojure will remain the best way to survive the twilight of the
Java era.

~~~
hga
Disagree: Sun v. Microsoft was strictly a battle on a licensing contract, not
a use of probably generic/bogus? patents against an independent piece of
software. And the end result was pretty much the death of Microsoft's version
of Java ("Visual Studio 2005 was the last release to include J#"
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%2B%2B#Visual_J.23>).

A similar outcome in SCOracle v. Google would be the capping and pretty fast
death of Android....

" _Regardless, Clojure will remain the best way to survive the twilight of the
Java era._ "

Well, if you're a Lisp fan like me (some Common Lisp fans are fond of Armed
Bear Common Lisp: <http://common-lisp.net/project/armedbear/>); others
strenuously disagree from both the Lisp (" _Clojure is a terrifying meld of a
beloved character and an unreasoning alien onslaught._
[http://www.reddit.com/r/lisp/comments/aqcqx/how_a_common_lis...](http://www.reddit.com/r/lisp/comments/aqcqx/how_a_common_lisp_programmer_views_users_of_other/c0iw1ey)
) and non-Lisp camps.

~~~
kevbin
Thanks, I hadn't heard that opinion on clojure. It is a weird lisp, but I like
that. The energy and interest around clojure, its fresh ideas, and frenemy
relationship w/ java are the reasons I think it's the best way to play on the
jvm as java goes away.

After ms vs. Sun, ms produced .net. If google settled with sun then did the
something similar: net win.

------
mahmud
There is more to programming language choice than syntax, semantics and
pragmatics. Like, economics.

Lisp is not a replacement for Java, and never will be. In the same way that a
sports car is not a replacement for the municipal bus system.

------
spooneybarger
There are an awful lot of assumptions there... the largest being that this is
going to have a large impact on Java. I remember years ago lots of hyperbole
about how Microsoft's J++ and Sun's suit was going to spell the end of Java
and here we are now...

Other points:

When I've looked at C++, Java and Lisp- I have never been able to see anything
that would make me take that 'halfway to lisp' comment seriously.

Clojure is just a language that runs on the jvm. There is nothing about the
current lawsuit that should have any technical or legal impact on Clojure.

~~~
hga
Well, it did largely spell the end of Java on the desktop.

The comment is by Guy Steele and at the very least by finally making GC
mainstream I agree.

Clojure as it stands now seems to be safe, although we just don't know what
"crazy" things Oracle will do now that it's "weaponized" Java. Just having to
think about potential legal issues now or in the future where you didn't
previously adds friction where there wasn't any before, which is never good.
We're also seeing a lot more interest in the CLR version of Clojure, and to
the extent effort is diverted from the JVM version, to that or to ones hosted
on something else, this may not be a good thing.

In the longer term, this quote struck me as the most apt WRT to Clojure or any
other language that uses the JVM in unusual ways (particularly the GC of
functional languages) [http://adtmag.com/blogs/watersworks/2010/08/oracle-
google-la...](http://adtmag.com/blogs/watersworks/2010/08/oracle-google-
lawsuit-hurt-java.aspx):

 _Forrester Research analyst John Rymer agrees: "I think this lawsuit casts
the die on Java’s future," he said. "It will become a slow-evolving legacy
technology. Oracle’s lawsuit links deep innovation in Java with license fees,
and that will kill deep innovation in Java by anyone outside Oracle or
startups hoping to sell out to Oracle. Software innovation just doesn’t do
well in the kind of environment Oracle just created."_

As Clojure matures, we'll be wanting to do "deep innovation" (such as in GC)
and Oracle has cast a pall on doing that in Java/JVM space.

~~~
konad
Surely one should credit Visual Basic with bringing GC to the mainstream. Bill
got them to copy Algol 68's "Meekly deproceduring to MOID FORM" and beat y'all
to it.

