
Python overtakes Java to become second-most popular language on GitHub - SupunKavinda
https://groups.hyvor.com/Java/213/java-news-python-overtakes-to-become-secondmost-popular-language-on-github
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tannhaeuser
Not a Python fan (like, at all) but can't say I'm surprised. I'm doing still
lots of Java development as freelancer to pay the bills, but the Java9+
"update" has just deprecated too much of the Java ecosystem. World-class
backward compat was the one thing that Java got right, but lifting a couple
years old Java apps to Java 8 and 9 was such a painful experience (with Spring
3->4, idiotic deprecated "REST" frameworks, and old netty servlet and jspc
maven conflicts, none of which had a reason to exist in the first place IMO).
Ironically, as we're moving to a world of closed language ecosystems, and
nobody produces regular shared or static libs anymore in favor of the
respective language's own little package manager, the Java ecosystem could
have played to Java's strength. It's depressing to loose a whole generation's
work of love who saw Java as the go-to language for such a long time with two
world-class IDEs to choose from, but I guess Java has run its course as a
language that started as a bytecode format for set-top boxes. Will Python
(started as the ABC language for non-technical users) take its place? I highly
doubt it.

Update: do you have a recommendation for a Java exit strategy? Like, using a
language that can compile to JVM byte codes to integrate with existing code
bases, yet can also be compiled into native code on x86/64 and ARM/64 for
linking against?

~~~
jbob2000
Java was a one size fits all language. Nobody wants that anymore. I work for a
bank, most of our applications are in Java, but like 90% of these programs are
very rudimentary transactional applications: take this piece of data and send
it over there.

We had a small pilot project to test replacing a Java app with a NodeJS app.
The node app was a single file of about 50 lines of code, whereas the Java app
had all sorts of bullshit associated with it. It needs to be compiled and the
dependencies need be installed, you need a specific version of the JDK, make
sure you run in with special flags... all to receive an HTTP request, pick out
some data, then forward it on to a downstream server. Huge productivity gains
from never having to fight a build, it was stupid easy to set up the
deployment pipeline too, much to the chagrin of the devops manager. Git pull,
npm install, node app.js _and that’s it_.

The Java exit strategy is to find the technology that serves your needs.
There’s just so much bullshit associated with having a language that does it
all that I think people are starting to look for solutions with common sense
defaults. Why, in 2019, is it still so fucking awkward to deal with JSON in
Java? Why do I have to handle so many interfaces and classes to make a simple
HTTP request?

C++ is facing the same reckoning as Java, thanks to Rust. You’d be stupid to
start a C++ project these days, given all the sanity that Rust brought to that
ecosystem.

~~~
kasperni
> Java was a one size fits all language. Nobody wants that anymore.

That sounds like a very opinionated claim. Can you back it up with any kind of
evidence?

Also, am I the only one that finds it kind of ironic that you describe how a
scripting language, whose main use is creating interactive web pages, is used
as a Java replacement?

~~~
tannhaeuser
No more ironic than using Java the original purpose of which was for
developing portable interactive apps on set-top boxes ;)

~~~
kasperni
It is ironic because the poster claimed that no one want one size fits all
languages anymore. And then he goes on to describe how they replaced Java with
Javascript.

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guessmyname
More statistics over here _(if anyone else is interested)_.

• [https://octoverse.github.com/#top-
languages](https://octoverse.github.com/#top-languages)

• [https://madnight.github.io/githut/](https://madnight.github.io/githut/)

• [http://pypl.github.io/PYPL.html](http://pypl.github.io/PYPL.html)

• [https://www.benfrederickson.com/ranking-programming-
language...](https://www.benfrederickson.com/ranking-programming-languages-by-
github-users/)

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submeta
Well deserved

