OT – the Javaverse [was Andrei's list of barriers to D adoption]

[Chris via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 10 June 2016 at 17:09:18 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:

> Whatever you read, the writer didn't really know what they were 
> talking about. At least not in general, and if they were 
> talking of the Javaverse as a whole. Java 8 features such as 
> lambda expressions, Streams, method references, etc. are no 
> longer even controversial. There is a world-wide activity in 
> transforming Java 6 and Java 7 code to Java 8. Yes some of this 
> is pull rather than push, and I am sure there are islands of 
> intransigence (*). However the bulk of Java programmers will 
> eventually get and use the features.
>
> Of course many people have stopped using Java and use Kotlin, 
> Ceylon, or Scala (**). The crucial point here is that the 
> Javaverse is much, much more than just the Java language.

This only proves my point. This happens in languages that are 
"feature resistant". For years you have to write awkward code[1], 
and once a feature got accepted you have to revise your old code 
and jazz it up. And then of course you get conservative 
programmers who loath changes, they are a direct consequence of 
feature resistance. The more progressive ones turn to other 
languages like Clojure and Kotlin.

All this proves that being feature resistant is not healthy for a 
language.

[1] E.g. Java event listeners, Runnable etc.

> (*) Usually people who think Java 5 was a bad move and stick 
> with Java
> 1.4.2.
>
> (**) There are others but these are the main players.