Java's Cover (April 2001)
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Submission timeline
2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
First comments on top threads
HN comment order> 9. It's designed for large organizations. Large organizations have different aims from hackers. This is where I think pg's bias steered him wrong. Hackers tend not to like Java (although that is less the case now with the JVM ecosystem being what it is), but hackers do not solely determine the success of technology. Furthermore, the type of hacker that pg is interested in—the lisper, the 10Xer, the startup founder—are in limited supply. Certainly they wield more influence per…
Note that this is not about if Java was good or bad, which is obviously a question of opinion. This is about if Java was going to be successful: > I've never written a Java program, never more than glanced over reference books about it, but I have a hunch that it won't be a very successful language. Given that Java became spectacularly successful and still is, the question is why the author turned out to be so wrong? My…
Sort of ironic that all of his concerns were proven out, yet Java still managed to prove his prediction wrong. Though his definition of success seems to be "would really good programmers (wizards) ever use this language for sweet projects? If yes, than this language is a success." By that metric I guess he would be correct.
No one loves it. C, Perl, Python, Smalltalk, and Lisp programmers love their languages. I've never heard anyone say that they loved Java. - You must be kidding me, ever been to any JUG meeting or JavaOne conference? There are millions of hardcore Java lovers at those places. Java has one of the the biggest developer community world wide. I love Java - it's one of the best programming language till date.
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
- Breakout years
- 3
- Total points
- 329
- Total comments
- 442
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010-03-11 | Java's cover (2001) | b-man | 5 | 2 |
| 2010-08-20 | Java's Cover | heseltine | 3 | 0 |
| 2010-12-14 | PG on Java - comments from 2001First breakout | RiderOfGiraffes | 32 | 70 |
| 2012-04-13 | JAVA's Cover | ekm2 | 4 | 2 |
| 2012-09-11 | Java's Cover (April 2001)Best thread | cdi | 185 | 180 |
| 2013-04-28 | Java's Cover (2001) | j21 | 1 | 0 |
| 2015-12-18 | Java's Cover (2001) | vminkov | 21 | 40 |
| 2018-10-12 | Java's Cover (2001) | thegeomaster | 2 | 0 |
| 2019-06-21 | Java's Cover (2001) | talonx | 1 | 0 |
| 2019-11-17 | Java's Cover | vinnyglennon | 18 | 21 |
| 2019-11-26 | Java's Cover (2001) | pulse7 | 2 | 0 |
| 2022-06-26 | Java's Cover (2001)Hall induction · Latest 20+ point return | mliezun | 50 | 123 |
| 2023-03-08 | Java's Cover – Why Java will not be successful (2001) | rrampage | 5 | 4 |