I missed the most recent DemoCamp event because I had another event that night.  I read a review of it by the AccordionGuy and I wished I had been there to hear a comment by a frustrated Java developer.  As the AccordionGuy describes it

I feel for those Java developers.  In the late 1990's they were really king of their game.  I recall a colleague from Nortel who got sent to a Sun sponsored Java conference for developers.  We all gathered round him to hear what it was like. 

When he arrived to register at the conference, in addition to the usual questions, he was asked what kind of coffee he liked (regular, latte, americano etc) and what he took in it (milk, two sugars etc).  His response was programmed into a small Sun branded key chain.  When he went to the coffee machine, his key chain could fit in a small receptacle, it would read it and make him the coffee he had specified at registration.  I don't think I need to say it but ...... fancy-schmancy.


 



Java, it seems to me, was one of the first languages to be heavily marketed.  It was no coincidence that the Java conference organizers choose to illustrate the power of the programming language through a coffee machine.  Java, coffee, get it? Get it? 

According to Wikipedia, the name Java could be an acronym or could stand for nothing but was most likely chosen because the developers met at a coffee shop.  Either way, it was fortunate that they chose Java and that at the same time the coffee culture was rising.  That really made it easy for the marketing people. 

It was not a good day for programmers when marketing people got a hold of their languages.  In general, programming languages are developed by programmers to solve a problem that can't be overcome with what eventually becomes the predecessor language. 

In the '90's, corporates started to realize that programmers with an expertise in a language would become some of the 'stickiest' customers you could create.  And so the linguists were born.  When Kernighan and Ritchie developed C they certainly weren't thinking about the million dollar industry that would develop from Microsoft C++ courses.

I am often dismayed when I hear programmers act like linguists.  I speak 'C or Perl or PHP or Java or Ruby'.  And they put down the other languages.  I have no interest in that type of discussion.  As a product manager, I am most impressed with programmers who can listen to my business or customer problem, develop a solution and then prototype the solution for me (so I can see it).  If they wrote it in Lisp, I'm happy if it solves my customers problem.

So Java developer, be comforted.  If it solves a customer problem or saves your company money then you don't have to worry about what those Ruby guys are up to.  But if you are just there to defend 'Java' your language, the way acadamie-francais defends French then you have problem.