I tend to agree with you on  how Java came about and was marketed and
sold to corporate level execs, myself including during my bachelors was
required to work on Sun systems using Java 1.1 for my programming
languages. The school had received a large amount of money and equipment
from Sun in order to promote their new language, in fact my school
stopped teaching Advanced C++ for a whole year hoping everyone would be
happy with just Java's course work. Later they did bring C++ back but
only the CS majors and math majors took the subject.

In fact the government is promoting a lot of cross platform programming
projects, although they have dictated to us the use of the language.
Although there are some that resist.

Jared Dame
Software Engineer
Weapons Engagement Office




On Wed, 2002-09-04 at 23:03, W Kent Starr wrote:
> On Wed, 2002-09-04 at 15:00, nico wrote:
> 
> > IMHO, for a language to become standard (like C and C++) it can't be 
> > controlled by a single company. I consider Ruby to have an advantage over 
> > Java because it isn't proprietary.
> >
> 
> Agreed.
>  
> > Ruby won't get a chance to compete with Java... because java will be dead in a 
> > couple of years.
> > 
> 
> Nice thought, but I'm not -that- optimistic. Unlike perl, Python, some
> others, which were introduced in mainstream corporate use from the
> grassroots level in a somewhat subversive manner, Java was "sold" to the
> decision makers. As a result, there is a huge investment in Java-based
> solutions throughout the corporate world, one which the decision makers
> (especially those most responsible for buying into the Java hype) will
> actively protect.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Kent Starr
-- 
Jared Dame
SAIC
Weapons Engagement Office