On Mar 7, 2009, at 1:34 PM, Miguel Negrao wrote:
I think a lot of it is the marketplace. Companies, whether producing software for release or just internal tools, have a couple of incentives to stick with Java or C++. One is that they have been around for a while and it's easier for project managers to estimate risk if they don't have to factor in technologies that they don't know as well. The other is that they can count on a steady flow of Java and C++ programmers coming out of universities and IT schools (whereas it's probably harder to find talent if you want to build your project in Ruby or, say, Haskell). What happens when your ace Haskell consultant moves on to the next gig, and then you need to find someone else to maintain the project? You're hosed. But if it's all in Java, hey, J2EE developers are no further away than $100K/year. Computer science departments, of course, want their students to be able to get jobs, so they have to teach Java and C++. It may be more fun to teach more powerful, higher-level dynamic languages, but who's going to hire a kid coming out of school who goes into an interview saying, "Java sucks, why aren't you using Haskell"? We're lucky -- we can choose our poison! hjh : H. James Harkins .::!:.:.......:.::........:..!.::.::...:..:...:.:.:.:..: "Come said the Muse, Sing me a song no poet has yet chanted, Sing me the universal." -- Whitman |