Thanks. Looks to have cleaned it up.

Historically mainstream languages age better than hip languages. By and large, mainstream languages of the yesteryears are still mainstream languages, whereas many hip, fringe languages of the yesteryears are now unhip, fringe languages. The churn is likely to slow going forward because new programmers represent a smaller percentage of the programmer population.

I think I'm finally getting the hang of this technology hipsterism - just like the real hipsterism, it doesn't make sense if you're part of the working class or the real upper class and remains the domain of a portion of the middle class that feels they don't belong there. If your career trajectory and credentials are above-average, or at least you fancy yourself above average, yet you're not anywhere near Jeff Dean or John Carmack types and your career and sense of identity are threatened by recruiters, hiring managers, peers and people on the internet who don't seem to understand that you're not just another average programmer, technology hipsterism gives you a way to distinguish yourself from the masses.

But hipsterism works because the very trappings that hipsters are consciously rejecting have mainstream acceptance among the middle class and may even be aspirational for the working class. Java, C#, McMansions, SUVs or AppleBees or whatever it is hipsters are railing against these days wouldn't be so uncool among hipsters if they weren't so prevalent. For every hipster corporate Java developer who goes to Clojure meetups to complain about his struggles against the machine, there are DB girls of the working class world for whom Java is aspirational. Hipsters wouldn't be caught dead at chain restaurants like Olive Garden and Cheesecake Factory, but those are annual treats for many working class families!

Not saying that these technologies don't have pros and cons and are purely matter of fashion, but the way people identify with certain technologies doesn't seem to have anything to do with their value as technology just like hipsters growing their own "organic" food in their Brooklyn backyard don't do so out of their overwhelming concern for sustainable living or their own health.

if people here don't appreciate this, I don't know who will:

You might be off by a milenium.

Languages obviously have momentum. Heavily used languages have a large momentum that keeps them being used. My caveats of already knowing the language is related to this fact. A language you know (or that your coworkers know) is at a definite advantage over a language nobody knows. A language with libraries relevant to what you want to do is at an advantage over a language that doesn't. And so on.


Not thinking Java isn't the best choice in the scenario above has nothing to do with hipsterism. Its the fact that there are much better languages out there in the scenario above.

The rest of your post seems just kind of rant-y. So ok?

Edit: Obviously both gm and I weren't being super serious with our posts about the hip language, the 90s, and Java.

I'm actually generally pro-Java. I would write many things in it, but there are also other things I have no intention of ever using it for again without really good reasons (like building a web application). But if you want to write small applications with little to no programming experience, Java usually isn't the best solution.

I don't like Java as an introductory language, but I think it should be taught by schools because it is a mainstream language that still has lots of good things about it. But that doesn't mean that every application is a nail to be hit by the Java hammer.

This feels like goalpost shifting - you were mocking DB Girl for her obsession with Java and only after adios pointed out Java's popularity you shifted to this measured stance that the most popular language isn't the best language to start a project with if you don't have experience with it. Well that ought to apply doubly to unpopular languages but I don't see anyone catching flack for starting projects in obscure languages they don't know yet. Maybe I'm dense or something but I'm sure the mocking tone in your or anyone's post has a lot more to do with the shocking unhipness of her technical decision as opposed to its suboptimality.

The scenario here is that DB Girl wants to learn Java and a typical corporate Java job probably represents a considerable step up from what she's doing, given what Dave has told us about his working condition and everything. What better language is out there if you want to get one of those jobs? This seems like reasonable aspiration for someone in her position, and certainly something to be excited about.

I don't see this as any different from a bunch of hipsters making fun of some working-class family that's super excited about their annual Olive Garden outing. I mean, I get that you feel superior to DB girl and by any reasonable standards of judging programmers you probably are, but it still feels wrong.

I get that but didn't you feel that way at least a little about DB girl? I've been at technology hipsterism for longer than most of you here and I will admit to feeling that way at first before realizing that it's really not something to be proud of.

Re:Java...I think it's always at or near the top of web frameworks performance wise (an area where cooler languages get most hype). And you can develop pretty rapidly in it these days.

In fact I wouldn't be shocked if Java web development is actually quicker than Rails web development despite being super verbose...but alas Rails has long gone from hipster stuff to laaaawl.

candybar, it's also more fun to work with new technologies. If I had to go back to Java my job would become much more of a J-O-B job, rather than getting paid to tinker with cool stuff. Obviously there's the requisite corporate BS either way, but take out the fun part and that becomes a lot more onerous.

The same thing happened when I went from Perl to Java. I had an e-commerce website that I had written from scratch in Perl (no templates! o_O), basically teaching myself web programming as I went. The company using it had all kinds of ongoing work for me at $65/hour - which is pretty damn nice for the late 90s and no middleman. I had a hard time motivating myself to do the work. It just wasn't fun or interesting to me anymore. I wanted to play with Java Servlets. Ooooooooohhhhhh.

If it feels like that to you - you misunderstood me. To be clear:

In the 1990s I think Java was a fine language for someone like DB girl to learn in this context. Might even have been the best (my knowledge of 90s programming is limited). It also had lots of hype.

In the present day its not the best language for DB girl (for reasons stated). Java also doesn't have lots of hype.

That's the joke*... no goal post shifting.

I might also argue that "hype" or "hipness" is better correlated with being the correct choice for a use case like that of DB girl than "mainstreamness" (although probably not highly correlated either way). Just a random thought pulled out of my ass though.

* Edit: Just to really kill the joke, many of the things Dave tells us about his company don't strike me as particularly modern. Hence why I felt that this was an extra funny comment I was making.

I don't know what you're asking here.

This is definitely a common sentiment.

I was doing some work with a random big silicon valley company a little while ago and they were telling me a bit about some of the projects developers were working on. A bunch of them seemed totally unnecessary from a business perspective and I ended up thinking that the only reason the company was letting them happen is that it made developers happy and in today's highly competitive developer market it probably just ends up being a cost of recruiting and keeping the best talent.

Similar to my views on Google's 20% time.

This might be true in the twisted lands of SV. Elsewhere Java ist by far the best "career language" imo

I agree it's a bit dull. There's loads of very interesting stuff for it though (gazillion libraries of all kinds...I distinctly remember some cool simulation stuff). And there's enough somewhat interesting stuff to dip into if you're bored (AspectJ etc.)

My impression wasn't that she was learning a career language. I thought she was trying to build stuff for their company.

And if I were in a more argumentative mood, I might even take the position that while Java might be the best "career language" its not the best language to start a career with. As in, it's still not the best thing to start learning on your own.

ding ding ding

This conversation just reminded me of a dream I had the other night where my friend said their company was rewriting their entire application in D. Pretty sure I woke up right when he said that because I knew something wasn't right.

I missed this before, but wow, this seems like a pretty deep psycho-analysis of a throwaway comment. But, uh, ok?

Well it is daveT. So it's safe to assume something's askew.

It's not about you in particular but multiple people, including daveT thought finding Java exciting in 2015 was some kind of laughing matter and there appears to be some kind shared of expectation that we should find such things funny. I do find it funny too, but it's a little disturbing to me that I do.

I kinda envision everything daveT's employees are doing are to spite him. Like they created this super simple "Hello world" function and don't want to let him in on it, similar to how young kids build a secret tree fort and since their friend bad mouthed their idea in the beginning they don't let the friend in once its complete. Even though everyone knows the tree fort sucks, it creates enjoyment by only because of its exclusiveness.

daveT's employees only like their Java "program" because daveT doesn't.

It is kind of funny. It's a reversal of standard stereotypes. But to me that doesn't make it malicious / disturbing. It could just as well be funny because many of the standard stereotypes about Java actually are sort of ridiculous.

As an extra bonus, DaveT was talking about compiling / dependency management portion of Java. And people that get excited about that, regardless of experience, are kind of funny to me because its just so different from the parts of programming that I enjoy.

Edit: I can't think of a concrete example right now*, but I have a similar reaction when I see someone really smart/talented/successful get really excited about something relatively simple or something I would consider very boring. It's not a judgemental reaction - just the situation.

* Thought of one: I saw Bill Gates give a talk once and he got side tracked into a 2-3 minute monologue about how awesome bit manipulation was. It was funny - even though I have no dreams of ever being in the same tier as Bill Gates in the vast majority of metrics.

just for the record, i love the cheesecake factory

bit manipulation is awesome. It's a fact

The advantage of being 45 is that you can hate the Cheesecake Factory just by virtue of being old and grumpy. No need to get all hipster about it.