🚀 go-pugleaf

Erik P. DeBenedictis wrote:
> 
> Andrew Koenig wrote:
> >
> > In article <4k7akk$nsh@engnews2.Eng.Sun.COM> linden@positive.eng.sun.com (Peter van der Linden) writes:
> >
> > > Andrew Koenig <ark@research.att.com> wrote:
> > > >Of course, the head of Java marketing is expected to say things like this,
> > > >whether or not the facts strictly justify them.
> >
> > > Well Andrew, one could equally well say that a proponent, supporter,
> > > and author of a book on  C++ would be expected to defend the C++ language
> > > by saying something like this, regardless of whether it is borne out by
> > > the evidence or not  ;-)
> >
> > Of course.  You should always take people's biases into account
> > when you evaluate what they say.
> 
> ...yet even a biased person may say things that are worth listening to.
> 
> I agree with Andy. Java has a lot of marketing behind it.
> 
> Languages have not traditionally been the center of a lot of marketing attention.
> C/C++, for example, was developed by AT&T which did NOT market them as a product.
> Java, on the other hand, is the subject of major marketing efforts by Sun. There
> are "Java days," for example, where Sun loads a circus tent with a thousand people
> and provides free food. Thus, I don't find Java's popularity at all surprising. While
> marketing people are not rigorously scientific, they are quite capable of producing
> a large amount of talk/$ invested. Given the number of marketing dollars apparently
> devoted to Java (and the lack of a competitor) I think Java's success is pretty
> much in the "middle of the Bell curve" as a marketing effort.
> 
> I believe there are better comparisons than C/C++ and Java. There is precedent
> for applying marketing to computer languges, however. Prolog (or the Japanese
> 5th generation computing initiative) and PL/1 got very expensive marketing campaigns
> as well. These were all bombs.
> 
> Is it possible that Java will become the Prolog or PL/1 of the 90's?
> 
> Erik DeBenedictis

When was the last time you saw ProLog featured in Time magasine? ;^) I 
think it already has too much inertia & dev community support behind 
it to meet that kind of grisly end. Besides, Java is actually 
_useful_....