Ask HN: Language inversion-- why do you think it exists?
The more I think about language inversion (the fact that the best languages, like Scala and Haskell, remain obscure; while C++ and Java remain mainstream) the more it puzzles me. Often the justification given for using Java is, "it has the best tooling". Well, that's completely reasonable. But how'd it get to that point? How did Java, despite the obvious deficiencies of the language, get the largest community in the first place?
It wasn't always this way, nor does it need to be so. In 1987, Lisp was the #3 language on the TIOBE index. Something happened that caused the state of language inversion we see now. I have a guess, but I'm kind of curious if there's someone out there who actually knows how we ended up in 15+ years of language inversion.
It wasn't always this way, nor does it need to be so. In 1987, Lisp was the #3 language on the TIOBE index. Something happened that caused the state of language inversion we see now. I have a guess, but I'm kind of curious if there's someone out there who actually knows how we ended up in 15+ years of language inversion.