Forum OpenACS Q&A: Response to A Technical Paper on Java

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Posted by Rafael Calvo on
Ben, Good document. I can not add anything from the technical point of view, but my feelings about your "how to chose guide" (in which I *technically* agree) are different. In my experience the people who *buy* will have exactly the opposed priorities:
  1. The general popularity of the language
  2. The availability of proven, useful packages of functionality
  3. The extensibility of the language platform
  4. The programming language's inherent adequacy to the task at hand
And I believe that the difference is what made aD change their way. In fact I think that it is why Microsoft is putting so much money into marketing C#, because they know that each developer is programming in C# for .NET is potentially one less for the competition.
Millions of dollars and men hours have been invested in Java. How is it that Microsoft suddenly has a "competitive" alternative?
How do you think opening the doors to the idea of OpenACS/C#, becomes part of this power game?
It would be interesting to highlight in your document that students at MIT, UCB, CMU and at least a couple of Univ. in Australia are studiyng Tcl. Maybe some figures from sciptics?
I apologize if you wanted to keep this discussion strictly technical.