All of them and more… We did CL, and Perl before Java and then immediately went to the 0.1 of Java when it was available. JSP didn’t exist yet, or servlets even, but we were hooked.
I went into 2000s doing enterprise java beans (and Corba code generators in xml) and stupid over architected Java stuff with everything XML (and XSLT). We wrote our own db which stored XML (but was mostly in memory), our own frontend language in XML. All with Java under it.
Our own fairly comprehensive application server with all kinds of ready made components; we sold a lot of licenses and in the end the company for a lot to a big vendor who immediately threw it all away.
But yes, we drank all the koolaid and it was good timing of course, just all very stodgy, especially as the system and the clients grew; we did the same large sized applications as we (other ‘we’ but still me) do now, but with far more people and far worse processes. The first years we had zip file version control (until moving to csv and then svn), tests, what are those? And more like that.
In hindsight, I would’ve skipped Java until Clojure, or skipped it altogether. I was very good at Common Lisp and c/c++ and liked all those things better. But I was convinced somehow that all that was going to die because of Java.
It all did die because of Java, or at least went into hibernation.
Common Lisp, true or not, was known as an AI language and died because it was attached to the AI winter.
C++ was killed by Java for a lot of business software, including at my company. It won what I call the 80/20 battle, meaning it gave you 80% of what the old technology gave you for 20% of the hassle. You still had OO, but didn’t have to worry about pass by reference vs. pass by value, interfaces got you out of the multiple inheritance diamond problem, and garbage collection of course.
Do you think if your application server was in Common Lisp or Perl that it would have sold for a lot?
Other losers of the 80/20 battles, Java over C++, XML over SGML, JSON over XML.
Cobra…shudder. Oh and COM, don’t forget COM. My greatest accomplishments in my career were avoiding going into management and avoiding COM.
Yeah, Java did win but c/c++ didn’t die and I just liked them better. And seemed you could’ve made a good sandwich for the past 25 years with CL as well. But yeah, the path I chose was probably the best for the time. Allowing me to retire before 30 (but didn’t).
COM I missed completely: we drank the Windows hatred koolaid popular in some circles back then too (Borg Gates etc), management I did for a bit thinking I would like it; I didn’t.
I went into 2000s doing enterprise java beans (and Corba code generators in xml) and stupid over architected Java stuff with everything XML (and XSLT). We wrote our own db which stored XML (but was mostly in memory), our own frontend language in XML. All with Java under it.
Our own fairly comprehensive application server with all kinds of ready made components; we sold a lot of licenses and in the end the company for a lot to a big vendor who immediately threw it all away.
But yes, we drank all the koolaid and it was good timing of course, just all very stodgy, especially as the system and the clients grew; we did the same large sized applications as we (other ‘we’ but still me) do now, but with far more people and far worse processes. The first years we had zip file version control (until moving to csv and then svn), tests, what are those? And more like that.
In hindsight, I would’ve skipped Java until Clojure, or skipped it altogether. I was very good at Common Lisp and c/c++ and liked all those things better. But I was convinced somehow that all that was going to die because of Java.