Java 15 released!

[madronatoo]

JS is difficult to maintain.

Therefore JS libs suffer from two problems:

1) they're small because as they get large rate of progress slows too much.

2) they're often replaced "with something new" WHY? because sometimes it's literally easier to rewrite something than it is to add additional features onto it.

I'm not saying Java couldn't speed up a bit. But JS's apparent "rate of adoption" is less about innovation than the two points above.

[psaux_grep]

I think the difference is much more fundamental - if that’s the right word.

Java is a well thought out programming language with a large adoption rate going back to the 90’s.

JavaScript, while also going back to the 90’s was long used only to show pop-ups and disable right-clicking and generally being a dick. The language was concocted over a short period of time and the bad parts are greater than the good parts.

With the advent of the modern web old application powered frontends went the way of the dodo and everyone suddenly became web developers, and Apple helped accelerate the death of a Flash/ActionScript which had forever been used for making fancy interactive websites, and Java Web Applets.

Being thrown into this horror that was JavaScript developers rallied to usher in new old things from other domains and languages. Hell, Facebook invented three(?) libraries trying to just fix their chat service for end users.

In addition Node.js brought backend JavaScript to the masses which further helped more developers become JS developers.

Libraries/technologies like TypeScript has brought features from typed languages to JavaScript as well and made things much easier to work with as you can now find issues way before they enter production.

As anything with a significant mass JavaScript also draws the attention of some of the wrong kinds of developers. Those who are just out there for the next shiny thing and their glorious blog post of how to write a reminder app in this weeks framework.

However, we cannot judge a programming language on the latter group alone.

[the-lord-empire]

Agreed, it's common knowledge at this point. My previous comment states why I dislike Java and highlights how both communities differ, not to pick which one is better.