I gave up on the times years ago. They have lost all objectivity. No need to believe me, believe the ex executive editor. They have lost their way in search of profits.
"We're also generically worried about our journalism being scrambled in a kind of Magimix (blender) with everyone else's journalism."
The NY Times gave up journalism in favor of click-bait a long time ago. It's understandable, they were bleeding subscribers before they did it. But they are now indistinguishable from every other click-bait site.
I'm sure you're old enough to remember when Dr Robert Atkins was called a quack. It took years to catch up to his ideas on the benefits of a high protein, low carbohydrate diet. You probably also remember when butter was bad and margarine was good. Until they realized they had it backwards.
It doesn't take much to get a kid to decide not to go to school. But are they willing to make real sacrifices for the environment? Probably not. You have to give up meat. You can't buy electronics devices. You can't use plastics. Can't drink milk or consume many other animal products unless they are expensive sustainable varieties. You have to give up on shopping at the mall and do all your clothes shopping at thrift stores buying only highly durable clothing that lasts more than a season. Give up any sports or extracurriculars that require you to travel by bus.
When kids do those things, they will be standing on firm moral ground.
I've had similar conversations with my kids. They are just as willing to give up their conveniences as wealthy people are willing to give up the private jets they use to get to the next climate junket.
For me, music will often help my productivity/creativity because it gives my brain a built-in distraction. So instead of deciding to check out Slashdot, Reddit, or some other Internet site "just for a minute", I'll just listen more to the lyrics when my brain needs a mini-break. I'm less likely to find myself having wasted three hours listening to music than browsing the web.
I agree with you. It helps me get in the zone. Without it my brain is a chaotic place.
The unfortunate thing is, the music that gets me in the zone today may stop doing it tomorrow. My brain stays chaotic instead of lining up. It could take a while to find the next one that works. Happily once it does I am a machine.
I don't know that it's vanity as much as it is an unwillingness to take the time and effort to understand 1) the workflow the code supports and 2) the code itself. I guess sure, there's a bit of vanity and overconfidence thrown into the mix too. Disdain for the existing code and overconfidence in my capabilities.
If you have have all the requirements, true, full, accurate requirements, and an intuitive, easy to use interface, sure a rewrite can succeed. The successful cases listed in the article (Basecamp to Basecamp2, Visual Studio, Inbox to Gmail, Freshbooks and Billspring) all knew what FEATURES had to be implemented. They had true requirements. They had continuity in management and likely programmers.
Getting the true requirements can be very, very difficult for a new team. As far as the crufty edge cases go... how much of that is a user requirement versus some flakiness caused by a weakness somewhere else in the program?
The problem with eliciting requirements from users is that they can't envison what they truly want until they can play with a real version of the product, and THEN they realize how they want to use it (I guess this is a more of a problem for a new feature). Requirements for new features seem to evolve too. Gross requirements -> user plays with the product -> refined requirements, rinse, repeat.
Another factor is how long the rewrite will take and what the user migration path is. If it takes too long the product stagnates. I think the Perl 6 rewrite killed the Perl momentum and it's never coming back.
I once worked in a government department that liked silver bullets. One of the things they tried was moving the development shop to one language, Java. That meant rewriting everything they wrote and even used. Even apps that were running without issues had to be re-written just because it was originally written in C. They even wanted to rewrite the utility formmail.pl that most sites were using at the time just because it used Perl.
Perl itself is an example. The grand rewrite to Perl 6 is still a work in progress. I think it killed Perl in the process.
The insistence on rewriting because "The old code is complete crap" is often just about vanity. That it works and meets the business requirements is irrelevant, they just don't like it. They don't care that rewriting it will take a lot of time and cost a lot of money to get to where they already are functionally.
While that rewrite is going on someone else is busy maintaining and enhancing the existing product. By the time rev 2 is near done it is already out of date. Many times I've seen it get canceled. Other times it just keeps meandering along sucking up resources and making grand promises while everyone else happily stays on rev 1.
"However, if we listen to our streamed music using a hi-fi sound system it’s estimated to use 107 kilowatt hours of electricity a year, costing about £15.00 to run. A CD player uses 34.7 kilowatt hours a year and costs £5 to run."
Where did they get this estimation from? What's a "hi-fi sound system" in this model? How many watts are the amps? Is the CD player a component hooked up to the same "hi-fi sound system" or is it a standalone device? CD players have motors and lasers, anyone who used a portable one knows it eats power much faster than an MP3 player. All those moving parts mean CD players break a lot faster than MP3 players. What about the cost of manufacturing and disposing of them? How did they actually calculate the CO2 cost of the infrastructure that streams music?
I could go on and on. This is just so stupid. I'm reminded of the scene from "Back to School" where Rodney Dangerfield laughs at the snobby professor and says, "Oh man, you left out a lot of stuff".
About the authors: "Sharon George is a lecturer in environmental science and Deirdre McKay is a reader in geography and environmental politics, both at Keele University"
What is a "reader in geography and environmental politics" anyway?
I've been in meetings where a choice of technology comes down to free VS non-free, and free wins almost every time. They are sometimes willing to pay something for "support", but not much. As for "giving back", some companies prohibit their employees from contributing code to anything.
So open source is great for the consumers of it, but less great for the providers and their commercial competitors.
This subsidy was Governor Andrew Cuomo's baby. He was heavily invested in it.
He even offered to change his name from "Andrew" to "Amazon Cuomo".
Nobody on the planet is going to be less objective.
He has less credibility than a NYC Bowery bum to be making forecasts about it.
By quoting him, you are saying much more about your own judgement and gullibility than about the supposed benefits of the subsidy.
I guess you're much too busy being snarky to read the announcement or the attached memorandum of understanding between the parties: https://esd.ny.gov/sites/defau...
The memorandum with attachments is very explicit in the details but you needn't read that either. You obviously know the terms better than the parties that signed it. For everyone else who lacks your keen insight here is the first paragraph:
"This memorandum of understanding (the “MOU”) sets forth certain understandings and agreements among New York State Urban Development Corporation d/b/a Empire State Development (“ESD”); The City of New York (the “City”); New York City Economic Development Corporation (“NYCEDC”; together with the City and ESD, the “Public Parties”), and Amazon.com Services, Inc. (the “Company”), with respect to a project to create, in coordination with the Company’s development partners, a new corporate headquarters for Amazon.com, Inc. and its affiliates in New York City, including the design, development, construction, renovation and operation of what will initially be approximately 4,000,000 square feet of commercial space and the creation of 25,000 new jobs with an average wage of over $150,000 annually within 10 years of the date hereof, with a planned expansion for a total of 6,000,000 to 8,000,000 square feet of commercial space that is expected to result in the creation of up to 40,000 new jobs within 15 years of the date hereof (the “Project”). "
Or the net benefit Amazon brings far exceeds the amount they aren't paying.
By some estimates the net benefit was $0.
By some estimates the net benefit was $27 billion.
Do you also believe in the Easter Bunny?
Robbing Peter to pay Paul sounds great if you are Paul. But the net benefit is zero. Or even negative if Peter moves away because he keeps getting robbed.
I'm sure with your deep knowledge of New York finances and your rigorous study of the project economic details your analysis is more accurate than the one from the Governor of New York's office: https://www.governor.ny.gov/ne...
"Amazon Will Create 25,000 to 40,000 New Jobs with an Average Salary of More than $150,000, Invest More Than $3.6 Billion Over 15 Years and Create $27.5 Billion In Tax Revenue Over 25 Years"
It takes money to run a city. If Amazon is paying less, then someone else is paying more.
Or the net benefit Amazon brings far exceeds the amount they aren't paying. By some estimates the net benefit was $27 billion.
If a mugger leaves the cash in your wallet do you consider that some kind of gain for you?
Getting mugged happens randomly. We should be making our tax system less like mugging by having fair and uniform rules.
Random or not, the point is the same. Keeping the money you have is not the same as getting new money from another source.
People were buying apartments
For every buyer, there is a seller. What you are really saying is that prices increased from their already sky high levels.
developers were planning to build, new businesses would have been created.
Developers in NYC are always planning to build... and their building permits are denied 90% of the time. If NYC wants more construction and more businesses, they don't need to spend $3B. They can instead spend $0, and just stop saying "No".
It's not a zero-sum game. Demand increases supply. And stop saying "Spend 3 billion". They weren't writing 3 billion dollar checks.
these would have been jobs for locals
The local unemployment rate is at 3.8%, which is an historic low. The locals already have plenty of jobs to choose from. Amazon would have just bled workers from other companies, who couldn't match Amazon's wages because they weren't getting the same subsidies.
Again, not a zero sum game. People will move and/or commute for jobs. I certainly have. And you are still ignoring the regional benefits.
There's an important distinction between being paid, and incentives that mean you pay less.
There is indeed. But both are wrong. There should be equality before the law, even for businesses. One business should not be taxed to fund tax breaks for another "more worthy" business.
What does "fund a tax break" mean? They aren't writing Amazon a check. They are collecting less from them. If a mugger leaves the cash in your wallet do you consider that some kind of gain for you? It was already your money.
Just the *news* of the new headquarters had started an economic boom in Long Island City. People were buying apartments, developers were planning to build, new businesses would have been created. Long Island City isn't car friendly, these would have been jobs for locals (including workers who moved in to the area) or train commuters from the rest of NYC and Long Island. They would have been using the local restaurants and shops, and going out at night there or taking the train to Manhattan. Killing this project killed a tremendous source of tax revenues for the city.
Or, NYC could take that $3 Billion dollars and hire 25,000 workers with $50K annual salaries for two years to rebuild and modernize the city's subway system which will provide much greater and longer term economic benefit to the city than an Amazon office building.
NY wasn't writing Amazon a check for 3 billion dollars.
"The San Joaquin segment was supposed to be finished by 2022, and the whole enchilada by 2029. But it’s not looking good, and if that first deadline is missed, the state could be exposed to the clawback of up to 3.5 billion in federal funds awarded the project in 2010 as part of the Obama administration’s economic stimulus program."
Probably more thinking about the fact that Amarillo has about a 200k population with the majority having only a high school education or some college experience. But the vast majority does not have a degree of any sort.
Not really the place to move your high tech company to when you need a highly educated workforce.
It's not that we think your dumb, it's just applying even the lightest common sense would have shown you why this was such an idiotic suggestion.
Did you ever look at the statistics for New York City? According to https://www.towncharts.com/New... New York City has 37% of people with a bachelors degree or higher. Is that a "vast majority"?
Definitely not dead or gravely wounded. Python may not be the new hotness, but it's absolutely a go-to language for new code for me. I have been, in point of fact, writing new Python code for my employer recently. It's still the tool I reach for when I need something working Now. I don't spend time writing code for small reasons either--if it isn't making us significantly more money than it costs to build, I don't build it.
Python makes us money, and that's the bottom line.
Now, I'm no picky eater. I've been coding 26 years, and I'll use the correct tool for the job any time I can, rather than "work like an asshole" [favorite saying of an old boss]. For me, that's often Python, but I won't hesistate to drop down to C/C++ or assembler if that's the appropriate tool--or work with Java or C# or Objective-C or Clojure or Ruby or Javascript or Erlang or Haskell or HTML or CSS (and once upon a time, BASIC, Pascal, et al...).
Why are people so stuck on one language or one way of thinking? I was listening to a software engineering podcast recently, and this guy with 8 years of experience is saying he thinks he knows it all now. Well, sorry to break it to you, 8 Year Master, but after 26+ years of this, I've realized that I will never learn it all (even though I keep trying).
Pay your bills first, keep your deadlines and promises, go home to your loved ones, and do things that expand your horizons.
Java, Python, C, Go, Rust: these things aren't important in the same way.
I agree with your basic points. If I'm writing tools I prefer a scripting language, and in that domain I express myself better in Perl than Python. But in a large system with lots of interfaces and implementations right now I would prefer to use Java.
Python isn't dead, but it was gravely wounded by the Python 2/3 debacle. (Python 3 is backward incompatible with Python 2, without actually fixing any of the big problems with Python 2.).
A lot of people still use Python because of the huge library ecosystem. However not many new projects are being started in Python today. The quality of the community has also dropped precipitously as good developers jumped ship and the code monkeys piled in.
Golang, otoh, is alive and doing very well. Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, Etcd, and Prometheus are a few of the high profile FOSS projects written in Go. Many talented folks who jumped ship from Python are now Gophers.
Open source and enterprise aren't the same thing. An open source project can choose to use whatever flavor of the month they like. An enterprise will have a strong bias towards using tech they have established depth in. Adopting a new language becomes a long term support commitment that has to make business sense.
Java is used mostly to make enterprise-class server-side software. It's used extensively in the financial services sector. Most of the code for any FI's web applications you interact with is Java. And so is all of the backend code. And it's not going anywhere in that space.
It is so not dead. The ecosystem around Java is huge and growing. If we are talking web apps, sure, they are using Javascript, Typescript, etc. But the server side for pretty much every major project I've seen in the last 10 years is Java, with C/C++ in some areas.
As TFA also notes, it would be extremely unusual for the government not to accept this recommendation.
That's a fair statement but still it's wrong to spin an article titled "Germany should phase out coal use by 2038: commission" into "Germany To Phase Out Coal Use By 2038, Says Report".
Slashdot Mirror
I think anti-vaxers are misguided but being misguided is not illegal, and neither is their opinion.
This new trend of blocking things some people disagree with is just wrong,
The Times isn't bad. Far better than MSNBC
"Better than MSNBC" is a very low bar.
I gave up on the times years ago. They have lost all objectivity.
No need to believe me, believe the ex executive editor. They have lost their way in search of profits.
"We're also generically worried about our journalism being scrambled in a kind of Magimix (blender) with everyone else's journalism."
The NY Times gave up journalism in favor of click-bait a long time ago. It's understandable, they were bleeding subscribers before they did it. But they are now indistinguishable from every other click-bait site.
No, there is never new advice. The advice is always the same
Indeed. If you get your advice from doctors or nutritionists it is steady. If you get it from CNN, it is not.
The advice changes over time, even from experts
https://www.healthyway.com/con...
I'm sure you're old enough to remember when Dr Robert Atkins was called a quack. It took years to catch up to his ideas on the benefits of a high protein, low carbohydrate diet. You probably also remember when butter was bad and margarine was good. Until they realized they had it backwards.
The movie "Sleeper" had a funny segment on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
It doesn't take much to get a kid to decide not to go to school. But are they willing to make real sacrifices for the environment? Probably not. You have to give up meat. You can't buy electronics devices. You can't use plastics. Can't drink milk or consume many other animal products unless they are expensive sustainable varieties. You have to give up on shopping at the mall and do all your clothes shopping at thrift stores buying only highly durable clothing that lasts more than a season. Give up any sports or extracurriculars that require you to travel by bus.
When kids do those things, they will be standing on firm moral ground.
I've had similar conversations with my kids. They are just as willing to give up their conveniences as wealthy people are willing to give up the private jets they use to get to the next climate junket.
School administrations are not going to get in the way of the cause du jour. The ensuing recreational outrage will not be worth it.
Maybe it's marginally useful in a senior citizen home providing services to the bedridden.
Otherwise I think it's just embarrassing.
For me, music will often help my productivity/creativity because it gives my brain a built-in distraction. So instead of deciding to check out Slashdot, Reddit, or some other Internet site "just for a minute", I'll just listen more to the lyrics when my brain needs a mini-break. I'm less likely to find myself having wasted three hours listening to music than browsing the web.
I agree with you. It helps me get in the zone. Without it my brain is a chaotic place.
The unfortunate thing is, the music that gets me in the zone today may stop doing it tomorrow. My brain stays chaotic instead of lining up. It could take a while to find the next one that works. Happily once it does I am a machine.
I don't know that it's vanity as much as it is an unwillingness to take the time and effort to understand 1) the workflow the code supports and 2) the code itself. I guess sure, there's a bit of vanity and overconfidence thrown into the mix too. Disdain for the existing code and overconfidence in my capabilities.
If you have have all the requirements, true, full, accurate requirements, and an intuitive, easy to use interface, sure a rewrite can succeed. The successful cases listed in the article (Basecamp to Basecamp2, Visual Studio, Inbox to Gmail, Freshbooks and Billspring) all knew what FEATURES had to be implemented. They had true requirements. They had continuity in management and likely programmers.
Getting the true requirements can be very, very difficult for a new team. As far as the crufty edge cases go... how much of that is a user requirement versus some flakiness caused by a weakness somewhere else in the program?
The problem with eliciting requirements from users is that they can't envison what they truly want until they can play with a real version of the product, and THEN they realize how they want to use it (I guess this is a more of a problem for a new feature). Requirements for new features seem to evolve too. Gross requirements -> user plays with the product -> refined requirements, rinse, repeat.
Another factor is how long the rewrite will take and what the user migration path is. If it takes too long the product stagnates.
I think the Perl 6 rewrite killed the Perl momentum and it's never coming back.
I once worked in a government department that liked silver bullets. One of the things they tried was moving the development shop to one language, Java. That meant rewriting everything they wrote and even used. Even apps that were running without issues had to be re-written just because it was originally written in C. They even wanted to rewrite the utility formmail.pl that most sites were using at the time just because it used Perl.
Perl itself is an example. The grand rewrite to Perl 6 is still a work in progress.
I think it killed Perl in the process.
The insistence on rewriting because "The old code is complete crap" is often just about vanity. That it works and meets the business requirements is irrelevant, they just don't like it. They don't care that rewriting it will take a lot of time and cost a lot of money to get to where they already are functionally.
While that rewrite is going on someone else is busy maintaining and enhancing the existing product. By the time rev 2 is near done it is already out of date. Many times I've seen it get canceled. Other times it just keeps meandering along sucking up resources and making grand promises while everyone else happily stays on rev 1.
"However, if we listen to our streamed music using a hi-fi sound system it’s estimated to use 107 kilowatt hours of electricity a year, costing about £15.00 to run. A CD player uses 34.7 kilowatt hours a year and costs £5 to run."
Where did they get this estimation from? What's a "hi-fi sound system" in this model? How many watts are the amps? Is the CD player a component hooked up to the same "hi-fi sound system" or is it a standalone device? CD players have motors and lasers, anyone who used a portable one knows it eats power much faster than an MP3 player. All those moving parts mean CD players break a lot faster than MP3 players. What about the cost of manufacturing and disposing of them? How did they actually calculate the CO2 cost of the infrastructure that streams music?
I could go on and on. This is just so stupid. I'm reminded of the scene from "Back to School" where Rodney Dangerfield laughs at the snobby professor and says, "Oh man, you left out a lot of stuff".
About the authors: "Sharon George is a lecturer in environmental science and Deirdre McKay is a reader in geography and environmental politics, both at Keele University"
What is a "reader in geography and environmental politics" anyway?
I read/reply to email if and when I want to. Same goes for text messages and voice mails.
It's my device and my time and I will use them as I please.
I've been in meetings where a choice of technology comes down to free VS non-free, and free wins almost every time. They are sometimes willing to pay something for "support", but not much. As for "giving back", some companies prohibit their employees from contributing code to anything.
So open source is great for the consumers of it, but less great for the providers and their commercial competitors.
This subsidy was Governor Andrew Cuomo's baby. He was heavily invested in it.
He even offered to change his name from "Andrew" to "Amazon Cuomo".
Nobody on the planet is going to be less objective.
He has less credibility than a NYC Bowery bum to be making forecasts about it.
By quoting him, you are saying much more about your own judgement and gullibility than about the supposed benefits of the subsidy.
I guess you're much too busy being snarky to read the announcement or the attached memorandum of understanding between the parties:
https://esd.ny.gov/sites/defau...
The memorandum with attachments is very explicit in the details but you needn't read that either. You obviously know the terms better than the parties that signed it. For everyone else who lacks your keen insight here is the first paragraph:
"This memorandum of understanding (the “MOU”) sets forth certain understandings and agreements among New York State Urban Development Corporation d/b/a Empire State Development (“ESD”); The City of New York (the “City”); New York City Economic Development Corporation (“NYCEDC”; together with the City and ESD, the “Public Parties”), and Amazon.com Services, Inc. (the “Company”), with respect to a project to create, in coordination with the Company’s development partners, a new corporate headquarters for Amazon.com, Inc. and its affiliates in New York City, including the design, development, construction, renovation and operation of what will initially be approximately 4,000,000 square feet of commercial space and the creation of 25,000 new jobs with an average wage of over $150,000 annually within 10 years of the date hereof, with a planned expansion for a total of 6,000,000 to 8,000,000 square feet of commercial space that is expected to result in the creation of up to 40,000 new jobs within 15 years of the date hereof (the “Project”). "
Or the net benefit Amazon brings far exceeds the amount they aren't paying.
By some estimates the net benefit was $0.
By some estimates the net benefit was $27 billion.
Do you also believe in the Easter Bunny?
Robbing Peter to pay Paul sounds great if you are Paul. But the net benefit is zero. Or even negative if Peter moves away because he keeps getting robbed.
I'm sure with your deep knowledge of New York finances and your rigorous study of the project economic details your analysis is more accurate than the one from the Governor of New York's office: https://www.governor.ny.gov/ne...
"Amazon Will Create 25,000 to 40,000 New Jobs with an Average Salary of More than $150,000, Invest More Than $3.6 Billion Over 15 Years and Create $27.5 Billion In Tax Revenue Over 25 Years"
What does "fund a tax break" mean?
It takes money to run a city. If Amazon is paying less, then someone else is paying more.
Or the net benefit Amazon brings far exceeds the amount they aren't paying. By some estimates the net benefit was $27 billion.
If a mugger leaves the cash in your wallet do you consider that some kind of gain for you?
Getting mugged happens randomly. We should be making our tax system less like mugging by having fair and uniform rules.
Random or not, the point is the same. Keeping the money you have is not the same as getting new money from another source.
People were buying apartments
For every buyer, there is a seller. What you are really saying is that prices increased from their already sky high levels.
developers were planning to build, new businesses would have been created.
Developers in NYC are always planning to build ... and their building permits are denied 90% of the time. If NYC wants more construction and more businesses, they don't need to spend $3B. They can instead spend $0, and just stop saying "No".
It's not a zero-sum game. Demand increases supply. And stop saying "Spend 3 billion". They weren't writing 3 billion dollar checks.
these would have been jobs for locals
The local unemployment rate is at 3.8%, which is an historic low. The locals already have plenty of jobs to choose from. Amazon would have just bled workers from other companies, who couldn't match Amazon's wages because they weren't getting the same subsidies.
Again, not a zero sum game. People will move and/or commute for jobs. I certainly have. And you are still ignoring the regional benefits.
There's an important distinction between being paid, and incentives that mean you pay less.
There is indeed. But both are wrong. There should be equality before the law, even for businesses. One business should not be taxed to fund tax breaks for another "more worthy" business.
What does "fund a tax break" mean? They aren't writing Amazon a check. They are collecting less from them.
If a mugger leaves the cash in your wallet do you consider that some kind of gain for you? It was already your money.
Just the *news* of the new headquarters had started an economic boom in Long Island City. People were buying apartments, developers were planning to build, new businesses would have been created. Long Island City isn't car friendly, these would have been jobs for locals (including workers who moved in to the area) or train commuters from the rest of NYC and Long Island. They would have been using the local restaurants and shops, and going out at night there or taking the train to Manhattan. Killing this project killed a tremendous source of tax revenues for the city.
Or, NYC could take that $3 Billion dollars and hire 25,000 workers with $50K annual salaries for two years to rebuild and modernize the city's subway system which will provide much greater and longer term economic benefit to the city than an Amazon office building.
NY wasn't writing Amazon a check for 3 billion dollars.
Which makes sense since it was supposed to finance a small percentage of the full project, not a bigger percentage of a scaled back project.
From http://nymag.com/intelligencer...
"The San Joaquin segment was supposed to be finished by 2022, and the whole enchilada by 2029. But it’s not looking good, and if that first deadline is missed, the state could be exposed to the clawback of up to 3.5 billion in federal funds awarded the project in 2010 as part of the Obama administration’s economic stimulus program."
Probably more thinking about the fact that Amarillo has about a 200k population with the majority having only a high school education or some college experience. But the vast majority does not have a degree of any sort.
Not really the place to move your high tech company to when you need a highly educated workforce.
It's not that we think your dumb, it's just applying even the lightest common sense would have shown you why this was such an idiotic suggestion.
Did you ever look at the statistics for New York City?
According to https://www.towncharts.com/New...
New York City has 37% of people with a bachelors degree or higher. Is that a "vast majority"?
Definitely not dead or gravely wounded. Python may not be the new hotness, but it's absolutely a go-to language for new code for me. I have been, in point of fact, writing new Python code for my employer recently. It's still the tool I reach for when I need something working Now. I don't spend time writing code for small reasons either--if it isn't making us significantly more money than it costs to build, I don't build it.
Python makes us money, and that's the bottom line.
Now, I'm no picky eater. I've been coding 26 years, and I'll use the correct tool for the job any time I can, rather than "work like an asshole" [favorite saying of an old boss]. For me, that's often Python, but I won't hesistate to drop down to C/C++ or assembler if that's the appropriate tool--or work with Java or C# or Objective-C or Clojure or Ruby or Javascript or Erlang or Haskell or HTML or CSS (and once upon a time, BASIC, Pascal, et al...).
Why are people so stuck on one language or one way of thinking? I was listening to a software engineering podcast recently, and this guy with 8 years of experience is saying he thinks he knows it all now. Well, sorry to break it to you, 8 Year Master, but after 26+ years of this, I've realized that I will never learn it all (even though I keep trying).
Pay your bills first, keep your deadlines and promises, go home to your loved ones, and do things that expand your horizons.
Java, Python, C, Go, Rust: these things aren't important in the same way.
I agree with your basic points.
If I'm writing tools I prefer a scripting language, and in that domain I express myself better in Perl than Python.
But in a large system with lots of interfaces and implementations right now I would prefer to use Java.
Python isn't dead, but it was gravely wounded by the Python 2/3 debacle. (Python 3 is backward incompatible with Python 2, without actually fixing any of the big problems with Python 2.).
A lot of people still use Python because of the huge library ecosystem. However not many new projects are being started in Python today. The quality of the community has also dropped precipitously as good developers jumped ship and the code monkeys piled in.
Golang, otoh, is alive and doing very well. Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, Etcd, and Prometheus are a few of the high profile FOSS projects written in Go. Many talented folks who jumped ship from Python are now Gophers.
Open source and enterprise aren't the same thing. An open source project can choose to use whatever flavor of the month they like. An enterprise will have a strong bias towards using tech they have established depth in. Adopting a new language becomes a long term support commitment that has to make business sense.
Java is used mostly to make enterprise-class server-side software. It's used extensively in the financial services sector.
Most of the code for any FI's web applications you interact with is Java. And so is all of the backend code.
And it's not going anywhere in that space.
It is so not dead. The ecosystem around Java is huge and growing. If we are talking web apps, sure, they are using Javascript, Typescript, etc. But the server side for pretty much every major project I've seen in the last 10 years is Java, with C/C++ in some areas.
As TFA also notes, it would be extremely unusual for the government not to accept this recommendation.
That's a fair statement but still it's wrong to spin an article titled "Germany should phase out coal use by 2038: commission" into "Germany To Phase Out Coal Use By 2038, Says Report".