> a hunch that it [Java] won't be a very successful language
He lists COBOL as a bad language - but it's been very successful. So I think he's not really writing about "success", but about what hackers like. Interpreted this way, he's accurate: hackers don't like Java.
Businesses like investments that keep returning value - for languages, that means compatibility and portability. Hackers like to change things - expressiveness and power. Java code from years ago still works; it's also portable across machines and OSes. In contrast, ruby broke my simple toy code, after just a few months, in a minor point-release. Similarly, I believe there are many incompatible versions of lisp, and many hackers write their own libraries rather than reuse, so there's little standardisation. Different things are valued.
So I agree with pg's theme that if businesses like it, hackers won't. (There's some factual inaccuracies in the rest, but that wasn't his point.)
Businesses like investments that keep returning value - for languages, that means compatibility and portability. Hackers like to change things - expressiveness and power. Java code from years ago still works; it's also portable across machines and OSes. In contrast, ruby broke my simple toy code, after just a few months, in a minor point-release. Similarly, I believe there are many incompatible versions of lisp, and many hackers write their own libraries rather than reuse, so there's little standardisation. Different things are valued.
So I agree with pg's theme that if businesses like it, hackers won't. (There's some factual inaccuracies in the rest, but that wasn't his point.)