Java Shop Politics | Michael O. Church

Once, I was at a company that was considering (and eventually did so) moving its infrastructure over to Java, and there was a discussion about the danger of “Java Shop Politics”. It would seem strange to any non-programmer that a company’s choice of programming language would alter the political environment- these languages are just tools, right? Well, no. In this case, almost all of us knew exactly what was being talked about. Most software engineers have direct experience with Java Shop Politics, and it has a distinct and unpleasant flavor.

Lots of people (including the guy who first taught me how to write computer programs) like to say “you can program anything in most any language, and the people I’m interested in are those who can pick up a book and learn as much of the language they need to get the work done.” This is an interesting counterpoint in the case of Java.