Well, I guess I'm an old programmer now

It's funny to me when the fresh-faced young pups 'bouts these parts find out that they have to do something in Java. They stamp their feet, ball up their fists, puff out their cheeks and start whining "but Java's so old and boring and doesn't have all the fancy stuff they're always talking about on Reddit, and didn't they just find a dinosaur fossil in Alberta that was wearing a Java baseball cap and clutching a fossilized copy of Teach Yourself Java In 24 Hours?"

This is hilarious to me, because In My Day, back in university, Java was
pants-pissingly hot. University departments were talking about switching all the first year classes to Java. Cool companies were "in to" Java, Sun was holding Java events on campus, wearing Java-logo giveaway swag was common, all the freshly-hatched pleiosaurs were reading The Java 1.1 Developers Guide in the food court. The feeling was that you didn't so much have to sweat out programs in Java as draw some class diagrams, then wave them at the monitor, and programs would come out.

What you have to realize is that, compared to the alternatives at the time, this wasn't that far off the mark. If you were writing real computer programs in the early and mid 90's, you were doing it in C or C++ or something with clockwork gears and a steam boiler you had to heat up before you could open the editor. Writing in C is like telling someone how to bake a cake over the phone, only the person can't remember anything by themselves, and they don't know what any of the ingredients are or where they're kept, and if you tell the person one little thing wrong, HE WILL DIE. C++ is exactly the same, except you can make bread too. Compared to that, Java seemed like a verdant Eden, a land of milk and honey and built in garbage-collection.

These day's Java's the ghetto. Java's for banks. C and C++ are for historians and people working in the basements of banks.

It looks like the same thing's happening with Subversion now. I remember In My Day, fighting tooth and nail to replace the source control system at work with Subversion, and how when we did, suddenly every day was a little sunnier. In my universe, Subversion is still a brightly shining star that shoots beams of candy and cupcakes and good development practice in every direction. Apparently this is not the case for everyone, apparently Subversion sucks with a lower-case x, and now all the cool kids are using git. Subversion's what your dumb manager forces you to use at boring old work, but at home you can keep all the source code for your racecars and speedboats and Ruby On Rails apps in git.

I guess what I'm saying is, maybe you think you're cool and with it, but THIS WILL HAPPEN TO YOU TOO.