Java was first released in mid-1995, just 6 months before JS.

By 98, when I went to college, Java was already used for all the first level courses in the CS program.

How did it catch on so quickly (just 3 years) to shift university curriculum, which is usually so slow/behind?

I wonder why Java was so respected and JS was not? Why/how was Java already seen as such a stable and mature language?

Not just Java, other languages (like python) were also released around/near 95, and also seemed to get to "mature" respect status. much quicker.
I bring all this up because my impression of Java in 98 was that it had been around "forever" (as had C++ first developed in 79, but not standardized until 98!), but that's not. true at all. These were all new languages around the same time.
I'm sure the language designs had different merits, and the target applications meant a different perception and reception, but...

it sure seems like the industry (and academics) just decided Java and C++ were the stable mature ones and langs like JS were toys.
BTW, before you assume JS was nascent/immature b/c the web wasn't much of a thing yet, remember that JS was actually released as LiveScript on the server before it was released in a browser. So "server-side JS" was always part of the story, not just Node 15 years later in 2009.
Why didn't "we" push JS on the server the way Java and C++ were pushed in that space?

Why wouldn't a university consider teaching JS alongside Java and C++ (and python), given they were all roughly the same age?
My point is, technologies and ideas don't always win on merits the way we hope/claim. More often than we admit, we just pick winners based on less tangible things like marketing.
There's a lot of tech (frameworks, tools, etc) floating around that are just as mature/stable/useful as the hyped bandwagon stuff, just without the huge community, fancy logos, conferences, and big corporate backers.

They're the "Java" and "C++" of today. They've been chosen.
Through a variety of intentional and accidental effects (like marketing), they're the "winners" right now.

But a lot of equally worthy candidates are floating around waiting for their moment (which may or may not ever come).
Are there any "toys" (tech that's not respected) right now that might accidentally end up ruling the world 25 years from now? What would you place your long-future bets on?

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So we had to develop technologies like this to barely manage control over limited areas in Iraq's few urban centers. Only ~8 in 100 Iraqi adults owns a personal vehicle. That rate is > 1 car/adult in America yet I have never seen any doctrine paper or work of fiction address this


We've seen and struggled in civil conflicts with instant, local, universal, distributed communications (cell phone era, basically every conflict since 2000). We've seen and struggled in conflicts with instant, global, universal distributed communications (everything since 2011).

The world's most overfunded military and glow in the dark agencies struggle and largely fail to contain conflicts where fhe vast, vast majority of people are locked into a ~5mi radius of their home.

How can they possibly contain a conflict in a nation with universal car ownership and the most developed road network in the world? The average car can travel over 400 miles on one tank of gas, how can you contain the potential of that kind of mobility?

I think that's partially why the system was so freaked out by 1/6. Yes, most of it is histrionics but you don't decide to indefinitely turn your capital into the Baghdad Green Zone with fortifications and 25k troops over histrionics alone.

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