When I got out of college and was still firmly in the "Java is the solution to everything" mentality I didn't realize that my admiration was really for the JVM and the Java App Server tooling that was so much more advanced than anything else at the time. It was basically Docker + K8s for anything running on the JVM more than 2 decades earlier.

Java the language eventually drove me away because the productivity was so poor until it started improving around 2006-2007.

Now I keep an eye on it for other languages that run on the JVM: JRuby, Clojure, Scala, Groovy, Kotlin, etc.

IMO JRuby is the most interesting since you gain access to 2 very mature ecosystems by using it. When Java introduced Project Loom and made it possible to use Ruby's Fibers on the JVM via Virtual Threads it was a win for both.

Charles Nutter really doesn't get anywhere close to enough credit for his work there.

Let me extol the virtues of Java the language.

You can take pretty much any code written for Java 1.0 and you can still build and run it on Java 24. There are exceptions (sun.misc.Unsafe usage, for example) but they are few and far between. Moreso than nearly any other language backwards compatibility has been key to java. Heck, there's a pretty good chance you can take a jar compiled for 1.0 and still use it to this day without recompiling it.

Both Ruby and Python, with pedigrees nearly as old as Java's, have made changes to their languages which make things look better, but ultimately break things. Heck, C++ tends to have so many undefined quirks and common compiler extensions that it's not uncommon to see code that only compiles with specific C++ compilers.

I have C++ code from 1997 that I occasionally compile. So far it runs. 10 yeas ago compiling with -Wall exposed an inconsequential bug and that was it. I suspect when it stops to compile it will be from an absence of a particular X11 library that I used to parse a config in otherwise command-line utility.

Which also points to another thing where Java compatibility shines. One can have a GUI application that is from nineties and it still runs. It can be very ugly especially on a high DPI screen, but still one can use it.

Yeah, that and the portability are really incredible and underrated. It is funny, because I constantly hear things like "write once, debug everywhere", but I have yet to see an alternative that has a higher probability of working everywhere.

Although Python is pretty close, if you exclude Windows (and don't we all want to do that?).

I can run basically any Perl code back to Perl 4 (March 1991) on Perl 5.40.2 which is current. I can run the same code on DOS, BeOS, Amiga, Atari ST, any of the BSDs, Linux distros, macOS, OS X, Windows, HP/UX, SunOS, Solaris, IRIX, OSF/1, Tru64, z/OS, Android, classic Mac, and more.

This takes nothing away from Java and the Java ecosystem though. The JVM allows around the same number of target systems to run not one language but dozens. There’s JRuby, Jython, Clojure, Scala, Kotlin, jgo, multiple COBOL compilers that target JVM, Armed Bear Common Lisp, Eta, Sulong, Oxygene (Object Pascal IIRC), Rakudo (the main compiler for Perl’s sister language Raku) can target JVM, JPHP, Renjin (R), multiple implementations of Scheme, Yeti, Open Source Simula, Redline (Smalltalk), Ballerina, Fantom, Haxe (which targets multiple VM backends), Ceylon, and more.

Perl has a way to inline other languages, but is only really targeted by Perl and by a really ancient version of PHP. The JVM is a bona fide target for so many. Even LLVM intermediate code has a tool to target the JVM, so basically any language with an LLVM frontend. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a PCode to JVM tool somewhere.

JavaScript has a few languages targeting it. WebAssembly has a bunch and growing, including C, Rust, and Go. That’s probably the closest thing to the JVM.

  > I can run basically any Perl code back to Perl 4 (March 1991) on Perl 5.40.2 which is current.

Yes, but can you _read_ it?

I'm only half joking. Perl has so many ways to do things, many of them obscure but preferable for specific cases. It's often a write-only language if you can't get ahold of the dev who wrote whatever script you're trying to debug.

I wonder if modern LLMs could actually help with that.

> I wonder if modern LLMs could actually help with that.

From experience, they can.

I can. Some of it by some developers I can read far more easily than others.

Can you read arbitrary code written by developers from around the world in PL/1, or Ada, Forth, APL, or even C++? Big languages have lots of syntax choices, yes. It doesn’t need to be abused.

Even C has an obfuscated code contest that’s been going on for decades.

>Yes, but can you _read_ it?

Java was marketed (at least in its early days) as a WORA language - WRITE ONCE RUN ANYWHERE.

Perl was unmarketed as a WORM language - WRITE ONCE READ MANY (TIMES). ;)

jk, i actually like perl somewhat.

but I think Larry and team went somewhat overboard with that human-style linguistics stuff that they applied to perl.

Interesting about that long list of languages.

There's also Groovy.

I wonder what other languages run on the JVM. What about Perl, Icon, SNOBOL, Prolog, Forth, Rexx, Nim, MUMPS, Haskell, OCaml, Ada, Rust, BASIC, Rebol, Haxe, Red, etc.?

Partly facetious question, because I think there are some limitations in some cases that prevent it (not sure, but a language being too closely tied to Unix or hardware could be why), but also serious. Since the JVM platform has all that power and performance, some of these languages could benefit from that, I'm guessing.

#lazyweb

> Haskell

https://github.com/Frege/frege

https://github.com/typelead/eta

Of the others you mentioned, I bet there's a couple JVM Prologs out there, but haven't encountered any myself.

Thanks.

I briefly looked at Frege; both it and the person it is named after are very interesting.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottlob_Frege

So I submitted HN posts about both of them:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44112115

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44076220

Full speed ahead, and damn the naysayers, er, downvoters, er, torpedos! ;)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Farragut

I mentioned Haxe by name, and Eta is essentially Haskell on JVM.

There is an OCaml-Java. NetRexx targets the JVM. For Prolog there are JIProlog and TuProlog at least.

Red basically is REBOL. Yes, Red targets IA-32, ARM, JVM, AVM2, x64, and the CLR.

I’ve seen some experiments for running Perl on the JVM. Rakudo can target the JVM for Raku, which is Perl’s sister language.

For Ada, gnat can target the JVM. https://docs.adacore.com/gnatvm-docs/jgnat_ug.html

For Forth there are a number of implementations. JVMForth, jForth, Misty Beach Forth, HolinJ Forth, bjforth, and xforth at least.

I’ve seen a couple different Java libraries for SNOBOL-style matching but I’ve never seen a SNOBOL tool that targets the JVM.

MUMPS has M4J.

Rust is interesting. There are JVMs written in Rust. There’s support for the JNI for Rust for interoperability. I’m not aware of a JVM target for Rust, though. However, Rust still uses LLVM as its primary code generator. As I mentioned, there are LLVM IC to JVM compilers.

Basic isn’t really a single language. For something like MS Visual Basic, there’s Jabasco. There’s JVMBasic. MBC transpiles Basic to C or C++, so you could use clang to put its output on the JVM. PuffinBASIC is a Basic interpreter written in Java. GLBasic compiles to C++, so again with LLVM all things are possible here. BCX Basic also outputs C or C++. There’s something just called “BASIC Compiler” that is both written in Java and compiles its source to JVM bytecode. The basgo compiler outputs Go code, so anywhere you can target golang code you can target Basic code with basgo, including the JVM. I’m sure there are a lot more. These are different versions of Basic on the source side, some of them similar to one another.

Nimlvm is a Nim compiler to LLVM intermediate code. So once again, as a chain of steps it can be done.

Speaking of chaining translators/transpilers/compilers, did I mention there’s a WebAssembly to JVM compiler? There are actually more than one. Chicory is one and asmble is another. There’s something called “Happy New Moon with Report”. There’s also a WASM written in Scala called Swam. I’m sure I’m missing some.

So the huge and growing list of languages that target WASM can also be chain-translated to target the JVM. That includes C, Rust, Nim, TypeScript, C++, Forth, Go, F#, Lua, Zig, and more. https://wasmlang.org/

So if it targets the JVM, it can run on the JVM. But also if it targets WebAssembly, C, C++, LLVM IC, Lua, Go, and more it can also through other tools target the JVM. Or if it has an interpreter that runs on the JVM because it’s written in Java, Scala, Clojure, or some other language you can get it there. If you really want to get exotic and esoteric, there’s an x86 emulator in WASM out there and you could probably run that on one of the JVM WASM interpreters.

Thanks. That's a lot of interesting stuff to check out!

> I can run THE SAME CODE on DOS, BeOS, Amiga, Atari ST, any of the BSDs, Linux distros, macOS, OS X, Windows, HP/UX, SunOS, Solaris, IRIX, OSF/1, Tru64, z/OS, Android, classic Mac, and more.

No, you really can't. Not anything significant anyway. There are too many deviations between some of those systems to all you to run the same code.

Honestly, the main difference I run into is just file paths, and that’s easy to sidestep ( https://perldoc.perl.org/File::Spec ).

There are differences, but they’re usually esoteric ( https://perldoc.perl.org/perlport#PLATFORMS ).

Yes, I really can, and with the same number or fewer OS-specific checks than the equivalent C program.

I often run into problems running Python code under Linux.

I don’t know if it is a me problem or if I’m missing the right incantations to set up the environment or whatever. Never had that much problems with Java.

But I’m a Java and Ruby person so it might really be missing knowledge.

It's not you. Python packaging has regressed into a worse mess than it was 20 years ago. I limit myself to simple scripts that only rely on builtins. Anything more complicated goes to a more dependable language.

I don't know about the difference between 20 years ago versus now, but it's certainly doesn't seem to be clear now.

e.g. poetry, venv and pyenv have been mentioned in just the next few comments below yours. and this is just one example. i have seen other such seeming confusion and different statements by different people about what package management approach to use for python.

I rarely run into issues when using Poetry. If you use pip, add packages to requirements.txt willy-nilly and don't pin versions then you are asking for trouble.

Poetry doesn't fix the fact that python removes modules from the standard library every release.

I've never run into that.

Doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist.

i like poetry though i've moved to uv - both work really well

I've heard great things about uv. I plan to try it for my next project.

I use pipenv and it kind-of-works. Will try uv or poetry though - which one would you recommend?

UV. Using it as the exec target for python (UV script) is great. Dependencies declared at the top, now I have executable files in something better than bash.

I no longer shy away from writing <500 LOC utility/glue scripts in python thanks to uv.

I can't recommend uv enough. It's so fast, and uvx is so useful to run a random Python CLI tool. If you want to do things like you're accustomed to with pip you just `uv pip ...`

what languages do you use for the latter?

For anything more than just a one off script, look into venv. I’ve not written any python until this past year and can’t imagine maintaining an ongoing project without it.

Prior to that I would frequently have issues (and still have issues with one-off random scripts that use system python).

Python can be tricky with the big differences between 2 and 3.

As late as 2022, I was at a company still in the middle of "migrating" from 2 to 3. I wouldn't be surprised if the migration project was still going on. The system had gone beyond tech debt and was bordering on bankruptcy.

Python 3 came out in 2008. If the 2 vs 3 differences are still biting you you probably have bigger problems to solve (deprecated, insecure, unmaintained dependencies for example).

And IPv6 came out in 1995

Your point?

"Comes out" and "Ready to switch to" are two different things.

Your conclusion is correct but not because Python 3 came out in 2008. It was ready to switch to some point a few years later but we'll before 2025 (I don't recall when sorry I didn't do Python at the time!)

Honestly, it isn't just you. I had to hold off on 3.13 for quite a while too, because of various package conflicts. It isn't terrible, especially thanks to things like pyenv, but it is far from perfect.

I just spent 30 minutes trying to get a python package running on my Mac... Not feeling that. Pythons version compatibility is just awful and the mix of native is deeply problematic. Don't get me started on tooling and observability.

I've got a jar that does one small thing and does it well that was compiled in 1998. Still works fine, no reason to update it.

I know that what you said is supposed to be true. However in my real world experience it is anything but. Cisco java programs are a disaster and require certain JVMs to run.

The enterprise Java applications we use require specific versions of specific Linux distros. It's possible that they would run on other distros, or even other operating systems, if you got the right JVM. But there's enough question about it that the companies that sell them for a substantial price aren't willing to promise even a little portability.

I have been badly burned, twice, by Python's cavalier attitude to backwards compatibility

Python "the language" or Python "the ecosystem"?

The language?

I am a mere user. I have two Python based systems that worked in Debian 11 and not in Debian 12

Python 3.9 to 3.11 I think was the change.

A

> Moreso than nearly any other language backwards compatibility has been key to java.

The Java 8 and 8+ divide very much works against this. It was a needed change (much like Python 2 vs 3) but nowhere near pleasant, especially if some of your dependencies used the old Java packages that were removed in, say, OpenJDK 11.

Furthermore, whenever you get the likes of Lombok or something that has any dynamic compilation (I recall Jaspersoft having issues after version upgrade, even 7 to 8 I think), or sometimes issues with DB drivers (Oracle in particular across JDK versions) or with connection pooling solutions (c3p0 in particular), there's less smooth sailing.

Not to say that the state of the ecosystem damns the language itself and overall the language itself is pretty okay when it comes to backwards compatibility, though it's certainly not ideal for most non-trivial software.

The Java 9 change was to remove access to unofficial APIs.

I agree it was somewhat painful, but not nearly to the level of the 2->3 change which ended up changing python syntax. Most dependencies worked throughout the change and still work.

> Furthermore, whenever you get the likes of Lombok or something that has any dynamic compilation ... there's less smooth sailing.

Not sure about c3p0, but Lombok goes out of it's way to inject itself into javac internals in order to make it's output changes. It's using the most internal of internal code in order to make that @Getter annotation work. Plenty of other annotation processing APIs are completely unaffected by javac updates because they choose not to use internal APIs. Immutables, Autovalue, dagger2, all examples of dynamic compilation that continue to work regardless the version of java. Lombok is a horrible little dependency that I wish people would abandon. It's making a mess and then complaining that it's somehow Java's fault because Lombok decided it needed access to the AST.

I get it, things have broken. But what has been broken is literally the undefined and non-public APIs which went so far as to call their packages things like `sun.misc.unsafe` just to try and ward off people from using these APIs. (With the javadocs to boot which told people not to use this).

And even with the break, the Java devs went out of their ways to make stand-in apis.

> You can take pretty much any code written for Java 1.0 and you can still build and run it on Java 24.

This is not my experience with Java at all. I very often have to modify $JAVA_HOME.

Are you using Gradle projects? Gradle is especially difficult for some reason.

Sadly. I would rather avoid Gradle and Java in general. I did not have good experiences with them. :/

The counter-example to this is C#. Barely younger than Java (by 5 years), and starting its life as mostly a Java clone with a sprinkle of Delphi, it evolved much faster and made many changes which "make things look better" without breaking things. Source-level compatibility goes pretty much all the way back to 1.0, as well.

That's not the virtues of Java the language. That's the virtues of Java the backward-compatible platform. That is, you didn't say anything about the language (syntax and semantics), you only talked about backward compatibility.

(It's still a valid point. It's just not the point you labeled it as.)

The language also follows the backwards compatibility principles. Java hasn't, for example, added new keywords in a backwards incompatible way. You can, for example, have something like

    int record = 1;
    double var = 2;

even though `var` and `record` are now used to create and define things.

That is an excellent point too.

It always made me wonder why I hear about companies who are running very old versions of Java though. It always seemed like backwards compatibility would make keeping up to date with the latest an almost automatic thing.

It is "mostly" backwards compatible. Applets and everything related to them where dropped. A few interface dependencies where changed to improve modularity of the runtime. Widely used hacks like sun.misc.unsafe are getting replaced with official APIs and locked down. Development of some Java EE packages has been taken over by a third party, so they are no longer packaged within the java namespace. To name just a few of the bigger examples.

Java version updates typically change GC behavior. If one has highly tuned setup there is no guarantee that a newer version would not regress.

Another problem is crashes. Java runtime is highly reliable, but still bugs happens.

Are you talking about performance or behaviour? I’ve never seen an issue caused by a GC.

Latency spikes are the issue. Modern Java mostly solved this, but tuning GC settings is still the thing especially when Java runs on a big server.

It is - but you don’t want to find out that something broke because of odd JVM update. If it ain’t broken…

I have the exact opposite experience. I haven't coded much Java, but when I tried to revisit it, code I wrote 10 or 20 years ago doesn't even remotely compile anymore. While with C++, 20 years later you may need to add a missing #include (that you were always supposed to have), but then it just works as it always has.

Java is, in my opinion, a complete mess. And I think it's weird how anybody could like it past the 1990s.

C++ not being compilable later hasn't been true since pre standard C++. We're talking 1980s now.

https://blog.habets.se/2022/08/Java-a-fractal-of-bad-experim...

Oh yeah. I still don’t understand why we even moved away from the original JEE model, including the different roles (app dev, deployed, etc).

The whole spec was great with the exception of entitybeans.

It provided things that are still not available it anything else.. why do we store configuration/credentials in git (encrypted, but still).

And the context were easy to configure/enter.

Caucho’s resin, highly underrated app server. Maybe not underrated, but at least not very well known

Entity Beans were terrible, representing the height of JEE over complexity. I remember editing at least 3 classes, a couple interfaces, and some horrific XML deployment descriptors to represent an "entity." A lot of the tooling was proprietary to the specific app server. On top of that, it was slow.

In the early 2000's, I used to work on JEE stuff for my day job, then go home and build PHP-based web apps. PHP was at least 10x more productive.

The worst thing about EntityBeans is they were so bad they made Hibernate look good, which led people to think it was good. After 10 years of hammering against ORM complexity I finally switched to using thin database wrapper layers and have not once ever regretted it.

Hibernate... a real PITA every time the application needed something beyond basic single-table CRUD queries; sadly for me it happened 99% of the times. After some months of torture, plain JDBC with their stupid checked exceptions was refreshing, even without wrappers.

Yes! Hibernate was awful, but still light years ahead of EJBs. I worked on a couple of Hibernate projects and always left asking why...

I never had any trouble with Hibernate tbh. It allowed you to drop back to raw sql if needed, and also custom fields to select if needed.

I never understood the fight against ORMs. In the end you'll simply be writing your own framework

Only if you insist on a nearly 1:1 mapping between your data and your class hierarchy.

I you just wanted queries, entity beans were ok.

Just a lot of boilerplate code, but the overal architecture and structure of JEE is still very sound

A lot of boilerplate and XML hell!

What did you like about JEE? I worked in that world for years and don't miss it in the least.

You know what's funny? Spring (earlier versions) had even more xml ;-)

I dunno it just worked for me. But I kept using the standards, no vendor lockin stuff, which bea etc always wanted.

I think the servlet design is great, the whole packaging/deployment model is great. And then well the session beans were overkill in general, so they were swapped out quite early by me. Swapped jsp out for I think velocity templates. And that application is still alive, running, and on the same platform.

And Java meant, at least for me and how I configured it, proper debugging and IDE support (love Eclipse), hot code reload, easy releases, repeatability, ci/cd. The last 20 years, no __significant__ improvements in my opinion.

I think servlets are great, too. Coincidentally I also swapped out JSP for Freemarker and then Velocity templates pretty early. The session beans and entity beans I could both live without. The "heavy weight" nature of the commercial app servers really bothered me. JBoss was fine, but WebLogic, WebSphere, etc were awful.

You have to keep in mind that entity beans were developed in a time before generics, annotations, and widespread use of byte code enhancement that made a lot of the easy, magical stuff we take for granted possible.

I remember. During the same time period, I wrote some Java apps that used plain old JDBC, plus some of my own helper functions for data mapping. They were lighter weight and higher performance compared to the "enterprise" Java solutions. Unfortunately they weren't buzzword compliant though.

I remember Resin.

I grew to be a big fan of JBoss and was really disappointed when the Torquebox project stopped keeping up (Rubyized version of JBoss).

Yeah, JBoss put "it's slow" to bed right away. I was doing my own research at the time and tried some workloads on it. Huge difference.

resin was okay but I never got what it offered over tomcat

Full JEE, not just servlets, performance, reloading, and a bunch of enterprise features. Resin existed.

After about 10+ years Spring kind of took over JEE.

Omg. Spring was just like moving code to xml. Different now, but still.

What I miss from JEE:

- single file ear/war deployment, today that’s a docker image

- the whole resource api from Java (filesystem/jar doesn’t matter). It means you don’t necessarily have to unpack the jar

- configuration / contexts for settings, + UI for it, database connections etc. Docker kind of works, most most images fail to achieve this. Docker compose kind of takes care of things.

- as said before.. all Java still runs everywhere

It is unfortunate the whole JRuby doesn't get more attention and it seems Rails community dont use JRuby much.

JRuby could also run on Graal as well.

Of all shows I might dare concede to, Chuck is not in the top 50.

Easily #1.

Fun, funny, action, romance, character development and fully immersed in geek history.

Also immensely rewatchable. It’s virtually impossible to watch an episode of Chuck and be in a worse mood than when you started.

Even has Community cameos.

Also great music

West Wing, Chernobyl, Westworld Season 1, Breaking Bad

I wonder why "best show ever made" always has contenders made in the last 30 years. You Bet Your Life with Groucho Marx was such a fascinating show, and had some of the most intriguing, raw conversations with ordinary people, ever. Not to mention Groucho's natural instinct for wordplay that just never failed him.

It was encouraging to hear an exec from Ford recently say essentially this in an interview. The legacy manufacturers seem to realize that Tesla is eating their lunch because of their lack of vertical integration. It’s not going to be an easy problem to solve but will be interesting to see what effort achieves.

BYD would eat their lunch even more if they were allowed to.

Tesla was eating their lunch in terms of software, integration, capabilities, apps. Then rivian came along and a few other companies doing a much better job than the awful legacy companies.

Now of course tesla/musk are destroying themselves through various idiotic actions. Sales are dropping through the roof. But the technical quality of the software ecosystem (car, web, app) is still better than all the incumbents. Think about Rivian getting a billion dollars from VW for their much better ECU and and software integration, for example.

I feel like Rivian is almost as good as tesla. Tesla still has all that, even as the company is in awful shape sales wise. Lucid seems to be better than the legacy auto, but I haven't looked into it as closely.

Rivians and Lucids cost tens of thousands of dollars more than 95% (not an exaggeration) of Teslas. Completely different markets (and size of market).

Was it the one with Verge?

This honestly feels so much closer to the old jQuery approach of using JS for enhancements but ensuring you could gracefully degrade to work without it.

I loved building things that way.

The Ruby code is already running on the JVM so utilizing the library isn’t calling out to another runtime to execute like you normally would have to in order to do something like this.

That’s really impressive! Not the chart itself, but seeing how easy it is to use any existing Java library from within a Ruby codebase is super cool.

Ruby already has a pretty incredible gem ecosystem but having all things Java available too really adds tremendous utility.

Love JRuby. Thanks for all of the hard work headius!

> Many of the best co-workers that I remember had physics degrees. In fact, it was so pronounced I personally consider a physics degree to be a top tier signal of programming ability, but that's my own personal prejudice.

I’ve also found this to be true. And math degrees.

Car insurance does that

Lol, that is pretty ineffective and mild compared to say pumishment for a dui. we need 6 months interlock attention monitoring for accident causers.

> Hasn’t RFK Jr spent his entire life trying to find the cause and cure for autism?

He was an environmental lawyer, not a doctor or scientist, so no.

> RFK Jr is giving a voice to parents who are scared, confused and fully aware that nobody is listening to them

It's far more likely (and reasonable to believe) that his brainstorm is an alien entity attempting to weaken the human race for an upcoming invasion, or he's a foreign asset for geopolitical reasons, or he's the biblical Pestilence Horseman of the Apocalypse, than that he's a voice that represents people in the autism community.

Just look at his history. He's caused/causing multiple measles outbreaks. He's already a massmurderer.

> Hasn’t RFK Jr spent his entire life trying to find the cause and cure for autism?

Has he? That 'cure' part makes it pretty clear what his background with autism is. He has no clue about it. It's certainly not a disease nor a brain injury that can be cured. And it's too complex to be caused by something like a vaccine. All I see is that he has a particular disdain for autistic people and he wants to use autism to target something else - perhaps vaccines.

> My life is pretty close to this community

Do you have an academic or professional background on the condition? Or are you someone with autism? If so, you may claim some credibility. There are even associations of parents of autistic kids who spout pseudo-scientific nonsense about autism. And they routinely get fact-checked and opposed by associations of autistic people themselves.

> I can verify that all of his comments are 100% accurate.

CDC falls under HHS, right? They published the results about a week ago and it clearly said that the higher incidence of autism is due to improved diagnosis. And then he went on to trash those findings publicly. Why should I believe a career politician over a whole bunch of career medical professionals on this? Considering his past and political stance as well, he has exactly zero credibility on this matter.

> Parents who insist on traveling separately as a safeguard to ensure one of them is able to care for their adult child in the event of an accident, living with the knowledge that both of them passing away will mean the child moves to a group home most likely.

Am I to assume that you're a parent of an autistic kid? If so, let me warn you now. You're doing something more harmful to your kid than what you described. And one more thing. Your view of autism is still very narrow. What you're describing is level 3 autism at best. Some symptoms don't even sound like autism, and could be some other condition. You should perhaps check with a specialist or a level 1 autistic to learn what autism really is and what it feels like (higher level kids often find it hard to communicate their feelings).

> Some who call CPS because they can’t handle the danger that their child poses to their other children.

Very much on point with what I said above. Harmful and hurtful behavior is not an autistic symptom. That sounds more like a cluster-B personality disorder. Not that they can't coexist, but this is a very harmful stereotype. But I'm not surprised.

> These are just a few of the issues before getting into “the autism diet” and chronic digestive issues.

Autism is a neuro-developmental condition. Autistic brains are wired differently, if you will. There are many environmental factors that influence autistic people's behavior - albeit temporarily. Food is one of the less important ones among them. And if you think it is a cure, you are in for big disappointment.

> RFK Jr is giving a voice to parents who are scared, confused and fully aware that nobody is listening to them.

Instead of a politician vying for attention, you should try to understand your kid first. If they have difficulty expressing it, try to talk to a specialist or someone with more verbal autism. They are very common - that's why the 1 in 31 statistics. Then you may get some idea about what to really focus on.

> If you had any idea the number of parents who are afraid to tell you when the symptoms started because they know you don’t want to believe them, it would shock you.

I have investigated various matters throughout my career. That statement has all the symptoms of confirmation bias. The way to get an unbiased result is to do a large-scale, randomized (double-)blind study. You need quantified data, not emotional anecdotes. And if you have something specific in mind and the quantified info to back it up, then we can discuss. Otherwise, those assertions are moot. And for that matter, do you know that these symptoms are extremely hard to identify in infants? The timing of recognition of those symptoms is a rather unreliable indicator for anything.

And remember what I said before - a lot of autistic parents' associations are in the business of spreading misinformation. They're widely opposed and debunked by associations of autistic people themselves.

> If you want to know what most people in the community believe is the root cause, it’s aluminum.

Let me guess. The adjuvant in vaccines? I know where that comes from. If you fancy your own research, try searching up the research papers on that topic. Pay special attention to the authors and the citations. Then check the affiliations of those authors, including funding sources. That will tell you a very enlightening story. To summarize the technical argument, the aluminum used in vaccines don't reach neurotoxic levels even for infants.

> His desire to help people is genuine and not something in question.

His actions at the HHS indicate otherwise. I would rather trust the qualified career medical professionals and researchers he fired. And let's not forget the disastrous way in which he's handling the measles outbreak. I can see how you're emotionally invested in this matter. But please don't assume that the people on the other side aren't.

That takedown was boss. Thank you. As a parent of two autistic children, and uncle to many more in my family, I can say that it is clear their minds develop differently, and many high-functioning autists successfully mask it and make it later in life. And these are quite often extremely gifted intellectually and academically, to the degree that while life is a struggle for them socially, they are far better than their 'norm' peers in other areas. I've not seen anything from RFK Jr beyond trying to support his anti-vaccine stance and what I would at best call evidence for 'othering' autistic people. And if he thinks he is going to make them victims, I can assure you he will find myself, my family, and the community at large ready and eager to destroy him. One could make a more coherent argument that we should create a database of those who lack empathy, the narcissistic sociopaths among us, and place them in camps and let them tear each other apart.

It really wasn’t any sort of “takedown”. It was the same stuff people have been saying on the internet for years that’s disconnected from what is reality for so many parents.

It absolutely refuted every inane speculation you made. I understand you clearly aren’t here to listen or change your mind, so it unfortunately passed right over your head.

It didnt, It was a list of wishful thinking. I have more exposure to families with previously called "low functioning as it relates to children, and plenty of adults who are very capable and high functioning.

What I do not see people willing to discuss

Parent getting called to school 3-4x a week, causing issues with work

Child running from school or aide and requiring a tracker program

Police/CPS involvement from "runners"

Destruction of marriage from constant state of stress

Violence to siblings

Inability to give attention equally in the family

Incredible high divorce rates, parents and any non a to a pairing.

RFK's speech had some issues, but if you read the transcript it does not match the sound bytes

All of his references to negative autism behaviors/impacts were in regards to the 25% of profound autism.

As I said, I know at least a dozen families where the above is their experience. Single moms breaking down on FB because they have no support and stressed to the max, Dad losing out on projects and sales because it cant be trusted he'll be in the office when needed. Siblings hiding away, sick of outbursts,yelling, non stop activity.

It is a disservice to all of those people to act as if the spectrum does not have a far range of activities.

That sure as hell doesnt mean we need to start trying to end "autistic people" and I think it is manipulation to say RFK's prevailing theme has ever been "autism", it has been a belief that the weaknesses in our food and drug systems are increasing chronic illnesses, mutations etc. Some headlines travel longer, the AIDS/HIV denial and Faucci hate should have got way more attention.

Its not RFK's words, its the media's practice of hyperbolic language that causes any real or perceived damage to the community.

I dont believe there is a connection to find, but maybe this will end the snipe hunt and that funding can just go towards creating spaces and education that allow for a range of interaction and social styles after September. But to ignore both sides of the experience is disingenous and is certainly a slap in the face to the families experiencing real hardship from their child's divergence.

I am not even a fan, I just despise the lazy characterizations that get slung around in all emotional spaces, he is mostly a careful speaker, especially compared to the norms now.

It's interesting because that list you provide ("Parent getting called to school 3-4x a week" etc.) is a good summary of my household growing up. Me, my sister, and my father are neurodivergent and on the spectrum.

But we are people that others would not consider to be in the 25% RFK is referring to. Yet, at some point in our lives we were. Growing up I was less verbal than I am now, and I was often paired to play with other autistic kids who were totally non verbal and died early because of their autism. So I'm well aware of the extent of the spectrum.

So I agree with this:

> It is a disservice to all of those people to act as if the spectrum does not have a far range of activities.

However I find it is RFK and not the poster you are replying to who fails to recognize autism as a spectrum. Indeed, if you read the transcript of his speech he does not refer to autism as a spectrum until the end, when a reporter frames it in those terms as part of a question. Instead, he very clearly keeps referring to autism as a binary of "profound" versus I suppose "regular" autism, which is not at all how autistic people experience autism.

What RFK does is juxtapose debilitative autistic behavior (nonverbal) with very normal autistic behavior (toe walking) and he lumps it into a category he calls "profound autism" which is not recognized as a category of autism, nor is it precise or descriptive enough to have a clear meaning. I'm already in an argument with another poster about that, I don't want to open up another front on that issue, you can read my thoughts about that in my comment history.

> Its not RFK's words

For me, it is his words. I've read the transcript free of any media filtering and the actual words he uses are causing real damage to the autistic community.

> snipe hunt and that funding can just go towards creating spaces and education that allow for a range of interaction and social styles after September. But to ignore both sides of the experience is disingenuous

You frame their concerns as a "snipe hunt" -- the opposite of genuine; yet characterize refusing to entertain them as being disingenuous and a slap in the face of autistic people. I don't understand, wouldn't dragging autistic people into a farcical excuse to prove some nonsense about the food system be far more damaging to autistic people and their families? Why can't we just not do the snipe hunt and use the money right now for creating spaces and education?

> lazy characterizations that get slung around in all emotional spaces, he is mostly a careful speaker, especially compared to the norms now.

I think this is a lazy characterization because you don't support it with any evidence. In my post history I highlight several examples from the transcript in which RFK is not careful with his language, and instead paints autistic people with a broad brush and engages in strange conspiracy theorizing in his official capacity as HHS director. Again, this is free from any media bias as it is the direct transcript from this press conference.

> As a parent of two autistic children, and uncle to many more in my family, I can say that it is clear their minds develop differently, and many high-functioning autists successfully mask it and make it later in life. And these are quite often extremely gifted intellectually and academically, to the degree that while life is a struggle for them socially, they are far better than their 'norm' peers in other areas.

This is one of the most uplifting thing I have heard in a while! Your children and the autistic kids in your family are very lucky to have such insightful, empathetic and caring adults like you around. Your presence make a huge difference in their lives. And as they grow up, they'll gift you a lot of unexpectedly sweet and proud moments. Good Luck!

> And if he thinks he is going to make them victims, I can assure you he will find myself, my family, and the community at large ready and eager to destroy him.

That's a very heartwarming and empowering statement! Some people argue that high-functioning autistics shouldn't talk for low-functioning autistics. But the autistic and the medical communities doesn't hold that distinction. Only 3 levels of disabilities exist. When I see the 'low-functioning' autistic people, I recognize in them the intense versions of the emotions and feelings that I'm all too painfully familiar with. That's why I decided to make an impassioned stance here. Yes! I'm seriously concerned about the safety and welfare of my peers - the only people I could ever understand.

All this dogma, greed and misinformation threatens the lives of millions of kids, a huge number of very innocent individuals and the very roots of the knowledge and profession we held dear throughout our lives. I don't know why some people hold on to false promises and rhetoric. But the final result of that is recorded very clearly in history. If only they did a bit of research on that too. It's very disturbing that many still can't see the very obvious danger signs. However, the stakes are too high to just watch and worry. Now is the time our voices and actions matter!

I'm bowing out of this debate. I have no illusions of being able to break people out of their artificial realities. But I think I made the point I wanted to - to record a sample of the false information about autism out there and its hollowness. Thank you again for being a decent and awesome human being! I hope we will have more allies like you. Thanks!

> With autism, we’re not allowed to even speculate publicly. If we do it’s a simple “I don’t know what causes it but it’s DEFINITELY not the thing that I don’t want to believe is involved.”

I think that communication could be improved on both sides.

I have had non-confrontational and earnest discussions with the kinds of people who believe vaccines cause autism. I couldn't escape the conclusion I eventually arrived at - these sorts of people started with a gut feeling or belief and worked backwards to find the justification for it.

This realization is what I feel is missing from a lot of science communication. People who are distrustful of the science aren't going to be swayed by more science unless it dovetails with their underlying gut feelings - so assuming that you can simply out-evidence any concerns is a fools errand.

But by the same token, if critics want a productive conversation, I think it's incumbent on them to be more honest about where their concerns are rooted. What is it about vaccines that makes them predisposed to not want to have them?

The “across all browsers” problem was such a huge pain. Not just for CSS but JS too.

I still remember the campaign for sites to drop support for IE6 in protest.

Yeah fun times.

I kept our internal reporting site running for 3-4 years, I used CSS for layout.. it required regular maintenance but I had enough time to do it as my main job was as a Database Admin / Data Engineer (I'd have been called "devops engineer" nowadays as I had quite a broad set of responsibilities).