This post has many generalizations and little technical content. The subject is interesting (for ObjC programmers mostly), but arguments are shallow.

> it was never an issue to port correct C/C++ code

In C/C++ there is no such thing as a portable application only applications that have been ported, even with standard compliant code. Try porting between Linux/Solaris/Windows and see by yourself.

> (paraphrased) Backend apps should be written in Objective-C instead Java, let's rewrite them!

Before making such bold statements about rewriting applications, what can you tell me (if anything) about the speed of a server JVM compared with Objective-C? And this is really a broad question, since for starters, languages don't scale, architectures do. Your outdated SO link doesn't begin to answer. See this general benchmark http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/which-programs-are-fas... and add to that Objective-C message passing. And then think how it translates to server code. Just food for thought.

> Java API replicates the entirety of the UNIX system layer in Java-ese, obscuring any helpful C idioms or UNIX-system knowledge in the process

Because you think that those idioms and platform specific code won't be an issue when ported, or they will be plenty of devs familiar with that, which isn't the case. Most programmers out there use Java because they couldn't code their way out of a paper bag.

> You cannot postpone garbage collection forever. This is a disaster for applications that need to scale.

Nope, GC happens incrementally, and it's not a disaster for scalable Java applications that are deployed now in the real world.

> Oracle now owns Java and is a hostile entity. Java is done. Its future as a product is finished. Whatever your relationship is with Java now, expect it to deteriorate.

Completely wrong. JDK 8 lambdas will be feature completed in January 2013, and if you are an Objective-C programmer, you know how much of a change it brings to the language. And we have Jigsaw, project coin, java.util.concurrent with CAS, and countless JSR. Java has better health than ever, ask around.

> Web shops won't go for Apple servers. All the development, all the monitoring, all the operational knowledge is based on a few varieties of Linux.

It's the cost, not the knowledge. Also if you are a linux admin you get the same toys in Mac. An Apple desktop makes sense because it's less likely to interrupt the work of someone with a salary, but a farm of web servers based on Linux is cheap and easily replaceable. The best contribution of Google to the "open" world was to show that you can scale on Linux.

And this makes me think, given that Apple makes money selling hardware, where is the motivation to compete with Java/.Net promoting server frameworks? This is all about us buying Apple hardware people, don't forget.

> developers who worked at Etsy when I was there, 100% either used a Mac to develop or use a Mac to develop now. This preference is standard in the industry.

Most devs in the planet are behind a cheap HP/DELL PC. Otherwise we would know based on StackOverflow logs and sites like that. You could say best devs use laptops, because that's at least what we see in dev conferences.

> PHP is (or was) the dominant web scripting language by a large margin. This happened because of performance and ease of use,

Java couldn't compete because JVM required 128MB RAM, and one app on a shared JVM instance could bring down the rest, so Java was dangerous and cost prohibitive for small sites.