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Does an Open Java Really Matter?
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Thu Jun 26, 2008 11:48 AM
from the oh-finally-an-easy-question dept.
from the oh-finally-an-easy-question dept.
snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister questions the relevance of the recent opening of Java given the wealth of options open source developers enjoy today. Sure, as the first full-blooded Java implementation available under a 100 percent Free Software license, RedHat's IcedTea pushes aside open source objections to developing in Java. Yet, McAllister asks, if Java really were released today, brand-new, would it be a tool you'd choose? 'The problem, as I see it, is twofold,' he writes. 'First, as the Java platform has matured, it has become incredibly complex. Today it's possible to do anything with Java, but no one developer can do everything — there simply aren't enough hours in the day to learn it all. Second, and most important, even as Java has stretched outward to embrace more concepts and technologies — adding APIs and language features as it goes — newer, more lightweight tools have appeared that do most of what Java aims to do. And they often do it better.'" Since Java itself never mattered except to sell books, I still don't see why opening it matters.
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Java never really mattered, Taco? Ouch (Score:5, Insightful)
Some would say the same about Slashdot.
Re:Java never really mattered, Taco? Ouch (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, that was a really lame comment. Does Rob think the programming world consists of Perl hackers like him? Thousands of programmers make a living writing Java code.
BTW Rob, when is the new browsing system going to handle scores correctly? I just started writing a response to a Score 0 AC post, something I never do intentionally. Maybe if you rewrote Slashdot in Java...
But here's why opening Java matters. When people talk about "opening Java" they really mean "opening Sun's implementation of Java". There have always been open-source implementations of Java, but they've had a hard time keeping up with the latest spec. So if you're distributing open-source software that depends on Java, you really want Sun's Java implementation in the bundle.
Parent
Re:Java never really mattered, Taco? Ouch (Score:5, Funny)
No Multiple Inheritance. Slower than a 486. Lame.
Parent
Multiple Inheritance (Score:5, Insightful)
Ignoring the parent troll for a moment, can someone please show an example of where multiple implementation inheritance is superior (not just equivalent) to multiple interfaces and the composition design pattern?
I've really tried to find a case, but ultimately fail. I even tend to agree with Gosling that abstract classes were a bad idea. On the other hand, I can name innumerable cases where MI causes more problems than it solves.
Parent
Re:Multiple Inheritance (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Interesting point (Score:5, Insightful)
And if code bases never changed, I might agree with you. However, what happens when a superclass is changed, e.g., a new method is added? Much of the time, nothing. But what happens with MI when one superclass adds a method that already exists by name in another superclass? You end up in exactly the same solution as with SI; you use composition to arbitrate the ambiguity.
When interfaces collide, there is no issue. If a method is added to a superclass in single-inheritance, it rarely affects the subclass unless that subclass is too tightly coupled with private variables (the implementation) of the superclass; you'd be hosed with any change in the superclass.
MI may result in slightly fewer lines of code, but it makes for code that's harder to understand and more brittle in the long run. In short, it's little more than syntactic sugar with no programmatic benefits but several drawbacks with regard to complexity.
Parent
Re:Java never really mattered, Taco? Ouch (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Java never really mattered, Taco? Ouch (Score:5, Insightful)
At least in this case, AC was right.
Whereas Taco, in this case... not so much.
Parent
Re:Java never really mattered, Taco? Ouch (Score:5, Interesting)
It's been nearly 11 YEARS. I think it's time you bury the hatchet.
Parent
Re:Java never really mattered, Taco? Ouch (Score:5, Informative)
You are also missing that the GWT that runs most of the apps on Google (like Gmail) is written in Java. Java's GUI has issues but that does not mean that Java does not have good uses.
Parent
Re:Java never really mattered, Taco? Ouch (Score:5, Insightful)
The good thing with an open java is that it's possible to port to a broader range of architectures with less concern for licensing issues.
Some may claim that Java is a bastard of Ada and C (or was it C++) but it's not really the case. Ada is a bit locked up in a limited market, which is a bit unfortunate - but things like that happens. If the licensing and availability of Ada had been better then we might have been programming Ada instead of Java.
And more important is that C# (C-hash as I call it) is created by Microsoft because they weren't allowed by Sun to create a diverged version of Java. And Microsoft always tries to get their own way so we will have to accept that. But some of us may still remember that there were applets around written for Microsoft's JVM and that they did only work in IE - while at the same time other applets didn't work in M$:s JVM.
Parent
Java never mattered (Score:5, Insightful)
"Since Java itself never mattered except to sell books, I still don't see why opening it matters."
What an ignorant and irresponsible editorial comment. Care to substantiate that claim, or even clarify what it means for a language to "matter?"
Re:Java never mattered (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't believe that the editor put that comment. I'm not a huge fan of Java, but that's incredibly ignorant.
Suggested tag: flamebait
Parent
Re:Java never mattered (Score:5, Informative)
Python is the only language I'm aware of (certainly the only major language) that uses whitespace to define blocks. Thank God. It's a *serious* dealbreaker for me.
Parent
Re:Java never mattered (Score:5, Insightful)
Except, of course, that Python doesn't provide enough context for an editor to properly indent blocks automatically, as there's no proper block delimiters. So, if I, for example, need to change the level of nesting in an existing block of code for some reason (say, introducing an if statement, or factoring some code out into a separate function), the editor can't help me to ensure I get the indentation level right. And in Python, incorrect indentation means incorrect semantics.
Sorry, it *is* a deal-breaker.
Parent
Re:Java never mattered (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure he was being facetious. Everyone knows Java is in heavy use in various industries. Lighten up.
Parent
Re:Java never mattered (Score:5, Funny)
Everyone knows Java is in heavy use in various industries
particularly Publishing and eCommerce :-)
Parent
Re:Java never mattered (Score:5, Insightful)
My experience is in investment banking and every single bank I've ever heard of write the majority of their buisiness-critical server-side apps in Java. Hedge funds too. Any place where you want to quickly develop large server-side in-house apps, you can do that much more reliably with Java and you have access to a huge talent pool of developers. The reality is that the systems that drive the economy are written in Java. Some trivial MP3 catalog GUI, bulletin boards or throwaway websites don't really turn the wheels of capitalism I'm afraid.
It seems Taco has basically doesn't understand how I.T. in the real world actually works. My advice to him is to quit whining and accept the ideological war against Java has already been lost years and years ago. Java is huge, deal with it. That's a reality that won't go away just because you post a throw away editorial comment on Slashdot.
Parent
Re:Java never mattered (Score:5, Funny)
He must be referring to Amazon's use of Java.
Parent
Re:Java never mattered (Score:5, Funny)
Java isn't just for selling books. Look at how many Java libraries are around.
Parent
"Java never mattered"? (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it funny that we have statements like "Java never mattered except to sell books", while I distinctly remember hordes of posters on this very site only a few years ago, rabidly arguing that Java is the best thing ever and that nobody will be using anything but Java in the future. Now, we have hordes of Ruby, Python, and what-not advocates saying the same things. I guess it's their turn. I'll just keep my C++, thank you very much, which nobody advocates these days, and everyone says is obsolete, too complicated, and inherently broken. Go ahead, mod me as flamebait! I'm used to it.
Re:"Java never mattered"? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:"Java never mattered"? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with the whole C++ is "obsolete, too complicated, and inherently broken" and isn't advocated these days is that it remains the language of choice for real complex scientific and engineering challenges, especially time-critical/real-time systems, which the newer languages typically don't address well.
Parent
Re:"Java never mattered"? (Score:5, Funny)
C++ will always have a place in my heart & I'll use it when ever practical.
Don't you mean &&?
Parent
Re:"Java never mattered"? (Score:5, Informative)
I guess I should know by now to expect most people to not know what they're talking about when they post.
But, back to the issue. I fully agree with many other posters claiming it reduces the possibility of being screwed over by Sun or licensing inside of the various packages (audio is one that comes to mind - the one they're still rewriting).
Parent
Use debian? (Score:5, Informative)
If you've ever wanted to run a Java app on a debian box, you know why this matters.
The strictly FOSS distros have historically refused to include a Java package due to its non-Free license. There's some really good Java software out there, and without a pre-built java package, it was just that much harder to access them.
Re:Use debian? (Score:5, Interesting)
That is a good point. LAMP became a one-checkbox install because it's FOSS. LAMJ could easily have been. Except it's not a very catchy acronym.
Personally I'd like to see LAPJ: Linux, Apache, Postgres, Java.
Anyway, love it or hate it, Java has reached the critical mass to be around for a long time.
Parent
Java doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
If elephants could fly... (Score:5, Insightful)
if Java really were released today, brand-new, would it be a tool you'd choose
If Windows were released today, brand-new, would it be a tool you'd choose?
Who cares. It's not today that it's released, and the importance of availability, mind-share and already developed applications around it, gives it a clear importance, even if you have better hammers for your particular nail.
Submission needs -1 Troll (Score:5, Interesting)
>>
Since Java itself never mattered except to sell books, I still don't see why opening it matters.
>>
The day job could buy an awful lot of books with the $X0 million worth of Big Freaking Enterprise Apps we have written in (mostly) Java. Its like any other tool: there are some places where it makes excellent sense, some where it does not, and I have my own personal tastes for when I would use it or not. (Cards on the table: I do proprietary desktop Java development in my spare time and BFEwebA at the day job, but have been mixing in a bit of Rails programming lately.)
At the end of the day, what matters is "Does Java help us make our customers happy?" It does. Despite how skull-crushingly boring writing CRUD apps can be, for our customers having the things available and working means the difference kissing their kids at 6 PM or being stuck at the office at 2 AM wondering if they will still have a job in 5 hours.
So how does opening Java matter? Well, even in an extraordinarily mature platform, you'll sometimes find weird, off the wall, how the heck did that happen issues with particular combinations of software. Enterprise Computing = combinitorially explosive numbers of possible adverse reactions. We've got at least 150 packages in the system, many of which have to interoperate with code which has not seen the light of day since the mid-90s.
You'd think the odds of actually having to touch stuff deep in the bowels of the infrastructure are pretty low, but believe it or not we have our own little fork of, e.g, Tomcat 4.1 in production use *to this day* to get around a particular classloader issue that got fixed in later releases. (We can't upgrade that particular customer at the moment. Its a long story and if you've ever worked in industry you've heard the basic gist before.) Java being open means there is one less place for issues to be totally inaccessible should we need to work around them.
If it weren't for Python, sure (Score:5, Interesting)
We're a Python shop. It does everything Java does that we need it to do, but is actually fun to write. If Python disappeared tomorrow, though, Java would be a no-brainer. It's cross-platform and wouldn't leave us beholden to the good wishes of Redmond.
Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:5, Informative)
Java is slow?
Python has the Global Interpreter Lock, which means even though there are threads, they don't execute concurrently. Too bad if your server has several processors / cores.
Parent
W(h)ither Programming Languages? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, depending on who you talk to...
(C | C++ | Java) is the ultimate programming language.
Now we're being told that compiled languages are passe' and all you need is
(Perl | Python | AJAX).
In the meantime, the -art- and -science- of programming language design seems to have withered away due to lack of interest from the developer community.
From what I've seen over the last 30 years:
1. Programing Languages -DO- make a difference in both individual productivity and organizational effectiveness. And the latter is -much more important- than the former for anything bigger than a breadbox.
2. Management doesn't believe #1. In fact, management doesn't believe in software engineering. Instead, management wants to throw bodies at problems to make impossible schedules, with little concern for quality of the product. At best, managers throw process (and SEI CMM/CMM-I) at the hoards of programmers, believing that process is a substitute for
(a) developer talent
(b) product quality
So I guess ( 1 & 2) together explain the demise of programming language design. And all we can pray for is increases in second-order tools such as debuggers and, if we're really good, tools like static analyzers, to make up for the sh*tty set of current (popular) programming languages. And as end users, bugs and security holes will continue to be chronic results...
dave
Re:W(h)ither Programming Languages? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've got two major problems with your post.
1) You list AJAX along with Pearl and Python in a list to be compared against C, C++ and Java. Here's a hint:
Pick the item from the list that doesn't belong:
C
C++
Java
Pearl
Python
AJAX
2) Er, shitty set of current (popular) programming languages? We have NEVER had such a choice in programming languages as we do now. There are a LOT of popular programming languages right now. C, C++, C#, VB, VB.Net, Pearl, Python, Java, Javascript, Ruby, Eiffel, Tcl for starters.
Care to go back 15 years and provide me with the list of better, popular languages at that time?
Don't think you're flaming, but I also don't think you have a clue as to what you're talking about.
Parent
Re:W(h)ither Programming Languages? (Score:5, Funny)
Pearl. All the other terms are correctly spelled?
Parent
never mattered (Score:5, Funny)
Incredibly complex (Score:5, Insightful)
First, as the Java platform has matured, it has become incredibly complex. Today it's possible to do anything with Java, but no one developer can do everything
What developer has to do everything? We use Java to run our systems without using all the complex frameworks that you seem to be referring to. It does the job. Just because people have developed over-engineered frameworks with a language doesn't detract from the the value of that language.
Java never mattered....? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Since Java itself never mattered except to sell books..."
Wow...that has to be one of the most idiotic statements I've ever read from one of you guys.
I'm no Java evangelist, but saying Java itself never mattered is like saying C (or even C++) never mattered - it just smacks of total ignorance.
Java has had a HUGE impact on software development, especially in the enterprise. I won't say it's all been great...but it's certainly made a difference in a lot of areas.
If the language really never matter, there would not be such a large community of developers using Java, and Microsoft would not have bothered to change their entire development platform to be so much like it (i.e. C#/CLR/.NET).
I'd thought you Slashdot guys were smarter than this. I guess I was wrong.
java is like an old truck (Score:5, Interesting)
Java has its problems, but it's actually a great stable platform. I think people carp about Java's flaws because it is so popular, taking shots at the leader. In reality, Java is a huge and boring but effective ecosystem if you want to deliver a piece of software and have it just work.
It's not sexy, but jeez on linux, windows, and Mac, I've built java code and moved the .jars all all over the place, and darned if it doesn't do what it's supposed to, like an old truck that just works carts around all sorts of work.
With Java being open, we all benefit from its increased spread as an open and reliable platform -- like C. Depending on Java looked a more iffy when it was so tied to Sun. Your source code is such an expensive investment, you don't want to take weird risks (cough .net cough). With Java open ... well now it looks like a very safe, neutral choice.
You can write C code, and since it's open, you know your code would work all over. Java has a future that way too now.
C is still great for its niche, but (flame on) Java delivers 10x more capability in its libraries. C is a creature of the 1970's, so you don't get so much (I *love* C, but get a lot more done in Java). Also, the optimizations in HotSpot are awesome, making languages which run on the JVM look like the future. I hear if you want to see Java with the cruft stripped away, check out Scala.
Nice try Taco (Score:5, Insightful)
I think I know what you're doing - purposely trolling in order to incite a flamewar, driving up hits and thus ad impressions.
It won't work though; surely the vast majority of your readership browses with Firefox and some sort of adblocking system.
I mean it can't be that you genuinely believe that arguably the most often-used language for enterprise and commercial web development work "doesn't matter"; a 30 second search on any popular job website would dissuade you of that infantile notion.
This should be obvious, but (Score:5, Informative)
To ask if Java were new we would use it today, while valid as an abstract and absolute measure, is irrelevant in today's software world context.
Java is HUGELY entrenched in today's business software market, probably even more so if one weights by overall company valuation (i.e. Java's market share by company valuation is substantial, perhaps even dominant).
Open sourcing it matters since Java's growth and maintenance matter, as the investment in Java is substantial and unlikely to change any time soon.
Java's never gonna be the hot young thing in programming again (if it ever was), but that's irrelevant to the question of open sourcing it. Java has substantial value, and open sourcing software of value matters. Doing things that alter the growth and maintenance plans of a heavily vested technology matter.
Further, this:
is a tautology. No developer can do everything with C++ either, that doesn't lessen its value or relevance. Neither does Java's complexity or unwieldiness lessen the value gained in being able to learn from and modify how it has implemented things.
I personally don't get this constant desire on some people's part to denigrate Java. Some sort of Comp Sci elitism for the business language?
Claiming open sourcing Java doesn't matter is like claiming open sourcing windows wouldn't matter; the same arguments apply. Windows is unwieldy and complex, and competing software generally does things better than windows.
Signed Java Applets = True Web Apps (Score:5, Insightful)
I program in Java because both for it's platform independence and for the fact that if you sign a Java applet and embed it in a web page you are pretty much able to do whatever a fully-fledged Java application could do, like access the full file system.
I know of no other platform that allows you to write true "web apps" that can rival the stand-alone ones.
Re:(Troll) I hate java, why does /. love it? (Score:5, Interesting)
A "cludgey" app can be written in every language, Java is no exception.
Without getting in to a bunch of holy war things, here are some of the things that Slashdotters may like about Java:
1. You can get paid to write in it. A lot of us (myself included) are software developers who write stuff in primarily in Java. Sure, I know other languages like Ruby, but it's nowhere near as ubiquitous as Java. This makes employers like Java.
2. It's mature. It's been around for a long time, and the libraries are mostly stable and bug free. This is not true for some other languages. Also, the APIs for Java are huge and support everything, and the documentation is good.
3. It's fast(er). Older Java GUI stuff was not fast, and it gave people the impression that all of Java is not fast. Well, Java 1.6 is fast.
4. It's cross platform. This isn't a big deal for me so much, but it might be for some people.
Parent
Re:(Troll) I hate java, why does /. love it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do we the /. crown love Sun/Java?
Many of us used Sun boxes at Uni (I did) then suffered IBM boxes (although SMIT was quite spiffy) in our jobs. Strangely we started to wish we had the old Sun boxes back. (Or is this just me?)
Many of us moved from C (and C++) to Java, see above.
We love Java because we know Java, it does everything, and if you've grown with it, then it's OK. Sure, coming to Java from cold today it seems really complex.
Is Java perfect? LOL! No, not even close. But Java is fun to program in. Java programs aren't wedded to any particular OS/Hardware combination (I'd admit they don't quite live up to the "write once/run everywhere" promise, but it's close enough). Java has proved amazingly adaptable - and speed isn't really as much of an issue as the haters claim, if it was we'd all write assembler. Java isn't really far off the speed of C++. As for no multiple inheritance - do you REALLY want that?! There is a reason pretty much every phone has Java on it (don't tell anyone - but I quite like playing Tetris on my phone, thanks Java).
As for Sun, well they do make some really nice boxes, and they are giving us some great stuff (DTrace anyone?)
Parent
You're wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
No, seriously, you're wrong. Just because you don't see that Java is being used for a web site's back end doesn't mean you haven't been using it. Personally, I like Eclipse, but then I'm a programmer. I used to use Azureus, but since I'm mostly on a Mac, I started using Bits on Wheels. Not a crack against Azureus from a functional or usability standpoint, I just preferred the "wheel" in BoW. Totally arbitrary eye candy.
The problem with Applets was that AWT was a GUI framework built on top of a web browser, which is already a (wait for it...) GUI framework. The only reason Flash succeeded was because web browsers didn't have vector graphic support ten years ago.
As for Sun, they have given far more to the open source community than most give them credit for. NFS anyone? There are more examples, but just for a moment wrap your head around the concept of what if Sun never released the specs to NFS. What would the BSDs and Linux use to map file shares? CIFS/SMB aka Samba?
So let's take a look at Win32 MFC. That was written in C/C++. So did that framework suck so much? Answer: good code can come from any language where the developer is sufficiently skilled. Bad code can come from any language despite any intrinsic qualities in that language.
Parent
Re:(Troll) I hate java, why does /. love it? (Score:5, Interesting)
So you better have to explain yourself what's really wrong with the type handling in Java. Maybe you program in some more obscure language?
Parent
Re:(Troll) I hate java, why does /. love it? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you find Java's static typing inflexible and restrictive, you're doing it wrong. The great advantage I find with the level of restriction that Java puts on your types is that it enables brilliant development tools. Refactoring support is paramount.
Having recently completed a major refactoring of a Ruby project with tens of thousands of lines of code, I can say from experience that refactoring of an app written in a dynamic language can be a colossal pain in the ass. Just finding everywhere that a particular class is being used can take hours or days. With a decent refactoring IDE and a Java 5/6 (with everything generified) such an operation takes a couple of seconds at most.
Parent
Re:(Troll) I hate java, why does /. love it? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Programmers opinions on the language? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have written a few applications in Java.
I actually like it. If you want to write a database driven application that is also multi threaded I think it is just great.
If you need to be multi-platform it is the best solution that I have found. QT is close also.
The speed argument is old and should be tossed. Swing isn't slow or nasty anymore and is pretty speedy. SWT is also pretty nice.
Try Jedit, Netbeans, or Eclipse to see what a nice java application can feel like.
If you haven't used the latest version of Java I suggest you try it.
I have even found good uses for java appletts. Yes I know they got a bad name because way to many idiots "Microsoft I am looking right at you" used them for stupid things like hover buttons.
Java is a a good free as in beer and free now free as in GPL RAD system.
As far as it not mattering? Well a lot of people make a living writing Java. I just saw a Story on slashdot about a guy running java on a Cluster to do modeling.
As far as Java being to big for anybody to use it for anything practical...
Well JEdit, Netbeans, Eclipse, OpenOffice, and thousands of cell phone programs all say BALONEY.
Parent
Re:surely that is a little harsh (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent