2007 Java Predictions

jg21 writes "Java Developer's Journal has published the results of its end-of-year poll of various Internet technology players, from its own internal editors to industry high-ups like the founder of Apress, Gary Cornell, and including too the thoughts of professor Tony Wasserman of Carnegie Mellon West. Participants were asked to foretell what they saw happening in 2007. Among the predictions — Cornell: 'The open-sourcing of Java will have no effect whatsoever on Java's slow decline in favor of dynamic languages (Ruby, Python) and C#'; Wasserman: 'The use of the GPL 2 for open-sourcing Java will inhibit the completion and acceptance of the GPL 3 proposal'; and Rails creator David Heinemeier Hansson: 'The stigma of being a Web programmer still using Windows will increase.'"

Java's dead!

[Rik Sweeney (471717)]

I read this on a messageboard years ago, it still makes me laugh to this day:

No one uses Java anymore, it's all flash these days.

Re:Java's dead!

[msobkow (48369)]

Cornell: 'The open-sourcing of Java will have no effect whatsoever on Java's slow decline in favor of dynamic languages (Ruby, Python) and C#';

Apparently Cornell doesn't realize C#/.Net is just Microsoft's implementation of a p-machine and framework, the same as Java. With such insightful educators, it is no wonder some of the newer computer science students don't have an adequate background in abstraction and conceptualization of systems.

BTW, Java is far from "dead" or even a coma

[msobkow (48369)]

Out of all the interviews I did this year, only one shop wanted .Net services, and they wanted VB, not C#. Half a dozen shops about the same size were sticking with Java. Half a dozen shops several times the size were also sticking with Java.

I think it's a lot easier to add unsigned types to Java than it is to switch to a new framework.

Re:Ever used Eclipse?

[drerwk (695572)]

Didn't have you coffee yet this morning?
The parent makes a living programming J2EE. He might even use Eclipse.
I think for many folks Java is used to write software that does not see the front of a web page.
In fact I have not used Java on the client side since about '98. But I write far more Java now than I did back then. I hope that the work Ethan Nicholas [java.net] is doing to will help, but frankly Flash works fine for many web pages. And as long as I don't have to write the Flash code I'm fine with that. Is it still programming via dialog box? Can I use svn with my Flash code these days? I also hear AJAX is popular and effective for client side work. Anyway, Java is not likely to die anytime soon.

Re:Ever used Eclipse?

[The PS3 Will Fail (998952)]

'Now you can find your open source code trapped by an open source license.'

Java will still be available under the Sun license; releasing it under the GPL is just another option - but not the only way to license it. You're spreading nonsense.

Re:Java's dead!

[angel'o'sphere (80593)]

I've never been a fan of the language. Performance is terrible, Neither is the performance terribel nor ever was it. I think at its slowest time Java was roughly 10 times slower than C, and in general only 5 times slower ... not what I would call terribel. In our days Java is probably in the speed range of 1.2 of C. ... and moving an app from one VM to another often causes serious problems. Thas a myth. The cross platform claims have consistently been exaggerated. Well, if you had problems with that it must be ages ago. Don't use "\" as path seperator e.g. ... I for my part enver had one single issue. And real troble I only have heared about when people used RMI and where not aware that serialization is not allways the same from version to version.

We develop on linux and Mac Os X and our customers usually develop on linux and Windows, the software is usually deployed on Sun machines, either SPARC big iron or I86x blades. We never had any portability issue.

angel'o'sphere

Re:Java's dead!

[revscat (35618)]

I've never been a fan of the language. Performance is terrible, and moving an app from one VM to another often causes serious problems. The cross platform claims have consistently been exaggerated.

I work for a large .com that serves up tens of millions of hits per day, and we are a Java shop.

You don't know what you're talking about.

re: cross-plaform compatibility. I do my development on OS X, but most of our developers use Windows. Our dev and staging environments are Linux, and our production boxes are Solaris, although we've recently introduced Linux into that mix as well.

There have been several times where I have taken a jar file built on my machine, and deployed it to other developer's machines or our staging environment with absolutely no problems. The same jar runs on every OS we deploy to.

Nor has performance ever been a problem. VM technology has seen amazing improvements over the past ten years, and is now such that for most non-trivial applications it is more performant than the compiled C/C++/Obj C equivalent. The success that Java has seen would not have been so tremendous if this were not true.

Re:Java's dead!

[ciggieposeur (715798)]

Back in the days when JDK levels 1.2.2 and 1.3.1 were the bleeding edge of commercial application servers, it was actually quite easy to find 100% Pure Java code that would barf on one JVM/platform combo but work quite well elsewhere. Off the top of my head, here are some examples:

1. Rendering double-byte character sets on AIX and Solaris crashed the JVM for various combinations of language (ja and ko were notoriously fragile), JVM, and OS level.

2. Code that spawned processes worked correctly in Windows, AIX 4.3.3, and Linux, but failed under AIX 5L and Solaris.

3. Solaris would throw an erroneous OutOfMemoryError when lots of EJBs were loaded, but it worked fine under AIX 4.3.3, AIX 5L, Linux, and Windows.

Our project was a relatively simple and classic J2EE webapp with a few EJBs for adminstration, some JDBC for large dataset handling, and JSPs for the frontend. It had an "InstallShield Multi-Platform"(tm) Java-based installer. We generally found JVM errors at the rate of once a month. Most could be worked around, but a few had to be documented to the user, and some (such as running the installer in a particular double-byte character set) could not be solved at all given the existing necessary workarounds for other JVM bugs.

Perhaps the JVMs have improved in reliability and work now as you say they do. I moved away from Java after that project and I doubt I'll ever switch back now.

Boston Globe

[KruiserX (1008455)]

When the the Boston Globe was asked about the decline of JAVA to dynamic languages their reply was to "stop using JAVA"

I Just. Don't. Get. It.

[IdahoEv (195056)]

The entire IT reporting industry, and Slashdot. Writes about languages these days as if there is only one task in the world: web apps whereby users insert and retrieve basic data to/from a database. Yeah, for those apps you bet Java is losing ground to modern interpreted languages.

But there are a thousand other types of projects for which other environments might excel.

One of my current projects is a desktop app that does real-time signal processing on a live microphone feed, and produces a full-screen GUI with output of the signal that updates at 30+ FPS. Between the signal processing and graphics, it needs to do some hundreds of megaflops, effective - interpreted languages are a couple of orders of magnitude slower doing raw math. Java is pushing the low end of speed for this app.

At the same time, we want the benefit of a multiplatform release, because the project is for the education and music professional markets - there are an awful lot of macs among our target market, and our competitors are PC-only. Java has actually come through on the write-once-run-anywhere promise for us, straight down to the live audio input. We're just 2 developers - how much longer would it have taken us to have to port C++ between different platforms' APIs? Way too long. And we can't even consider platform-specific environments like C# or ObjectiveC/Cocoa.

Use the right tool for the right job. There are times when Ruby's the right tool - and times when it ain't. There are plenty of niches still where nothing else can remotely fill Java's shoes.

David Heinemeier is a troll

[by Anonymous Coward]

David Heinemeier Hansson: 'The stigma of being a Web programmer still using Windows will increase.'

I guess we can say the same about those snobby pre-teen emo kids using the Mac.

Umm...what stigma?

[Aphrika (756248)]

'The stigma of being a Web programmer still using Windows will increase.'

Am I missing something here, I was unaware that there was a stigma attached to being a web programmer using Windows. Right tools for the job, whether it's Ruby on Rails or not I'm afraid. Last project was PHP on Apache and MySQL, current project is ASP.NET and SQL Server 2005. My next project will be PHP on Windows using MySQL and IIS. I do what's best for my clients, not what's flavour of the month.

Attaching a stigma to certain platforms or technologies for certain jobs is just stupid and childish. Are we going to start lambasting publishers that don't use Macs next, or Linux users that do accounting on their machines? Bizarre...

That quote was out of context

[brokeninside (34168)]

Hansson's prediction was that Apple will become the development platform of choice for techies and, consequently, other developers will laugh at any web devs saddled with using a Windows based laptop.

Re:Umm...what stigma?

[Aphrika (756248)]

Interesting. Well firstly I'd like to say that I don't consider myself a fanboy of any particular database/OS/web server/development product, I work to solve problems, not increase/decrease some software/hardware company's market share.

In most cases, SQL Server is right becasue a company has in-house SQL Server Admins and deploying another database platform is a waste on company resources. That would entail another complete platform and maintenance/admin skillset. In many cases companies don't want this, which makes perfect sense as there's no point having a disparate bunch of technologies that you need to manage. If I was ever deploying a .NET solution, SQL Server 2000/2005 is also what I'd recommend as it talks to .NET code much more effectively than MySQL or other alternatives. Performance of SQL Server against MySQL with .NET code is way better to the extent that I wouldn't recommend MySQL in that situation, regardless of deployment cost. As you work with various platforms, technologies and languages, you tend to fit the ones which fit together best - that's something that comes with experience. You also have to look at an outfit before you start on a new database project. If a company is using a lot of Windows boxes, has sysadmins who are Windows-based, then chances are that they'll be much more at home doing admin of a SQL Server on a Windows platform. In an ideal world, I'd all roll out what I personally love best. In a business world (the real world) I roll out what's best long term for the client, and that's looking at return on investments, total costs of ownership and what they already have in place. There's no point in rolling a shiny new Windows 2003 server into an Oracle datacenter and asking them to admin it. These are all factors that'll affect what I'm recommending/using/deploying.

Personally speaking, I've never had any issus with any SQL Server versions in either performance, scaling or security. A well installed, maintained and managed setup will work really well and be considerably cheaper than alternatives such as Oracle. While MySQL may be cheaper, it's not as fully featured as SQL Server. Off the top of my head, I reckon I've dealt with around 40 or 50 SQL Server setups since version 6.5 and I don't have a bad word to say about them - never had an intrusion, never had database corruption, havce ported databases between machines with no problems, run them on VMware etc. etc. It's certainly one of Microsoft's better technology platforms and though many people would like me to, I can't really fault it. Same goes for MySQL - I like it and I use it where necessary and relevant, i.e. conversely, I'd tend to roll out MySQL in a Linux-house if I were developing PHP on Apache for instance. As I said earlier, you find technologies fit together through experience.

Although as with anything out there, chances are someone's had some really bad experiences with it and couldn't recommend it though personal experiences, YMMV.

Hope that answers your question though.

The Best Predictions From The Article....

[E++99 (880734)]

...by Richard Monson-Haefel
Award-Winning Author & Senior Analyst, Burton Group

1. Jonathan Schwartz open-sources Sun Microsystems.
In a move that will surprise everyone Sun Microsystems will announce that it will open source its entire company. Sales, marketing, finance, and even operations will be open to the community for anyone to contribute.

2. Apple computer announces the iPod Uno.
The size of a match stick with no screen or controls, the iPod Uno plays one song in a constant loop. Despite its limited capabilities, the tiny device becomes an instant hit and a cultural icon.

3. In what is heralded as the seminal article on the subject, Tim Berners-Lee mentions "IT2"
Overnight the term morphs into "IT 2.0," spawning thousands of blog entries and press articles, a dozen books, five conferences, and millions of dollars in venture capital. It turns out that the original article, incomprehensible to most readers, was actually another attempt to explain the Semantic Web and the IT2 reference was just a typo.

4. Microsoft will create the first CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) position.
The new CMO will immediately change his own title to Chief Command & Control of Packaging Officer (C3PO) and then announce that Vista will be delayed and renamed Microsoft Virtualization Application Program Operating system Reloaded (Microsoft VAPOR).

...funniest stuff I've read in a very long time.

Crystal Ball time...

[starseeker (141897)]

OK, we all know how useful and accurate these predictions tend to be, but since it's that time of year...

The open-sourcing of Java will have no effect whatsoever on Java's slow decline in favor of dynamic languages (Ruby, Python) and C#.

That depends on what market we are talking about. Open sourcing Java will make a MASSIVE difference in terms of Java's appeal to the open source development community. Whether this translates to more Java software or not I don't know, but there are already some very good programs in Java that are open source (Jedit http://jedit.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net], Jabref http://jabref.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net] and JaxoDraw http://jaxodraw.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net] come readily to mind). Seamless integration with Linux distributions has the potential to make it a much more popular language, and may also result in usability improvements to the environment itself.

Other languages will grow of course, but I would personally be surprised if Java fades too much except perhaps as the "new toy". There is a LOT of Java code out there, and it is doing important work.

The use of the GPL 2 for open-sourcing Java will inhibit the completion and acceptance of the GPL 3 proposal.

I don't understand this. GPL3 will go forward as it is going forward now, with much discussion - I can't imagine any issues Java would raise that aren't already being raised. Anybody with more knowledge of the process and Java know what he's saying here?

Now, just to get into the swing of things, my predictions:

a) Every major Linux distribution will deploy Sun's JRE as a core system component soon after a full open source release is made. Allow six months to replace any pieces that could not be released due to copyright/license issues. The Sun JDK will also see large scale integration.

b) Open source software written in Java that already exists will get a boost in interest and visibility, as it is no longer using a language that is non-free.

c) Graphics performance and native appearance of widgets will be a major focus of interest and effort, possibly resulting in Java applications becoming better integrated visually with the desktop. This may actually cost Java a bit in terms of name recognition, as end users will see less visual evidence of the difference between Java and other languages (I know, I know - that's not what makes Java different, but it's what can be SEEN that counts.)

d) As Linux distributions integrate and include Java by default, it will increase the appeal of both Java and Linux on the server side.

And one that I would like to see proven wrong:

e) No major OEM computer maker will add the Sun JRE as a default part of their desktop, despite it being released as GPL.

Trollpost

[Elektroschock (659467)]

Is is an ivory tower troll. In fact almost no one uses ruby. It may be hot among Nerds and its growing. Java went into the enterprises in the 90th as Cobol did before. C++ was less usable for enterprises. Java looked good and fostered plattform independency, helped to increase interoperability. "Java to go" is as off-topic as the prediction that FreeBSD would take over Linux. Ruby and Python are upcoming languages. Growing but you have to wait for another five years. Open Source Java will mean all Linux systems will ship free Java. Java will get a working GNU compiler native compilation. Java will be the trusted alternative to -- arrrgh patents --- Mono for enterprise applications. SUN knew exactly why they did it. Linux will become a strong Java plattform and with Linux on so many servers that will give Java and Linux a boost.

My own predictions

[mgkimsal2 (200677)]

In no particular order:

Java as Open Source will help in creating smaller versions - perhaps very lightweight browser-plugins - optimized for particular use (media, number crunching, etc.). These browser plugins will help revive Java as a thin-client/web2.0 (3.0?) player in browser-based apps, possibly even making some small inroads against Flash. The 'apollo' project from Adobe may put the kibosh on this, but the increased-eyeballs angle will likely prevent a complete obliteration from happening to desktop Java.

Java will become even faster. Although this has happened in 2006, with the release of Java 6, the full impact will be a refitting of the niche Java apps out there to work specifically with Java 6 and the speed improvements there. This will give some Java some good PR points and case studies with the 'Java is slow' crowd (which I'm definately a member of [fosterburgess.com]).

(As I think one of the panelists in the article said) - there will be a greater acceptance of dynamic languages (ruby/php/python/etc) in Java shops, as Java6's support for dynamic languages (JSR 223 I think [jcp.org]) will help increase productivity for Java devs willing to think outside their javaBox.

JAVA and GLP v3

[MMC Monster (602931)]

Did anyone really expect JAVA to be released as GPL v3? A license that hasn't even been written yet? Or wait until GPL v3 is released (is there a set date for that?)?

stigma

[Threni (635302)]

> Rails creator David Heinemeier Hansson: 'The stigma of being a Web programmer still using Windows will increase.'"

The stigma of a well paid job. Ah, how will I ever show my face in civilized society again.

Java is doing better than ever IMHO.

[TheNarrator (200498)]

I have been programming in Java since 2000 and it just gets easier and more powerful to develop with. Sure there were some big disasters in Java land like EJB1 and EJB2 but that's all cleared out of the way and the tools now are fantastic. I've been working with Appfuse, JSF, Hibernate, Testng, Spring and the latest versions of Eclipse and almost every day I find myself smiling with glee at how easy web development has become compared to a few years ago. The biggest mistakes for new developers in Java is not using Eclipse and not using either Maven or Appfuse. That's because there's a lot to take advantage of in Java land and getting all the tools and dependencies set up and rolling along can take quite a while. Both Maven and Appfuse make this process go a lot quicker and tend to steer the developer in the right direction. Eclipse makes understanding the whole thing a lot easier as well and the refactoring and debugging are amazing. After the initial setup though things start to become very easy and fun and development goes quickly. This is the opposite situation from programming in a dynamic language. Starting in a dynamic language is easy but as programs grow, the lack of static typing and refactoring support causes more and more bugs to start sprouting up and the system generally get more painful to work with.

    I don't know why anyone would want to work with C#. I never run into showstopper bugs in third party libraries with Java because I have the source and can trace into the libraries, find the bugs, report them to the developers and then find an intelligent workaround while a $35 call to MS tech support will tell me to reinstall my whole system and upgrade to the latest versions.

Re:Java is doing better than ever IMHO.

[TheNarrator (200498)]

Using an IDE no matter if one is a rockstar or an average programmer is going to make work go quicker. There's more than enough things to think about on any given project and and IDE just lets one focus better on the more interesting parts of the project instead of things like repetitively typing import statements.

'Javas slow decline in favor of...' oh please

[Shayde (189538)]

The ONLY people who think Java is in decline in favor of Ruby or Python are the ivory tower academics who aren't actually developing large scale enterprise applications. Neither of these tools can manage true EE environment. Or if they can, the number of people who know how to build, maintain, and debug them is so tiny, it would be ludicrous to adapt a large installation to the platform.

An environment is only as useful as the tools that are available for it. And it only takes a quick glance around the net to realize how HUGE the Java community is.

Still not convinced? Lets take a look at Hotjobs. This is a pure keyword lookup, doing a little tuning to make sure we're not finding jeweler entries for 'ruby' :

• 'java' 8213 job results.
  
• 'python' 671 job results.
  
• 'ruby' 180 job results.
  

And just for giggles, lets throw some more searches:

• 'php' 1063 job results.
  
• 'c#' 2092 job results.
  
• 'c++' 5482 job results.
  
• 'perl' 3197 job results.
  

So, in support of the claim that Java is in 'slow decline', we have... java as the most requested programming language in the job market today.

Re:It is official; Netcraft now confirms:

[Marcus Green (34723)]

Quick search on the nearest Job board
Occurances of the word Java
3043
Occurances of the word Ruby
30
Reports of death seriously exaggerated

Re:I think they're right

[Timesprout (579035)]

Of course, if Java had been an open standard for the past 10 years, there'd be dozens of independent implementations right now

I love statements like this. The specs for the language have been available since day one. There are a couple of very good alternative implementations (free as in beer) and some very mediocre OSS attempts. Its been a constant source of amusement to me that for all the 'we have all the best developers etc etc etc' the 'community' has harped on at Sun for years to open source because basically they have been unable to produce a comparable implementation on their own. It's for this reason I think Sun opening Java fully will make sod all difference, just as opening Solaris made sod all difference (yes different licence but very much a case of 'ta we'll just cherry pick the good stuff like dtrace and port it to linux').