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Java Programming

Industry Leaders Discuss Java Status Quo 390

Posted by michael from the two-lumps-with-cream dept.
prostoalex writes "JavaPro magazine published a wrap-up report on Java discussions at the recent JavaOne. If you missed JavaOne, the video Webcasts of McNealy, Schwartz, Gosling et al. are available from this site. The round table mentioned above gathered people from Sun, Oracle, Borland, Novell, Motorola and others. The discussion topics included: Java vs. NET, integration issues, the impact of open source and top problems that Java is facing today."
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Industry Leaders Discuss Java Status Quo More

Industry Leaders Discuss Java Status Quo

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  • Enough! (Score:5, Funny)

    by cK-Gunslinger ( 443452 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @02:02PM (#6286427) Journal
    Java Script, Java Beans, Java Swing, Java Status Quo!? Enough!

    • Re:Enough! (Score:4, Funny)

      by L. VeGas ( 580015 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @02:15PM (#6286558) Homepage Journal
      Java Script, Java Beans, Java Swing, Java Status Quo!? Enough!

      I thought this sounded familiar. It's the lyrics from that old Ink Spots song. Java Jive. [amazon.com]

      Java script,
      Java bean,
      Java jive,
      Java swing
      Java status quo?
      Java gotta go!
      Go cat go!

  • Make JavaOne Open Source! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Lieutenant_Dan ( 583843 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @02:06PM (#6286464) Homepage Journal
    I think it would benefit the Open Source developer community if the minutes of the conference were made public. That would enhance the understanding that the hundreds of millions of Java developers throughout the world have of Java.

    We need to be more agressive in building the respect and visibility of Java in the corporation. Only by doing so can we establish the necessary paradigm to determine the direction that the IT world, nay, the society in general has to take.

    It makes me mad when I look across the look and see the cookie-cutter drones that spout Windows drivel without questioning their origins and more importantly their destinies.

    Why must we live such a drab and empty existence? Why can't we challenge authority figures and build a better tomorrow. Not by force, mind you, but by knowledge. It is the only way to world peace.

    So in summary, if you don't support Java, you're against world peace.

  • Java Status Quo (Score:4, Funny)

    by Richy_T ( 111409 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @02:10PM (#6286513) Homepage

    import music.blues.12bars;

    public void static main(){
    and.I.Like(It).I.Like(It).I.Like(It).I.Like(It);
    I.la.la.la.Like(it).la.la.la.Like();
    Here(We).go(o);
    Rocking.all.over.the.(World);
    }

  • Hey They Mentioned Me! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by stoolpigeon ( 454276 ) <bittercode@gmail> on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @02:13PM (#6286541) Homepage Journal
    I'm a full time VB programmer who is looking to move away from microsoft tools as well as microsoft platforms.

    I started out not knowing anything but ms products- learned VB in school and landed my first job writing database apps. As I learned more, and my employer's needs grew- we started realizing that MS was too expensive and we looked for alternatives.

    Now we use linux and open source tools. I am learning to handle a system and use software that has been built by the open source community. I've even tweaked some code here and there for our own purposes.

    While all this has been going on- I've been trying to look to the future and work on some projects of my own. I really wanted to learn a language that would be portable, and have good tools I could afford. I've finally opted to go with Java.

    Java seems the simplest way to be able to work cross platform and have access to sufficient resources without having to shell out big bucks. In fact my development platform right now is a RedHat box with eclipse and Sun's JDK. I'm about 2 months into what I hope will be a long relationship. I think the article is right in that what is good for Linux is also very good for Java.

  • Missed opportunities (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Octagon Most ( 522688 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @02:22PM (#6286638)
    Does anyone else find it a little disconcerting that, "according to a recent Evans Data Corporation survey, developers who are migrating now from Visual Basic are moving to Java and C# in roughly equal numbers." What good is a few years head start and breathless hyperbole from the entire technology industry when Microsoft can simply create a new competitive product and quickly catch up? Java may well continue to be quite successful even though it has under-delivered, but that could mean little with C#, .NET, and whatever else comes out of Redmond. Does Java have enough momentum to thrive?

    • Re:Missed opportunities (Score:4, Insightful)

      by LarryRiedel ( 141315 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @02:48PM (#6286912)

      "...developers who are migrating now from Visual Basic are moving to Java and C# in roughly equal numbers." What good is a few years head start and breathless hyperbole from the entire technology industry when Microsoft can simply create a new competitive product and quickly catch up?

      That quote does not imply that C# is even starting to catch up with whatever lead Java has in developer base.

      Java may well continue to be quite successful even though it has under-delivered...

      I think Java has many flaws and weaknesses, but I also think it has more than delivered on its goal to be the successor to the platforms that preceeded it.

      Larry

      • In fact, I think it is only because of Java's relative weakness that it has succeeded that well.

        It was never meant to be the best language possible, it was meant to be better than C++ (and honestly, how hard is that!?). A language with which you can develop mostly boring software using lots of mediocre, exchangable developers in a half-way predictable amount of time. A limited, but not too confusing step up from what everybody used back then in the early nineties in the direction of what smart people have

    • Re:Missed opportunities (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Glock27 ( 446276 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @02:52PM (#6286953)
      Does anyone else find it a little disconcerting that, "according to a recent Evans Data Corporation survey, developers who are migrating now from Visual Basic are moving to Java and C# in roughly equal numbers." What good is a few years head start and breathless hyperbole from the entire technology industry when Microsoft can simply create a new competitive product and quickly catch up?

      You're looking at this the wrong way. Try this phrasing instead: "Microsoft is losing half of it's VB developers to Java, rather than having them move to C# [or VB.net]".

      Also, remember that C#/CLR is little more than warmed-over Java/JVM with the Microsoft label - it's not as though it's actually a different product...other than not being cross platform that is. ;-)

      Java may well continue to be quite successful even though it has under-delivered, but that could mean little with C#, .NET, and whatever else comes out of Redmond. Does Java have enough momentum to thrive?

      Will the 'whatever else comes out of Redmond' run on anything besides Windows? If not, Java will have a strong niche for the foreseeable future. Personally, I think Java and the JVM will outlive C# and the CLR. On the other hand, there is nothing preventing someone from coming out with a Java implementation for the CLR...

      Java has the momentum to thrive, not just survive. Red Hat's recent offer to support an open-source implementation may prove to be another positive inflection point for Java....we'll see.

      One thing that is very positive for Java - it is widely used in educational curricula, especially at the university level. That is a huge advantage over .Net.

    • When Java was first announced, it was to be the language for everything cell phones, appliances, games, databases and web access. Over time, Java has become a much more focused application development tool.

      But, Microsoft has not looked at tools that could be used by everything in a processor in it - instead it just focused on the Java's core market, while Java was trying to figure out what it was.

      It seems like both Java and C#, (.NET) have all been developed over the same period. It's just that Java has
    • It is expected that Microsoft Visual Basic users will migrate to the next Microsoft product. Since half are going Java, that means that MS is actaully losing ground.
    • As I've pointed out in previous posts in another Java thread, with the momentum of Red Hat and the entire OSS movement behind it, probably.

      Much like Microsoft and the Internet revolution, Sun needs to wake up and smell the coffee (bad pun intended). Sun will die alone. Proprietary lock-in is a science at Microsoft and too big of a threat, in this developer's eyes. It won't last forever, but it very well may outlast Sun.

  • I still don't get the allure of Java (Score:4, Interesting)

    by CoughDropAddict ( 40792 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @02:25PM (#6286662) Homepage
    This is not a troll.

    Why does anyone use Java, ever? In what situation does it offer anything that justifies the pain and inconvience that it incurs?

    Can you think of even one Java application that you use on your desktop and like?

    Can you think of a single language/runtime that feels so out of place no matter what platform you're running on? A platform that makes you deal with CLASSPATH, non-native and slow widgets, and shell scripts to set a thousand environment variables before starting your "portable" application?

    Can you think of a single problem domain where Java offers greater portability than the competition? Standard C, C++ or Python (depending on your desired level of abstraction) are just as portable as Java as long as your libraries/toolkits are cross-platform. And programs written in these languages just fit in, they find their libraries without fuss, they start up rapidly (in comparison) instead of seemingly spawning an OS within an OS.

    I've felt this way about Java since the moment I first tried it, and I'm still at a loss. I just don't get why so many people decide that Java is the solution for them.
    • i'm very, very new to java, so i can't deny anything you're saying, however a lot of it seems like fud to me. i hope some senior java guy tells me where i make my mistakes.

      Can you think of even one Java application that you use on your desktop and like?

      limewire?

      Can you think of a single language/runtime that feels so out of place no matter what platform you're running on? A platform that makes you deal with CLASSPATH, non-native and slow widgets, and shell scripts to set a thousand environment variabl

    • Re:I still don't get the allure of Java (Score:4, Interesting)

      by bytes256 ( 519140 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @02:37PM (#6286800)
      The "portability concerns" you mention are really quite minor, have you ever attempted to write a semi-complex cross-platform piece of software that strayed beyond the Standard C and C++ libraries? Also, Python is just as much of a pain to integrate into your system if you must also deploy on windows...users have to install Python, and if you use any non-standard Python modules, you're stuck with a reallly ugly mess. Java includes a lot of nice things by default that are at best afterthought add-ons in other portable programming languages. Also, with Swing, you can make your app fit in perfectly with the underlying OS, also with today's fast computer systems and continued improvements in JIT technologies, Java really isn't bad performance-wise, and only stands to improve as time progresses. As far as apps I like that are written in Java? I could list dozens of websites, limewire, Eclipse, Ant, JavaCC Even with traditional cross-platform approaches, you are still left with the task of handling dependencies and integrating into the system. How is integrating your Java app into the system any different than making an InstallShield wizard for your C++ app on windows? The allure of Java for me is simplified development of the actual application. Sure, installation concerns are still there, but how does that differ from C++?
      • Not true. You can use py2exe to distribute python apps to windows users. That creates a directory (Roughly 2MB in size usually) that you can zip up and give to your users. They simple unzip and do the double clicky.
      • The "portability concerns" you mention are really quite minor, have you ever attempted to write a semi-complex cross-platform piece of software that strayed beyond the Standard C and C++ libraries?

        Yes, I am a significant contributor to the audio editor Audacity [sf.net]. It runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. It uses cross-platform libraries to do:
        • GUI (wxWindows)
        • Audio I/O (portaudio)
        • PCM sound file i/o (libsndfile)
        • mp3 decoding (libmad)
        • id3 tagging (libid3tag)
        • pcm resampling (libsamplerate)
        • time and pitch s
        • Swing does not fit in perfectly by any means. Even someone who knows nothing about computers can tell you it looks different and feels different. That's why Swing includes the "Native" look and feel, which does, in fact, look and feel Native. Yes, default Swing doesn't fit in to any system, but Native certainly does. Also, how is that different from the widget set of OpenOffice.org or MS-Office, etc.? You don't even need an InstallShield wizard for apps written in C++, all you need is a .zip with the ap
          • Swing includes the "Native" look and feel, which does, in fact, look and feel Native

            Bullshit. Any novice Windows user can easily pick out Java Swing apps in "native look and feel". They look similar, but not the same.

            tell your users to install the JRE version x.x from www.java.com

            You're joking, right? Please tell me your joking.
            • Hey, guys, guys, come on -- be cool. You're allowed to redistribute a JRE, you can put that as part of your install, and let the user choose whether to use it or use his own (he might already have it). You don't have to tell someone to go to a website...

    • Re:I still don't get the allure of Java (Score:5, Insightful)

      by stoolpigeon ( 454276 ) <bittercode@gmail> on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @02:38PM (#6286804) Homepage Journal
      I will relate to you my experience and the largely subjective reasons I ended up moving towards Java. I am still new at it, and open to other tools- but this is where I am at right now.

      I'm not trying to defend my choice but rather- just answering your question by describing what happened to me.

      All the code I had written outside the classroom- prior to a couple months ago was written in VB6. That is what I get paid to do. As I've learned more, read more, and dealt with things like MS licensing for a company app that exceeded the cost of the server it ran on by a large margin, I've decided that I want to move to tools that don't leave me depending on MS.

      I took a c++ class at a community college- I learned how to write stuff that ran from the command line. It was cool but I wanted to see the kind of progress I had working with VB. Writing GUI based apps in C++ was in a word daunting.

      At the same time, working on a project to move a group of people at my company off of windows to linux, I needed to start working with an App written in Java. I found that I could do GUI work that ran on linux and windows with the same code.

      Yes it took me a few tries to get things to run on each system. But I only had to figure it out once.

      To be frank- and this may get a negative reaction- but if I didn't read /. I wouldn't know what Python is.

      Java is accessible, launches you quickly into results that are enjoyable and runs on both platforms without too much effort.

      And once again my disclaimer-- I'm not interested in arguing why Java is or is not better. As someone new looking to move away from something that has grown undesirable- Java has attracted me the most. This article encouraged me - because my one concern was- "will java be around for a while". I think so.

      • The "allure" of JAVA really has very little to do with JAVA itself.

        A big part of the "allure" of JAVA has to do with the history of your average programmer.

        The typical programmer used to go to collage where they learned C / FORTRAN / COBOL or if they were lucky, mabye PASCAL. Then they went into industry where they solved a problem, wrote an app, and all was well. That is, until the bugs came rolling in. Somewhere between fixing the bugs, including new features, interfacing with the new library x.so (o
      • Java is good at many things - huge standardized thoroughly documented libraries, lots and lots of commercial and oss tools and projects, availability of and demand for Java programmers etc. etc. But there's one kind of problem that you can only solve in a reasonable way with Java, AFAIK: huge "enterprise" apps. These apps require a technology that, among others...
        • is cluster-capable
        • can scale to big iron (dozens of cpus upwards)
        • can interface with mainframe apps
        • supports transactions where a single trans

    • Re:I still don't get the allure of Java (Score:5, Insightful)

      by oops ( 41598 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @02:44PM (#6286872) Homepage
      Why do people use Java ?

      [background: I work in technology for the financial centres in London]
      • multi-platform
      • a huge, standardised API
      • a large base of expertise available (especially at the moment)
      • it's especially productive for most programmers

      None of these are really technical reasons for Java being good at anything, but the combination allows enterprises to hire people easily, not have to cross-train them, and to get products out the door (usually within their own environment).

      None of the places I've consulted at use Java extensively on the desktop. Mostly it's used for back-end work. Front end is Microsoft / web, with a little Swing occasionally.

    • Re:I still don't get the allure of Java (Score:5, Insightful)

      by pohl ( 872 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @02:46PM (#6286893) Homepage
      Java shines in problem domains where you have a long-running service that needs to be secure, robust, scalable, and quickly mutable to changing requirements. If you don't live in that world, your confusion is understandable. Your post is not too different from usenet posts back in the day where Mac/Windows users didn't understand the appeal of unix. From their perspective, nobody used unix and it was extremely unfriendly. What they didn't know was that sometimes large organizations need to create large, custom internal systems that live long and adapt quickly. Java is no panacea there, but it's better than the alternatives.
      • Please define "robust." Everybody who says "robust" about a product means something different.

      • Amen! (Score:2)

        by Lysol ( 11150 )
        This is it!

        I've written stuff for a lot of big projects - where sometimes billions o' bucks are at stake - and here are a few things I've learned while building email services, travel portals, procurement systems, and various other web-based apps.

        Big complicated systems are crazy things to work on. There's no way I'd try to do any of the same stuff in any other language. Regardless of how I think of Sun, Java is here to stay. Remember, there is a bigger company that has a lot invested in Java as well as
    • I use Java all the time and I love it.

      I will agree with you on many points, but the language is clean and I like the structure. After programming in Java for several years, I'm learning how to better deploy my in house applications to minimize impact on users (ie. they don't have to download new apis or set paths or environments variables).

      On the plus side, I'm also involved in a lot of web programming, and use JSP, with servlets and beans and MySQL has been a bit difficult to learn (and configure!), but

    • Have you actually tried writing a serious app in Java? Having worked on big apps in C, C++, and Java, I've liked it a great deal.

      Of course, I don't really do GUI stuff much, and don't really care so much about how good the GUI is. That's someone else's problem.

      I also feel like you're understating the requirements to get a typical C program running. You seem to have used well-packaged other programs and badly-packaged Java, but that's just a packaging problem. I've certainly had my share of C etc. prog
      • Have you actually tried writing a serious app in Java?

        No, but the reason is that I've never come into contact with anything related to Java that left me with a good feeling. I figure that if no one else can make Java likable, it would be unrealistic to assume that I can.

        I come into contact with Java at work, and I have experimented with small projects in Java in the past.

    • Re:I still don't get the allure of Java (Score:5, Funny)

      by lobsterGun ( 415085 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @02:53PM (#6286968)
      >this is not a troll......

      Please allow me to translate

      > Dear Mr. Moderator, please mod this up. I realize that it is posted every single time that slashdot posts an article on java, but this time it's serious. thanks.

    • Re:I still don't get the allure of Java (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Dr. Bent ( 533421 ) <ben&int,com> on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @03:02PM (#6287080) Homepage
      In what situation does it offer anything that justifies the pain and inconvience that it incurs?
      Here's three off the top of my head:
      • Enterprise Applications - The vast majority of the performance costs of Java occur at start time, when HotSpot is just starting up. Once you get the app up and running (like, for example, on a server), the difference in performace is usually negligable. This is especially true if you are a decent Java developer and understand what Java does well and what it doesn't.
      • Embedded devices - There are hundreds of millions of Cell Phones, PDA's, and smartcards out there today that are running Java. Each make and model can have a different processor, memory size, display, etc...but your Java application will run on all of them.
      • Web-Deployed applications - The ability to push an application out onto the web via a Java Applet or Webstart application, and have it run on every machine in your company, can save millions of dollars when deploying to a large orginization. Java is able to do this in a way that is reliable and secure.
      Are you going to use Java to write a Windows desktop application? Probably not. But how many new Windows desktop apps are there left to write? That's why there are more developers using Java than any other language.

    • desktop apps is not the only software development (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Kunta Kinte ( 323399 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @03:05PM (#6287120) Journal
      Why does anyone use Java, ever?

      then, to justify...

      Can you think of even one Java application that you use on your desktop and like?

      You're assuming that desktop applications is the only applications being developed. You are incorrect.

      Java is a powerful server side development language. Ever heard of J2EE? This is an entire framework, complete with a component protocol, called JavaBeans. Other protocols provided or supported by J2EE allow the J2EE server components ( called containers ) to provide services to the web applications it runs. Or maybe you're heard of JSP, aka Java Server Pages? Which is much like PHP on steriods. An HTML embedded scripting language

      J2EE standard has been honored reasonabley well in the industry, with much of the J2EE components built easily moved from one application server to the other.

      • You're assuming that desktop applications is the only applications being developed. You are incorrect.

        You are assuming that one prong of my critique is representative of the whole. You are incorrect.

        Specifically I will refer you another part of my post:

        Can you think of a single problem domain where Java offers greater portability than the competition?

        I believe server-side development can handily qualify as a "problem domain."

        Now that we're done with pedantic snottiness, I can see why a server-side
      • I would say around 90% of the errors I encounter on websites are JSP errors. Maybe 9% are VBscript? errors. Less than 1% are PHP errors.
    • Given your antipathy towards Java I take it you tried it once perhaps Loooooong ago, didn't like it, and now spew the same antipathy today as if nothing has changed. Not trying to criticize your view or anything but they "were" valid... years ago.

      I've used Java from day one, loved it, and use it everyday in my career. It's changed a lot from when it first came out and my love for it has only increased.

      People like me, who love Java, tend to do so because
      a) We do not have to worry about the underlying OS (m
      • Given your antipathy towards Java I take it you tried it once perhaps Loooooong ago, didn't like it, and now spew the same antipathy today as if nothing has changed. Not trying to criticize your view or anything but they "were" valid... years ago.

        Do you deny that it still takes a shell script to start most Java apps on Unix? The latest Ant apparently still does this, for example.

        Do you deny that developing and building Java apps requires that you adjust you CLASSPATH in order for the compiler to find t

        • Re:I still don't get the allure of Java (Score:4, Informative)

          by Wraithlyn ( 133796 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @05:36PM (#6288763)
          "Can you think of even one Java application that you use on your desktop and like?"

          Sure... Borland JBuilder, versions 3 through 9. Awesome IDE.

          "Do you deny that it still takes a shell script to start most Java apps on Unix?"

          Yes. Package it in an executable JAR. Runs on any Java system. Hell, with JBuilder 8 Enterprise I can easily build native executable wrappers for Win32, Mac, Linux and Solaris.

          "Do you deny that developing and building Java apps requires that you adjust you CLASSPATH in order for the compiler to find the locations of third-party libraries you are linking against?"

          Yes. See previous point. Or, do what we did, write our own dynamic ClassLoader bootstrap which searches out required libraries and loads them automatically.

          This is really the heart of your pet peeve against Java, isn't it? You struggled with some annoying CLASSPATH crap, it frustrated you, and you decided you hated the entire language? I do understand... that stuff is tedious when you're trying to get into it.

          "Do you deny that running Java applications still requires you to obtain a JRE from Sun?"

          You don't have to go to Sun. There are plenty of third party JREs.

          "And that many applications require at minimum a certain version of the JRE?"

          All software has system requirements, what's your point?

          Got some more questions?
        • Do you deny that it still takes a shell script to start most Java apps on Unix? The latest Ant apparently still does this, for example.

          uh... yeah? But even if you do, so what? Last I looked shell scripts weren't that big of a deal. Hell, if you can write the app I'm sure you're more than capable of writing a little itty bitty shell script to launch nicely with your favorite settings and perhaps even change your background to a nice picture of Lucy Liu while you're at. who cares.

          Do you deny that developi

    • Re:I still don't get the allure of Java (Score:4, Interesting)

      by sloppydawg ( 660580 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @03:14PM (#6287241)
      The justification comes in the form of a rich and robust API that included crypto, disk/network/serial io, collections, graphics, http(servlets), J2EE, database connectivity, and the list goes on. The relatively open JCP makes it highly likely that new technologies that are actually needed on a widescale basis will make their way into the language and API set in decent time. Sure libraries and API's are provided for various other languages and platforms but rarely are those 100% consistant so if you want to develop for more than one platform you are stuck learning each platforms API's, syntax, and system idiosyncrocies. With Java the only time you spend is on learing the ideosyncrocies of each platforms JVM implementation and rarely do you need to use/learn an entirely different API. So as a developer the 2 things I value most are time and flexiblity. Java for me offers the best balance of the 2 for me. Anyone who develops for a living knows that the time spent coding the inital release of a program is small in comparision to that programs evolution over time. If I decide to develop in let's say Python, C++ or C# if the code I write today needs to be ported to say AIX later I'm going to have to rewrite at least some of my code to make that happen. With java I'm only tweaking a few things and then I'm up and running. Also Sun and the JCP are constantly working to make sure JVM implementations improve overtime so if let's say a technology such as hyperthreading comes around I don't need to rewrite my code to take atvantage of that SUN will modify the JVM for that architechture so I get all the perks without any of the time investment.

      The applications written in Java that I use and like are 1 the IDE I use Eclipse which comes with all types of great plugins that let me do everything from debug an opensource J2EE container to work with my RDBMS platforms on the back end. I've also been using Freenet a great P2P app with lots of cool ideas that radically change the way information is distributed and consumed. Jabber a IM client written entirely in java. And think of it from a users perspective. If I'm going to spend time learning to use an application do I really want to have to go looking for a brand new application to fill that ones need everytime I want to purchase a computer that runs a different OS than the one I had before. No it's a waste of time and money. My only hope is either that the vendor of said product is generous and ports their application to both platforms or that they decided to write the application in an OS neutral technology such as Java.

      In repsonse to: Can you think of a single language/runtime that feels so out of place no matter what platform you're running on? A platform that makes you deal with CLASSPATH, non-native and slow widgets, and shell scripts to set a thousand environment variables before starting your "portable" application? I suppose you think it would be eaiser to port an application written in C,C++ yourself (assuming you even have the source). Of my favorite applications listed above I haven't had to do any of this to get them to run on mutiple platforms (MS 95 - XP, FreeBSD, Linux (many distros)) so don't knock the entire Java platform just because the few applications you've tried this on reqiured a lot of work to get running. You are describing and implementation detail specific to the applications you run.

      And you say: just as portable as Java as long as your libraries/toolkits are cross-platform. ...provided you even have access to the source what if you are encorporating 3rd party libraries into your code. If they're not Java their is no guaranty this will be possible. You will be left begging the vendor, believe me I know.

      And my last reason to use Java over C++, C is that garbage collection doesn't have to be integrated into my application, buffer overflows aren't an issue (at least at my application level) and just as a programmer of a Windows Application isn't resposible for se
    • The thing I like about Java is that it enforces best practices. Looking at the capabilities of the language it seems like the inventor sat down and said, "okay, here's all of the things I need to do. Now what are is the minimum number of keywords and constructs I can implement and still be able to do all of them." Good examples of this would be single inheritance with interfaces; lack of explicit virtual functions (all functions are virtual); the well-defined and supported Bean model of Get and Set methods
    • Well, I know where you're coming from. I used to do Java, and it can be annoying at times. Plus, it is kind of on the slow side, even with the new compiler producing cached native code (it only produces native code when that code gets called, so the first time any function is called it's still slow -- why, oh why did they do THAT? They should have compiled and cached the whole enchilada right away). So, yeah, I can see why you'd ask "why Java?". It's a good question.

      I think a lot of people like Java becaus
  • I find it interesting that the published report is via ASP...
  • Public school education at work...

  • The IDE's baby (Score:5, Interesting)

    by glenist ( 88139 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @02:29PM (#6286707)
    Maybe Iâ(TM)m ignorant, but I donâ(TM)t think there is an IDE for java that comes close to Visual Studio. While VS.NET might have its problems, it is integrated very tight. As a developer I donâ(TM)t want my time taken up with simple tasks, Iâ(TM)d rather work on the interesting bits.

    • Re:The IDE's baby (Score:3, Informative)

      by MojoMonkey ( 444942 )
      www.eclipse.net
      • Nope,wrong site. Try Eclipse [eclipse.org] - it's VERY nice. Once you try refactoring, you'll like it better than VS.NET. It's written in Java but it doesn't feel like a typical slow Java app because it uses SWT, a fast widget toolkit that uses a 100% Java API with the widget implemented natively. It's CVS integration is top notch too.

    • Re:The IDE's baby (Score:3, Informative)

      by durdur ( 252098 )
      IntelliJ [intellij.com] is an excellent Java IDE.

    • Re:The IDE's baby (Score:5, Informative)

      by zeno_lee ( 125322 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @02:57PM (#6287011)
      I've used Visual Studio, Eclipse and IntelliJ IDEA

      Eclipse www.eclipse.org is excellent and is backed by the industrial strength of IBM. It's open source and it's completely free.

      IntelliJ IDEA www.intellij.com is also excellent, but it's not free.

      Never tried Borland Jbuilder.

      In my opinion as far as IDE's go Visual Studio, IntelliJ IDEA, and eclipse are on the same level.
      • When I mention VS.NET everyone, and I mean every java developer mentions Eclipse. I've used it, and I think it is a very good IDE, and it's probably the fastest pure java app that I've ever used on the desktop. This being said, I think that VS.NET has an edge Eclipse - and I hated Visual Studio 6.

    • Re:The IDE's baby (Score:2, Informative)

      by lokedhs ( 672255 )
      Like others have stated, take a look at IDEA [intellij.com].

      I doubt there is a single feature in the .NET IDE that IDEA doesn't do better (except for GUI builder, of course, since IDEA doesn't have one. It's a tool for developers, after all[1]. :-) ).

      Check out this review [iprimus.com.au]. Or this one [servlets.com].

      [1] Actually, a GUI builder is coming in the next version, but it's still in alpha state.

  • Multilanguage support would be nice (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ShatteredDream ( 636520 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @02:39PM (#6286812) Homepage
    It would be very helpful if there was an analog to VB.NET for Java. Java is a language and a bytecode/runtime standard. I don't see why Sun hasn't worked hard to make the Java platform support other languages like Basic, Python and others. They really should have taken Jython to a new level: a Python compiler that generates Java bytecodes from Python source code. Or it could be Ruby for all I care. I just find Python to be an easier language to do stuff quickly in.

    Java is too hard for many people to understand, something like Python or BASIC as an alternative language that targets the same runtime would help them fend off .NET. Not that I really see much of a difference, it's sort of like being asked to root for either the Soviet Union or NAZI Germany during the Battle of Stalingrad. Sun's only more OSS friendly than Microsoft because they want a big stick to beat MS with. If Sun had no competition, they'd be the same tyrants that Microsoft are.

    I will say that in regard to .NET and J2EE I think Mono is safe because Microsoft is in a damned if you, damned if you don't situation. If they go after Mono, they reduce their claim that .NET is open and cross platform to steaming pile of rubble a la the WTC. If they don't, they have a potentially serious competitor that makes much of Windows' advantages disappear. Microsoft has to play catch up with Sun here and they're SOL if they don't let Mono grow. By the time Mono is truly mature, Microsoft will probably be a shadow of their former selves. Germany is already moving away from buying their products and the USDoD is quietly opening up to OSS. If Microsoft loses the USDoD then it's over for them in the US Government because the USDoD accounts for the majority of the federal work force

  • Java is not just client apps. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by niola ( 74324 ) <jon@niola.net> on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @02:47PM (#6286908) Homepage
    I see a lot of the usual anti-Java posts on here. "It's slow", "The screen flickers", "The widgets suck."

    Just like any other technology, implementation is more key to the quality than the technology itself. I have seen some REALLY bad Java client side applications, but then there are some that are awesome. The GUI installer for Oracle is Java Swing. It looks identical on every OS you install it on (aside from options that may or may not be available to install on a given platform), and it works really well. Another example is Veritas' VMSA software. It is Java Swing, allows you to run it on multiple platforms, and you use it to manage your Veritas volumes on multiple hosts, networks etc. If an organization spends a $100k+ on a storage system, you can bet your ass that they would be mighty pissed if they had some "slow shitty client software" messing things up.

    And don't even dis Java on the server side either. Java on the server side does not have to be slow like everyone thinks. One example is the application server Orion. You want to have some fun, go to http://www.orionserver.com, download it, and install it. Then do some apache bench comparisons between it and even a tuned Apache and Orion will serve static HTML pages faster. For even more fun, whip up a JSP with a database call to Postgres or Oracle, and bench that against Apache still serving static content. Orion will actually serve dynamic DB-generated content as fast or faster than Apache can handle static HTML.

    I guess the point I am trying to make is don't just make blanket statements and put down a technology because of a bad experience. It is all about the implementation. Best technology with a shitty implementation will suck no matter what.

    --Jon

  • What Java needs is GPL and experimentation (Score:4, Interesting)

    by expro ( 597113 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @02:54PM (#6286982)

    I have developed lots of significant things in Java, but have repeatedly been confronted with bad / stupid limitations of the environment and implementations. Even expending considerable resources and being a full Java licensee, it has never been possible to get simple issues resolved within a reasonable time frame. Occasionally I see something being addressed 5 years or more after the corresponding project gave up on Java because of the lack of a reasonable response. Other issues are never addressed. As such, I do not trust the Java base to deliver the necessary tools, fixes, etc. I see release after release that fixes some things and breaks a number of others and there is no real recourse.

    Swing is far worse for many applications than some of the toolkits it displaced. There need to be some larger set of viable competing UI toolkits, not just relying on Sun because they control the environment.

    Another big problem is lack of a more efficient incremental class loader. I gave a presentation at Sun many years ago explaining how this could revolutionize web applications. I helped create prototypes that never made you wait and incrementally downloaded as needed, but there was never the ability to integrate the solution into the environment as would be possible in a GPL environment. As a result, you have the dilema that on the one hand, you would like to only load what a particular user will execute, but on the other hand, loading it class by class using the default class loader and http is completely unacceptable for complex applications, so you wind up with a jar file, and you may as well have had an executable file, as far as modular download goes. This is part of what makes it, for example, prohibitive to use your own UI library instead of Swing, because it cannot be incrementally downloaded.

    Sun wants to control things, but does not innovate nearly as quickly as an open community would solving their own real-world problems.

    If Sun would GPL Java, I would come back to it in a major way. But often the sorts of things I might add are the same sorts of things Sun protested when Microsoft tried, such as tight XPCOM support in Mozilla so that it has equal browser integration to Javascript, Python, etc. Sun clearly wants to suppress this sort of thing.

    As such, what can be done with Java is largely limited to Sun's imagination, rather than that of the community. JCP does not seem realisticly useful or credible. Perhaps it is for some, but not for me and many I know of, for whom that perception is everything. I could go on and discuss a thousand issues. The wait time for required innovations is just too long from Sun.

    I know I have been out of Java for some time. If this is suddenly different now, then I hope to hear about it. Any GPL effort started now from scratch should define a new open standard unless Sun is willing to work with a standards body to standardize its offering, IMO.

  • Java 1.5 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sanity ( 1431 ) * on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @03:00PM (#6287054) Homepage Journal
    I am a long-time Java user, and over the past year have done some C# work. While I was obviously very familiar indeed with Java, its language, and its API, I must say that I was quickly seduced by C# convenience features like the "foreach" loop and auto-boxing (where you don't have to worry about converting between an "int" and an "Integer").

    Turns out that Java 1.5 will have these features and more - one thing I am really looking forward to is generics.

    The final advantage of C# over Java was that a C# program looked like it belongs on Windows - same widget set, same "feel". This is a bigger deal than most people realize. Windows users grow accustomed to doing things a certain way, and they don't like it when you try to impose something different on them. Swing just doesn't cut it in this regard.

  • Java is for elite-programmer. Is that a niche market?

  • .net interoperability issues -- bigtime... (Score:3, Informative)

    by kremvax ( 307366 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @03:17PM (#6287280) Homepage
    Now that MS is dropping IE support for Mac entirely, and has never offered anything workable for linux, .net component interoperability issues for non-windows systems should be a glaring problem for enterprise deployment.


    I mean, if you're using .net for what .net does best (prebuilt rapid deploy compenents), there are *lots* of .net components that just won't work without ie.


    Java isn't a perfect language, but at least it supports linux, mac, solaris, atari, commodore, ti-99, etc.

  • Java is the new COBOL (Score:5, Insightful)

    by The Famous Brett Wat ( 12688 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @03:25PM (#6287362) Homepage Journal
    Well, it got modded up to 5 last time [slashdot.org], but it looks like it needs saying again. Here's the cut-and-paste of it.

    Slightly off-topic, but I'm in the process of perusing the job ads again, and based on the proliferation of J2EE/EJB and other Java stuff I'm seeing, I think that Java is the new COBOL. Not that the languages bear any similarity whatsoever, but Java seems to have found a niche as the new lingua franca of business apps. It has competition, to be sure, but based on the history of COBOL, I would be so bold as to put my pundit hat on and say, "Java programming will be a safe bet for long-term employment in the computing industry." The jobs aren't necessarily all that interesting, but they look a whole lot more secure than the bleeding edge tech jobs which come and go in a flash.

    The whole C# and .Net thing is a potential competitor in the same arena, but I don't think that Microsoft's inclusion (or not) of Java is going to matter much. I always figured that Java was intended to allow cross-platform desktop app programming, but the niche it seems to be filling is a back-end role. Personally, I had expected Perl to fill this role as the new COBOL, but demand for Perl seems to be way down, except as one of those "we also expect you to know Perl" type things, which never actually turns out to be important in the job.

  • Java is, despite it's large and unavoidable negative sides, a very adaptable language. The fact that it is used in server side J2EE applications and on tiny symbian phones, means adaptability to me. I severely doubt that Microsoft's .Net will ever fit on Smartcards or be considered as reliable and secure by the industry.

    Java has been sorely neglected by Sun over the past few years on the Desktop, which is to be frank, the only thing that most computer users ever see or think about. The comments about Swing

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