Phillip Greenspun: Java == SUV

lateralus writes "In his blog, Philip Greenspun re tells of his epiphany that Java is the SUV of programming languages. An interesting point brought forth in his typical extreme style."

Agreed!

[toupsie]

It pollutes the environment and wastes gas...

so I guess that would make C# the....

[Anonymous Coward]

Pinto?

Re:JAVA is the suv?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean, "JAVA is the language of the people who like to call themselves developers."

SUV? Sure!

[Anonymous Coward]

Does that mean it's big, bloated and flips over every time you try to push it to do what it's supposed to do?

/me wonders what the Firestone tires of programming is. Then goes to RTFA.

Penis extension?

[skaffen42]

OK, I've heard Java called a lot of things and I know it has its faults, but I really don't think the SUV comparison holds water.

Nobody ever started using Java because they wanted to compensate for a small penis, which is the only possible reason for buying an Hummer.

Jeep is better than SUV

[mnmn]

Where ANSI C is the jeep of them all. C++ is a two-door which looks nicer but is slightly less useful. C can be used and abused by anyone anywhere and will obviously outlast Java, but anyone with money to throw and show off (at the cost of wasting enormous resources) will get the SUV. Smaller programmers here and there (not smaller in importance) will use the bicycle which would be Perl. For now, I'll just take a walk (BASIC)

Re:Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been writing web applications since the late 70s (initially for the NSA before we made it public) and in my experience Java has a lot of inherent faults that render it useless for large scope projects.

It's cross-platform feature has been tainted by the agenda of the forces that dominate the respective operating system (BeOS, Windows, OS/2, Mac OS, and AIX). That is a pity since Sun had done such a phenomenal job in releasing the first public Java release back in 1985 which at the time would run on Commodore 128 and my Amstrad PC. About a year later they released a IBM PC version but unfortunately it required 256k of memory which made it dificult to deploy at the time.

Java's not an SUV!

[Steve G Swine]

SUV's start up instantly!

Like a SUV huh?

[weave]

Let's see, I can't read the article because it's slashdoted already, let me take a stab...

Weave's rushed tongue-in-cheek SUV vs JAVA comparison:

• Very successful, can't sell enough of them. Nope
• Crushes the competition (anything that gets in the way). Nope
• Able to crash in spectacular ways if not handled correctly. Maybe
• Bloated, overkill. Yes
• Wastes resources. Yes
• Preferred by men with small penises. Yes
• Can put everything including the kitchen sink into one. Yes
• Is seldom used to do all of that. Yes
• Promoted by using annoying advertising. Yes

Re:SUV? Sure!

[Anonymous Coward]

Couldn't RTFA, for some unknown reason. Thank you, /.!

Thank You

[JamesP]

Someone spoke for that overbloated thing that is Java.

Sun really beat M$ in THAT game. If you want to do anything in Java you need a hundred classes, calling a million methods and passing them several times.

PHP and ASP are much more simple.

Java joined the complexity of the Windows API with the speed of an interpreted language, along with some bitches as strong-typing, millions of similar classes.

PHP
cut(bread)

ASP
bread.cut();

Java
knifeh = new KnifeHandle
knifeb = new KnifeBlade
k = new Knife
k.Attach(knifeh)
k.Attach(knifeb)

_try()
{ bread(k.cut)
}
catch (Outch)
{
dial.dialnumber(911);
}

Re:Finally

[ctl]

A voice of reason

Well, note that Phil does advocate in his article the use of VB instead!

Re:Worst analogy ever

[Anonymous Coward]

Mmm, nice comparison, can I compare assembly programming to bull running, it gets you fit and fast, but it winds up being a pain in the ass.

Re:Agreed!

[parseexception]

A project done in Java will cost 5 times as much, take twice as long, and be harder to maintain than a project done in a scripting language such as PHP or Perl.
not only that if you have to change direction quickly it will roll over and burst into flames

Harvard: The 'SUV' of Higher Education?

[hethatishere]

Just a thought from a friendly MIT student.

Re:Jeep is better than SUV

[pebs]

Take a hike (use assembly language)

Phillip Greenspun

[Hard_Code]

Phillip Greenspun == Hot air balloon of programming pundits

Re:so I guess that would make C# the....

[Epistax]

I think VB would be one of those things you put together with lego.

My language comparison

[Jugalator]

IMHO...

• Visual Basic [kellamknives.com] -- is a comment really necessary?
  
• Java [silveragent.com] -- does what it's supposed to do
  
• C# [promountainsports.com] -- tries to be more advanced than Java, and is, but is rather similar in the end...
  
• C / C++ [freeserve.co.uk] -- now we're getting somewhere... does the job efficiently, but be sure you can handle it
  
• Assembler [churchfarm.org.uk] -- it's cool, it's efficient, it's deadly if handled wrong

PARENT IS REDUNDANT MOD DOWN

[Anonymous Coward]

there already is an anon non karma whore post of the article... mod it up instead of this whore!

Re:JAVA is the suv?

[hplasm]

Ok, then Java isn't an SUV. It's the Econoline/ Transit van of the programming world. Until you get stuck behind it, it's fine...

Ummm???

[ayjay29]

How can "Java == SUV". it does not support operator overloads?

Maybe Java.equals (SUV).

Re:Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

as silly as putting Linux on your toaster...sure you could do it, but it's not the most efficient solution.

That's right. Everyone knows that NetBSD is the toaster OS of choice!

Re:JAVA is the suv?

[revscat]

Plus imho Tomcat is a pain in the ass to configure, and you gotta keep javac'ing, and so on. Just give me a language where I can throw in a little bit of code in the middle of a webpage, in the regular web directory, and be done with it.

Boy, what da HELL you talkin 'bout? Looky heah:

<body>
<p>
<% for (int i = 0; i < 100; i++) { %>
<b>Youz dummer dan a gator on whiskey!</b>
<% } %>
</p>

Now, what so hard 'bout dat? Looks like code t'me! Looks like it's in the middle of a page! Hit it, load it, be done with it. Need t'change a value? Change it, save it, reload it. You all needs t'pull yo cranium outta yo backside, mmmhmm.

"Gotta keep javac'ing." I declare, that's the DUMBEST thing I done heard all day.

No, Thank You!

[CausticPuppy]

For providing examples of invalid syntax in PHP, ASP, and java!

Re:Phillip Greenspun

[kisrael]

Phillip Greenspun == Hot air balloon of programming pundits

Clearly your anagram generation routine is broken. Here's one:
Phillip Greenspun = Gel slipper, hip nun
or
Phillip Greenspun = grep hep ills, unpin!

This guy has no idea what he's talking about.

[Dr. Bent]

JSP is fantastically simpler than "J2EE", which is the recommended-by-Sun way of building applications

JSP is a component of J2EE. [sun.com] Here's a tip: When you have an "epiphany" about the nature of something, it ususally helps to have at least a basic understanding of whatever the hell it is you're talking about.

Nah...

[hding]

For example,

http://www.cliki.net/Database

I personally use Pg most of the time now, but I used to use CommonSQL (that comes with Lispworks), on which UncommonSQL is based. That really makes database access dead easy in Lisp.

No!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Do you happen to teach Comp Sci at MIT?"

No, I work for a living.

Also, I have to live with the results of my technical choice for a decade, unlike some trendy professor from Boston who, in two years, will be promoting some other new technology trend.

That's not a flame, that's just the truth.

instances vs. classes

[shemnon]

Ahh, the good old ==. We are talking about Java, and instance of something, and an SUV, a tpye label assigned to various other isntances. The headling won't compile, you need to say Java == SUV.class but that's not quite right either. So what the headline should say is...

Java instanceof SUV

We'll ignore the bad naming conventions, specifically it should be a lowercase J. Dont forget also that Java instanceof 3GL and Java instanceof OO.

My favorit happens to be Java instanceof ToyLanguage. The difference between men and boys? The size of their toys!

Java is the UBT

[lardbottom]

Urban Battle Tank [jatdesign.net]

Where else can you feel so safe, but completely fuel inefficient? Plus, if you run into someone else's code, you'll be just fine.

Re:Discredited

[poot_rootbeer]

He suggests that Visual Basic is better than Java. I will refrain from comment, the quote speaks for itself.

Rootbeer's Corollary to Godwin's Law:

On Slashdot, the terms "Visual Basic" and "Hitler" shall be interchangeable.

Phil's not a troll

[abe ferlman]

You want to know what I really think happened?

Someone at Harvard wanted to load test their server configuration, so they turned to Phil and said "can you post some flame bait and then get it posted to Slashdot for us?"

So you see he's not a troll, just a resourceful engineer :)

Re:Tcl is good

[blibbleblobble]

"The fact of the matter is, you can't do anything in Java you can't do in C++ or C or assembly language or raw machine language for that matter."

You can write an arbitrarily complex program in any language... you just have to use that language to write a Lisp interpreter first...

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

if ( Java == SUV) CPP = F18_Hornet;

[cabazorro]

Enough Said.

Re:Thank You

[erikdotla]

#!perl
$bread = qq(wheatwheatwheat);
$bread =~ s/(\S{5})/$1 /g;

# :)

Re:Jeep is better than SUV

[Master Controll Prog]

no, you misunderstand asm. and seth is still a not-very-dark name, no matter what you say.

mv drk sth
nop