Only 32% of Java developers really know Java 220
prostoalex writes "Research firm Gartner draws attention to the fact that less than a third of people who put Java on their resume actually know their stuff. The knowledge gap between someone who can successfully write a System.out.println() and someone capable of designing and implementing a complex Java system brings to companies being back-logged with pending projects."
How shocking... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How shocking... (Score:2)
Now, there's a reason of ofcourse, and reading the article explains it quite well: if they accepted any lower percentage (so as to come closer with reality) they'd have to accept that the products advertised in the "article" have awfully low possible market-shares. But then again, the people who ACTUALLY knew their stuff won't need those projects anyw
They all know Java (Score:4, Funny)
Re:They all know Java (Score:2)
Working knowledge of java? Sure. Enterprise java beans? Of course - the company they last worked for probably had nice grinders for those too.
Only 0% of editors proofread their articles. (Score:5, Funny)
We also would have accepted: Only 26% of submitters to Slashdot can create proper sentences.
Re:Only 0% of editors proofread their articles. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Only 0% of editors proofread their articles. (Score:3, Insightful)
And as for the sales pitch, you could almost tell it was coming from the moment they brought up Compuware.
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Also "99% of researchers and statisticians have no idea what they are talking about and don't know what research means"
And... (Score:3, Funny)
Sad but true (in my case, at least) (Score:3, Informative)
Not at all suprised (Score:5, Interesting)
Now things are pointing similarly towards C# and
However, those who really know their stuff normally stick to the older languages... hype is good in some ways, but in the grand scheme of things, it's the older, better stuff that will prevail.
Re:Not at all suprised (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not at all suprised (Score:3, Funny)
Yes, just like MS-DOS has prevailed...
Re:Not at all suprised (Score:2)
Re:Not at all suprised (Score:5, Insightful)
those who really know their stuff
More than buzzword compliant resumes, I've been more interested in people who could show me nice looking code and explain it intelligently to an audience that includes people with varying levels of expertise.
I figure that anyone sharp enough to have picked up one language and set of libraries and used it well can just as well do it again.
That said, I can see the temptation to use stupid HR tactics to try to screen out smokeblowers. Problem is that it's difficult to devise a system that simple, where a non-expert in HR can turn a crank and cull the dolts from the field with perfect accuracy (it's like defending against spam). You're likely to let posers through the gates (false positives) and cull out an occassional gem that looks unpolished (false negative).
There's a good reason people resort to informal social networks for recruiting (that is, asking around if anyone knows anyone that's good and looking for a new position) - it's because the crank turning procedures are so unsatisfying.
Re:Not at all suprised (Score:5, Insightful)
Close but not quite. You're as likely to find that they end up using whatever new language you throw at them as if it were some weird dialect of the only one they know well.
My rule of thumb if I'm looking for someone that needs to be able to pick up a new language is to find someone that knows at least three different ones (and I wouldn't count C++, Java and C# as three -- one and a half, maybe), or two if they're different enough.
My first two computer languages were Algol and APL, I've since been paid to write programs in about a dozen other languages and written toy programs in another ten or so. Heck, except for short term contract jobs, I've often ended up developing software in some language other than the one I was originally hired for.
It's tough being on the hiring end too -- if I've got project deadlines looming and I'm given a foot-high stack of resumes to look through to pick out a few candidates to interview, I'm sorry but my first pass through the stack is to going to be to find any reason at all to not look at a given resume any further, so I can shrink the pile that I actually have to read and think about. I may end up throwing out a gem but as long as there's still one left in the pile I look at, that doesn't matter. (Well, not to me, I know it matters to the one I threw out.)
Yeah, the whole resume/HR/interview process sucks, and it's one of the least efficient ways to find a job (or a good candidate), but alas most tech types are even worse at social networking, at least with the kind of people one needs to to get the job.
Re:Not at all suprised (Score:4, Interesting)
I used to categorize them in groups, something like:
Highly skilled in: C, C++, Java
Experience in: Python, PL/SQL
Some exposure to: Ruby, Coral 66, BF
If I'd just done a couple of classes, it'd be in the "some exposure to" category. Anything less I wouldn't bother mentioning. (Hey, I've done the equivalent of "hello world" in a lot of obscure languages, and (like a lot of programmers) I can read more than I can write code in.)
These days I have enough trouble cramming my resume into just three pages, so I don't bother listing anything I'm not prepared (by both knowledge and inclination) to immediately sit down and start coding in. If there's some other language that might also be relevant to the job, I'll mention it in the cover letter. And there's stuff I leave out -- I've been an APL resident expert, even taught courses in it, but I don't mention it on my resume because (a) I'm very rusty and (b) I have no particular desire to do develop in APL again (and I guess (c), there's no demand for it). Now, if someone were looking to convert an APL application to Java, say, I might be interested.
(And on one job, despite never having claimed any knowledge of COBOL and even actively denying any knowledge of it, the boss stuck me with extending a COBOL application, over my protests, saying "it's easy, you'll pick it up". (Fortunately I managed to put it right back down again after that project
Re:Not at all suprised (Score:3, Funny)
Those were, of course, merely examples. The closest I've come to Brainfsck is reading stuff on the web, and somewhere around I think I have the Coral66 reference.
Then there's the guy I worked with who should have put "Team Lead" on his resume. Pronounced "led", as in sinker or dead weight...
there is technology underneath it all (Score:3, Insightful)
Java did represent an important step for industry beyond C++: it was the first widely accepted language with runtime safety, garbage collection, and reflection. Those aren't just buzzwords, they make a real difference.
On the other hand, Java has failed to keep up: Sun's irrational insistence on insulating programmers from the underlying platform, their intellectual property claims and licensing strategy over Java, and their failure to evolve
Re:Not at all suprised (Score:2)
I just hope I don't have to see a C++ template again in my life.
Re:Not at all suprised (Score:2)
"Java was the popular thing of it's time. If you didn't know it at the apogee of the internet bubble[...]
Let me guess, you are one of those who still think Java is mainly about applets, right? (OK, maybe you are not, but it's such a nice rhetorical opening question ;)) Boy, are you wrong...
Here's a quick google statistic (mostly bogus, of course, as are most statistics) which, I hope, might shake your belief a little:
Re:Not at all suprised (Score:2, Interesting)
"java" - 60 million hits
but
"java -coffee -island" - 9.3 million hits
Still quite a lot, but not as huge as the first search made it out to be.
Re:Not at all suprised (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm unemployeed so I spend A LOT of time looking at job listings.
In Austin, Texas, at least, it is STILL Java's time. Maybe things are different in Iceland.
--Richard
Re:Schools teach it now (Score:2)
I beg to differ. What text processing capabilities do you find missing? A lot of people uses JSP for all kind of web apps without any troubles.
And for inmaturity: Servlet/JSP have a third or four generation spec (2.4/2.0). One could guess the spec is very complete by now.
There are many open source and commercial implementations of Servlets/JSP servers,
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Schools teach it now (Score:2)
Isn't cgi kinda left behind the first generation of web apps? I wouldn't want to do a medium/complex web app with cgi for what I remember of it. CGI was simple though.
>C's PCRE implementation of regular expressions and java's are almost exactly the same.
It is not, because Java has a real String class in the language without the convoluted ways of C that only knows pointers and char arrays.
I still would like to know what text processing you think Java is missing.
>More
Re:Schools teach it now (Score:2)
Well, I'm relieved... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Well, I'm relieved... (Score:2)
is this what they had in mind when they brought out the whole idea of reusable code? or is it a
It's True. (Score:5, Insightful)
For the record I do NOT ask those boring certification style questions that you'd only know the answer to by memorizing the spec. All the questions we ask start with "here's a problem, now solve it with real Java code, please." If I've learned one thing, it's if somebody groans and complains that writing code is so trivial you shouldn't even ask it, then sit there and force them to write code because chances are they can't.
Code-completion interviewer (Score:5, Interesting)
On the other hand, most of us mortals don't store all the details of API's in our heads. Back in the Stone Age we used manuals and in the Information Age we use the SUN Web site. If your interview objective is to see how someone would get the information to solve the problem, that is fine, but if your objective is to see if that person already has some narrow set of information, you are going to exclude some capable people.
I am mainly a Delphi developer (I should say a Delphi component developer), and my Java experience is only 4 months old, and gee, my Java experience is limited to using JNI to allow a Delphi ActiveX component to invoke an extension module written in Java and using a class loader so that extension module can be reloaded while the ActiveX component is still running.
I don't know the answer to your question about Java collection objects without looking it up, although I have enough sense to know that you have to use Object wrappers for value types in collections and then have to cast those objects back to their original types when you pull Object references out of collections -- I know that from "wasting" time reading Slashdot.
I guess I would fail your interview.
Re:Code-completion interviewer (Score:2)
Basically I set up a situation where I want to create a hashmap of numeric counters such that I am going to increment a million times, but only store 100k keys into the table, and ask people to write me the structure to do it. Some just try to stick an int into a Hashmap and do a put(key, get(key)++) which shows a horrible lack of understanding of java objects. The better answer is when they know they have to st
Re:Code-completion interviewer (Score:2)
The hardest thing to do in this business is understand the problem and come up with a solution that is maintainable, easy to code and scalable. If I want to know how to solve a specific algorithm like that, I'll google. Someone, somewhere has already solved it. I should waste my time trying to find the best solution. Instead, I should spend time trying to understand the business.
Re:Code-completion interviewer (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't consider myself a Java developer (I design/build UIs) but I would be pretty dismayed if I saw a self-proclaimed Java developer resort to looking up that "algorithm" on google. Granted, the parent post's wording is a little ambiguous but that shouldn't stop an interviewee from ask
Re:Code-completion interviewer (Score:2)
I meant to say, the requirement for Collections to store objects.
Oops...
And just what does this say to the Interviewee? (Score:2, Insightful)
Basically I set up a situation where I want to create a hashmap of numeric counters such that I am going to increment a million times, but only store 100k keys into the table, and ask people to write me the structure to do it.
I have [or have had] a fairly extensive knowledge of the J2EE Collections Framework, and I don't have a clue what that "sentence" is supposed to say. In fact, screw the "sentence"; let's concentrate on the clause create a hashmap of numeric counters such that I am going to increment
Re:Code-completion interviewer (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It's True. (Score:5, Insightful)
The real skill is recognizing and choosing the best ways to solve problems with a computer in a given paradigm (OO, Functional, etc). Languages are easy to pick up, and almost all programmers (except maybe C) have a manual on their desk.
Memorizing the nitpicky details or anything more than basic syntax is worthless. I'm sure Dr. Knuth would fail your little test. He wouldn't bother memorizing stuff that is easy to look up.
I managed to get a job doing BASIC programming with little knowledge of BASIC. I knew C, C++, PASCAL, Perl, Python, and sh. It took me maybe 2-3 days to become comfortable with BASIC. Now I'm one of the best programmers they've ever had, and I'm cleaning up a lot of their old crap code written by people who sure knew BASIC, but couldn't design a readable program to save their own lives. I'm talking GOTOs every other line.
Every good programmer with a background in OO languages worth hiring would be able to pick up Java in a very short time. You're probably weeding out a lot of real talent.
Now go back to pretending you're a real programmer and getting your jollies mocking people who can't write a bunch of Java code off the tops of their heads without a manual to look at, yet dare to apply for a developer postition!
Re:It's True. (Score:5, Insightful)
If I'm appling for a C++ development job and I put C++ on my resume, isn't it fair to ask me to, say, write a simple class definition without looking up the syntax? If I can't do it, then I must not have programmed in the language much at all, and I have no business putting C++ on my resume. In theory, the resume's supposed to be for languages you know, not languages that you could learn.
Re:It's True. (Score:2)
Re:It's True. (Score:4, Interesting)
My rationale is that a software developer who has excellent problem solving skills can transfer their skills to any language. However, someone who knows the syntax and tricks of a language cold may or may not be a good problem solver.
The only exception to this is that if I want someone with OO skills, I will ask language-agnostic questions about OO design and development concepts (ex: define polymorphism, state why it is useful, and give an example of how it can be used).
Also, a question that "tricks people into trying to store a primitive in a collections object", doesn't seem like a very useful question. First, you are testing for knowledge of a Java syntactic quirk. Secondly, even if a person didn't know about this quirk right off the bat, any developer worth their salt certainly would figure it out the first time they tried to compile the progam.
In fairness, I do like the question about determining if a bit is set, although I wouldn't hold it against the person if they didn't have the Java bit operators memorized. As long as they understood the CONCEPT of bit manipulation, I'd be happy.
Re:It's True. (Score:2)
Re:It's True. (Score:2)
They haven't written a program recently for fun? Better give a very good reason then, if they want a programming job. They have but can't describe it or say anything interesting about it? Yeah right... Hello world = fun for them? Woohoo.
Why hire a person who's going to start work already having little joy wit
Re:It's True. (Score:2)
Of course most people fail. Do you really think an interview-style situation is one where people can regurgitate Java 101 answers to questions?
When I hear things like this it makes me really glad I have a job. I remember one interview I went on where I was given a set of five questions to answer. I answered 3 out of 5 questions "correctly". I missed two of the questions because the interviewer had the wrong answer. It was funny when she said, "that's OK everyone I've interviewed has missed that question".
Re:It's True. (Score:3, Informative)
I'm personally more worried about people who claim to know Java, but think that it is a good idea to keep pools of objects and reuse them. Aside from all of the programming hassles this creates f
Re:It's True. (Score:2)
Of course I have. And every now and then a candidate references this as well -- but rarely. If they don't, I ask. If they do, we discuss whether this makes the language any more efficient or if it is just syntactic sugar to make the programmer's life easier.
My original point was to give an example of a pretty simple problem -- really only one step removed from "How do you tell if a number is even or odd" or "How can
It's worse than this (Score:3, Interesting)
If you require knowledge of complex topics like sensible J2EE architecture or multi-threading it falls into the single digits.
The second half of the article recommends Model Driven Architecture for the masses as the solution. This amounts to putting complex tools into the hands of idiots. Tools that go out of their way to keep people ignorant, while simultaneously giving them the power to commit their sins on a grand scale. Brilliant.
dhk
Only 2% of English speakers know English. (Score:3, Funny)
"Only 32% of Java developers really know Java."
An old Digital Equipment Company manual for technical writers said that only a small percentage of people really know English. And here is an example of not knowing English, in the Slashdot story:
"The knowledge gap between someone who can successfully write a System.out.println() and someone capable of designing and implementing a complex Java system brings to companies being back-logged with pending projects."
32% are any good? (Score:5, Informative)
Knowing Java is very different from knowing programming. If you can't do a complex project in Java you can't do a complex project in any language. If you can do it in any language, you can do it in Java. The first step might be learning Java, but any good programmer can handle that in a short time. Now granted I'd want someone who knows all the tricks on the team so I don't re-implement the wheel, but a complex project by definition requires many people so that isn't an issue.
HR is far too hung up on what you have already done, not realizing that the data structures and algorithms are what counts, and they are the same in any language.
Re:32% are any good? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have seen too many "old school" developers who havn't the foggiest idea about OO who think they can code in Java because they know the syntax.
All languages are not equal.
Re:32% are any good? (Score:2)
oh and I'm 26 and have only be coding professionally for 5 years. So much for your "old school" idea.... people will always be better at what they are used to working with. Gante
Re:32% are any good? (Score:5, Informative)
Um, if you're a C coder, then you are not doing functional programming, you are doing procedural programming. Functional programming means languages like Lisp, ML, and Haskell.
functional (Score:2)
Re:32% are any good? (Score:2)
Re:32% are any good? (Score:2)
So back to C. In jave every "value" is a object(or a primitive). What are values in C? Primitives or addresses(pointers).
In C a function can not be a value, except that you can take the address of a C-function and pass that address around.
In a functional language values are functions, in a object oriented language values are objects and in pr
Re:32% are any good? (Score:2)
I guess what you meant was that these "old school" developers don't take full advantage of OO capabilities. If they know Java syntax, I think that pretty much means they can code in Java. Since any Java program that produces an output uses objects, they must be doing OO programming as well.
Re:32% are any good? (Score:2)
i think the problem is that it's very hard to tell from someone's resume and an hour or so of interview whether they actually know their stuff, much less whether they can learn new stuff. so most people just rely on job experience to determine whether people can actually be productive using a given tool or language.
i ran into this problem wh
Re:32% are any good? (Score:2)
One of the problems with OO programming is you can't always anticipate how an object might be used :) An interface you implement might be perfectly acceptable for your purposes, but there could be another interface which provides the same functionality for your software, and more functionality for another purpose of which you are not aware.
Re:32% are any good? (Score:2)
Hmmm, let's think over something here. I want to do a simple project: A time sychronization client. Well, I connect to a trusted time source, and I set the system clock to that.
Can't do that in Java, because there is no API to set the system date. Pretty stupid, if you want my feeling.
Re:32% are any good? (Score:2)
And the coding style is even worse (Score:3, Insightful)
He has moved on to writing web application in RPG for another department, where every new group of pages gets deployed on a new port...they seem lost on the whole url concept
Knowing Java is like knowing English (or any language.) Just because you know the language does not mean you are any good at writing poetry.
This article is just an advertisement... (Score:5, Insightful)
where "MDA" is Compuware's acronym for "buy our software and generate all your code". And since "highly skilled developers recognise the value", anyone who doesn't "recognise the value" and buy their product is an unskilled dolt.
Resume (Score:4, Insightful)
What do you have to know to put a computer language on your resume? Let's say that I put "Java" on my list. Am I expected to, say, know all of the built-in functions for a vector, or string, during my interview? If I put Python down on my resume, am I expected to know the names of built-in function overloaders for classes or the functions and parameters for the re module?
Basically what I'm asking is, if I put a computer language down on my resume, should I be expected to code something at an interview immediately without looking at any references? This doesn't seem unreasonable, if the program were simple, but I could imagine employers asking for more complex things. How complex is too complex and how much specific information should a computer programmer retain about a certain language, say, after not using it for 3 years (he was doing VBScript just until he could pay off his debt, I swear)?
I think it's more important to know "how to program" rather than "how to program in X" because the skills you learn in one language are usually easily transferrable to another, as long as you have lots of experience in different kinds of languages: functional, procedural, OO, assembly language, etc.
As a side-note, it looks in the article like by saying that 68% of employees don't understand Java, he really means that 68% of employees have never heard of MDA and have no idea what the hell it is, or don't quickly "recognise the value of MDA," since, of course, all highly-skilled Java programmers do.
--Stephen
Re:Resume (Score:4, Interesting)
So I have a big problem with syntax. That's why I like Scheme and hate C++. To me, syntax seems like a silly arbitrary distraction. I wish more languages took the Smalltalk approach to function arguments, too.
I'd have no problem with questions about architecture, abstraction, the development process and design trade-offs though.
Re:Resume (Score:2)
Re:Resume (Score:2)
Like many issues, knowledge is not black and white. To clarify the claims on your resume, you should qualify them. For instance, on my resume I would claim:
Programming Language Skills: Java (Guru), C++ (Expert), C (Expert), Perl (Novice), Python (Novice), Visual Basic (Novice), C# (Novice)
This provides an opportunity for the interviewer to read my claims of knowledge along a scale of how confident I am. If my terminology is not clear
Whooha! Gartner is right this time! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not just Java developers, in the booming years a lot of people were hired by IT consulting firms here (NL) that shouldn't be near any computer at all. I've seen system engineers who studied politicology and got an MCSE who don't know the most basic thing about Windows and are not able to solve any problem at all. I've met tens of 'project managers' who don't know anything about IT and even less about software development and are too stubborn to listen to people who do know their shit.
The worst of all are VB 'programmers' who are just able to point and click a basic application, but don't have any feeling for what a programmer should be able to do.
The worst is title inflation. Every donkey is a 'software engineer' these days, and if you are able to actually design a piece of software you should call yourself 'architect', otherwise people won't take you seriously.
Because 'programmers' are seen as monkeys that type and are doing a trick that every other monkey can do.
Re:Whooha! Gartner is right this time! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Whooha! Gartner is right this time! (Score:2, Interesting)
The VB thing is absolutely right. And I was *lucky* enough to have this type of guy as my project manager. He first started the project with Delphi (which rules, as everybody know), and when I was hired there, I started talking about refactoring the whole thing after 3 months (Trust me, the project really needed (and still needs, since that refactoring has never been done ) it.), and this guy said: "I think we should rewrite the whole thing in VB".
I then knew that I needed to work under another project
Imagine the statistics for C++ (Score:3, Insightful)
Which is why standard C++ should be avoided (Score:2)
A better middle ground perhaps is like what the Mozilla folks have done - adopt C++ but make it understood that only a subset would be used.
As for the anything-goes C++ approach...I advocate this strongly, for my competitors.
Re:Imagine the statistics for C++ (Score:4, Insightful)
I have been programming with C++ for 6 years now and I am competent with it and very productive. I would say 5 years is an overshoot if you're trying to gauge competence.
I'm not sure what your definition of "knowing the language" is. If someone asked me to rate my C++ skills from 1 to 10, I would give myself a 4 or a 5. Anyone that rates themselves a 7 or higher is either named Sutter, Alexandrescu, Glassborow, or Stroustroup. Or is either grossly unfamiliar with the scope of C++ or flat out lying.
Their were people that thought they new the language cold until Alexandrescu wrote Modern C++ Design and turned the C++ on end.
I'm still trying to add policy-based design, template metaprogramming, and generics for more than just containers to my C++ arsenal.
Give me 6 more years and I'll "know the language cold" until someone else writes a book on how to exploit a language feature of C++ in an absolutely different way.
However, that is not a bad thing because C++ does not punish you for features that you don't know.
Memorization vs Knowledge (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a few main types of programming styles: Object Oriented (Java), Functionally Oriented (C), Procedurally Oriented (LISP), and hybrids (C++, Perl). Once you learn how to think in the way required by each of these styles, all that's left is memorizing syntax and commands. And that's what man pages are for.
Re:Memorization vs Knowledge (Score:2)
It's like this... (Score:3, Insightful)
32% Sounds Too High To Me (Score:2)
From my experiences with the resume and hiring process I would put the number at more like 2%.
And that applies not to just Java, but ANY programming language or computer skill. After all, how many people who put HTML on their resume can actually code clean standards compliant HTML 4.01? How many know when CSS layout is appropriate, and when it is not, and can successfully blend table and CSS layout in an optimal fashion?
Re:32% Sounds Too High To Me (Score:2)
Tables and CSS are orthogonal devices for laying out content anyways, a given project can use either extensively or not-at-all, and the use of one doesn't inhibit the use of the other.
Is it any worse... (Score:3, Insightful)
But it is mind-boggling what people can get away with on their resumes. Knew a guy who claimed to have graduate degrees from schools whose names he couldn't spell. You'd think employers would spot that, but no -- he actually held a couple of director-level jobs at the height of the bubble.
I really should get a little more creative with my resume [picknit.com]. People who see it always ask why I don't mention where I got my 4-year degree. Answer: I don't have one. Which is a pain -- some companies won't even talk to me because of it. I could fudge up a degree from Whatsamatter U (double major, computer engineering and journalism). I'm sure nobody'd check. But I'm too much of a coward to pull off that kind of fib!
Oops. Just had a thought. I know Java. My credentials are impeccable: I wrote the JDK release notes for almost a year, and I once played a video game with James Gosling! But I've never worked as a Java programmer, being absolutely the worst coder on the planet. But if the shortage of Java programmers is that bad, maybe that's not such a problem!
Re:Is it any worse... (Score:2)
System.out.print("H");
System.out.print("e");
S
System.out.print("l");
Sys
System.out.print(" ");
System.out.print("w");
System.out.print("o"
System.out.print("r");
System.out.print("l");
System.out.print("d");
System.out.print("!");
?
Re:Is it any worse... (Score:2)
"know Java" vs "programming java" is still legit (Score:2, Interesting)
I know what Java is, I know how to use the Java commandline to turn on Debugging, manage memory usage, turn off GC, etc. I know more about idiosyncracies in Java VM versions on 6 different platforms then most programmers.
I never said I knew how to program Java.
Was this an article... (Score:4, Insightful)
This has resulted in a tremendous backlog of projects," says Aad Van Schetsen, Compuware sales director for application development and integration solutions in the Europe, Middle East, Africa region.
Ben van Niekerk, Compuware SA product manager, says locally the backlog is mainly in projects to integrate new applications into Java legacy code.
Van Schetsen says the key to the success of tools such as Compuware's OptimalJ is their use of a model-driven architecture
Tools like OptimalJ ensure best practices and standards as well as enable companies to leverage the core capabilities of their developers by allowing them to focus on applications and not the underlying technologies.
"Although we are still in the education phase, particularly with less experienced Java developers and development companies, momentum is gradually growing with OptimalJ sales increasing threefold in the past financial year."
Re:Was this an article... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Was this an article... (Score:2)
Uhhh... Thanks for all the free advertising, azuroff.
(ducks)
I dont get Java like too many techies (Score:2)
I played with QBASIC for many years, made many little pascal apps, did quite a bit of Visual Basic, but was always a little allergic to C++. There were too many things I couldnt even conceptualize. C is so clean and easy, you can make tiny C programs, then read the assembly language and you understand eve
Re:I dont get Java like too many techies (Score:2, Insightful)
I blame schools (Score:2)
Right now I'm attending a large university (formerly an "institute of technology") for a degree in Computer Information Systems, the main programming language they teach is Java (we also have to take classes on VB, PHP and COBOL, no C or C++ though)
I like to think that I have a pretty solid understanding of programming (I had 5 years experience with C++ before I started school), but I had never used Java before, I am probably about average in it
This is nothing new... (Score:5, Funny)
'Knowing' Java (Score:2, Interesting)
Why just JAVA? (Score:3, Insightful)
#) Building complex systems requires experience(on large projects and exp in a particular domain),no matter which language you are using....
#) One good way to identify someone's love for a langauge or platform is to check for his participation and contribution to FLOSS. that loves ensures his personal interest and can be a pointer to the fact S/he is inquizitive and likes exploring more (not just learning the basic sytax required to do the job).
This is an advertorial (Score:3, Informative)
Death of Java (Score:3, Interesting)
provide a development platform by which developers could do applications applications that would run either on the client or the server. The big problem is that Java never really delivered on the client end. Applets run, but they are so poorly engineered, in the words of Marc Andreeson "client side java is dead'--and Javascript has take much of the role it was anticipated that Java would take on the client.
I previous poster made legitimate points that Java brought garbage collection, reflection and runtime safety into the popular eye. However, there are other widely used, well-standardized languages with those same features, namely Javascript [technicalpursuit.com].
C# may be better in key respects than Java, but I have trouble conceiving of C# as a really open standard. The ECMA standard for Javascript is already supported by a variety of companies(i.e. IBM, Lotus, Microsoft, AOL/Time/Warner/Netscape) in a variety of products.
The folks at have shown that they can extend Javascript quite a bit-even in browser implementations.For all of the talk of C#, one thing that is interesting about
I'm a DBA and Perl/Python programmer. I've used Java for class projects at CMU. Java and C# both strike me as overly complicate for most of the work I do on a day by day basis. Javscript isn't there yet-but I can see that it might get there. There is a real niche for a well standardized, universally available scripting language that just hasn't been filled yet. If a small fraction of the engineering effort applied to Java were applied in this direction, I'd expect big benefits.
Re:Why do people keep making excuses for Java? (Score:3, Interesting)
It doesn't work well for an applet in a browser, and it doesn't work well for stand alone apps.
Yes, and those are not the areas where Java has been very successful. However there are others, like server programming where Java is clearly the best choce.
I think most Java programmers are like me, they played with it enough to find out it's not worth the trouble.
I hope so. That will make it easier for those of us who actually understand Java and where it is appropriate to charge high hourly consulting ra
Re:Compuware (Score:3)
Troll? You must be joking... (Score:4, Insightful)
Most Java programmers end up as class monkeys, taking very specific directions from a select few who determined the entire arcitecture of the system. This is not programming as an art. This is monkey work. Put them in a position where they need to use Java (or any language) to solve a real problem and they will fail.
Java has had the misfortune of a gigantic hype machine pushing it. Because it could not live up to the hype in some areas a lot of people have dismissed it. This is probably less Java's fault and more the fault of those who consider it "dead." For they should look at the language and realize where it's strengths are.
Java in the browser - DOA. It sucked. Still sucks. And nobody uses it anymore (or nobody SHOULD...)
Java as an App - So it turns out that the whole "corss-platform" thing was a joke. Multiple JVMs across multiple OSes made for far too many variables. Write-once, run-anywhere it most certainly is not. And these days you have multiple GUI implementations and their VM/OS-specific quirks.
Java on the Server - Ok, this has a future. Cross platform doesn't matter. Speed isn't an issue nearly as much. And there are a slew of components already available (J2EE) that do the hard part for you.
Re:Because OO design is a fricken MESS (Score:2)
But the real problem with OO is that most people owerdo it, but I think it all come back to the fact that 2/3 don't really know how to code and design software, and no amount of language/tool support can solve that problem.
And just to be a bit offtopic:
Say I have a relational databaes, and an application used to access data in the database. The application is a "desktop"
Re:Because OO design is a fricken MESS (Score:2)
I've been wondering what you might think of n-tier EJB / EDOC style systems. Those styles of systems are actually procedural designs (sad but true). They are task and table oriented, they just happen to be implemented in an OO language.
Well-designed OO code does not degenerate into spaghetti, any more than well-designed procedural code does. So much depends on the quality of the people creating the code that we often forget that the tools they use are less relevant than the skills they leverage.
Re:Because OO design is a fricken MESS (Score:3, Informative)
You're correct, of course. The principles should be simple. They should be fairly compact, and like all principles, they should come from the well of experience. The principles for good OO design are fairly simple:
Don't Repeat Yourself: knowledge should be represented only once in the system.
Tell, don't ask.
Classify objects in your systems by the messages they respond to, and the responsibilities they hold.
An object should only call features of: a: an object passed into it as an argument, b: an obje
Re:Because OO design is a fricken MESS (Score:2)
DRY is indeed not specific to OO. Design by responsibility and collaboration, on the other hand, tends to be.
Many-to-many relationships between classes (verb-to-noun) are often handled the same way you handle many-to-may relationships in a relational database; with an intermediate entity (class) that serves as a go between.
Good point about Prevayler and navigational / network DBs, but as for sharing data, or preferably services, with other applications, messaging protocols can accomplish this.
It might n
Re:Because OO design is a fricken MESS (Score:2)
I suspect you'd like C# then. It has C/Java-like syntax, a strong OO paradigm with escape hatches for direct memory manipluation (among other things). If you don't like Microsoft, that's OK too, as the Mono project [go-mono.com] has made some serious progress in producing an open source C# / .Net platform.