Java Is So 90s 923
An anonymous reader writes "Some of you may recall last year's Java vs. LAMP Slashdot
flamewar. The fight has now "brewed" (couldn't resist) into the mainstream press at
BusinessWeek." From the article: "Yared says developers far and wide are creating a new generation of Internet-based applications with LAMP and related technologies rather than with Java. Can it possibly be that Java -- once the hippest of hip software -- has become a legacy technology, as old and out of style as IBM's (IBM) mainframe computers and SAP's corporate applications? Mounting evidence points to yes. Reports by Evans Data Corp., which does annual surveys of the activities of software developers, show Java use is slipping as LAMP and Microsoft's .NET technology gain traction."
Don't Flame Me Because I'm Beautiful ... (Score:5, Insightful)
And now begins the second flame war started by said article.
Gentlemen and nerds, prepare your flamethrowers and ectopacks [tripod.com] (respectively)...
Begin!
When will I see a constructive article comparing and contrasting the two and inviting a civil conversation and an acknowledgement that there are fans on both sides?
Come on, it's not like this is a religious argument or (possibly worse) a Star Wars vrs. Star Trek argument.
And when they say "LAMP" (Score:3, Insightful)
And when they say middleware, they mean Ruby [blogs.com]!
PHP vs. Java (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod submitter -1, Troll (Score:1, Insightful)
Now search for PHP
Then Perl
Then Python.
Now take out about 70% of the Perl and 40% of the Python jobs, as it is most likely to be used as part of admin scripting, not web applications.
Last time I checked,
What I have noticed about the Java world, though, is that most companies are shying away from Websphere, Weblogic and other expensive application servers and switching to Tomcat and JBoss. Most APIs in use are the freely available ones (Struts, JSF, Facelets, Spring, Hibernate, etc...). So companies are finding its easier to go a cheap route with Java than to try and move to the LAMP way of doing things.
It is to laugh (Score:5, Insightful)
Java is still in incredibly heavy use in larger-scale systems and internal applications. It doesn't need to be "hip", "trendy", or "LAMP". It just needs to do a job, do it well, and be maintainable. It does that (and more), has still proven fairly easy to scale from small projects to very large, and is still a decent (though not terrific) language.
It also plays well with many other solutions, by virtue of numerous scripting languages which target Java bytecodes, as well as native code integration if you simply cannot get by without some piece of C code (although, there goes easy portability - one of the major benefits).
These articles are just a joke. That they would even use the term "hip" shows that this is far from a serious study.
.NET?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't
I mean really, not long after MS dropped Java, C# "popped up"
It's clear that C# is only a repackaging of Java, why should its fate be any different?
What makes
Interpreted Versus Compiled (Score:2, Insightful)
The big issue here is speed of development and ease of use. Java is a bitch to learn, it requires a compiler, and it has a syntax that's byzantine as hell. Compare that to an interpreted language like Python or Ruby that has a very spare syntax, is interpreted, and are quite easy to learn.
That isn't to say that Java doesn't have its place, just as an IBM mainframe has its place, but the vast majority of tasks don't require a mainframe. For doing something like simple text process, Java's syntax just gets in the way - why build a massive application in Java when you can bang out a much simpler and easier system in Perl, Python, PHP, or Ruby?
Look at Ruby on Rails [rubyonrails.com] - the idea that you can create a simple but powerful framework that does an excellent job of getting out of your way is nothing short of revolutionary. Struts provides many of the same benefits, but has nowhere near the elegance of Ruby and nowhere near the simplicity.
It's all about the KISS principle, and syntactically and practically Java is just too complex - it's like trying to dust a room with a jackhammer.
J2EE != Java (Score:3, Insightful)
J2EE is dying, long live Java
Re:Java programmers are more expensive (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The real 90s versus outdated 00s software (Score:5, Insightful)
How can you call it an "outdated" language? what is an outdated language? Ada is an outdated language, BASIC may be another.
I like Java (as a language) a lot, I have used it for enterprise level applications (supply chain management software) and currently I am using it to make market based simulations.
The wrong thing about Java is the Virtual machine implementation. You can blame Sun for that. If Java is slow, grabs lots of memory and all that it is because of the virtual machine, not because of the language. A language is just a BNF diagram specification which describes the syntax of the program, and all of its reserved words.
What Java needs is a better (less memory and faster) implementation of the libraries it has and the virtual machine to run the programs. As an example, almost everyone who has used C# or any other
Re:UNIX (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a tip. Programming languages and platforms aren't sexy. They are tools. Use .NET if that's the tool that best fits what you need to do, or what your employer requires. Or use Java. Or use COBOL, if that's what fits. Under no circumstances should one use the above standard, which is about on the same level as some twelve year old girl deciding whose pictures are going to adorn her wall.
Re:PHP vs. Java (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The real 90s versus outdated 00s software (Score:3, Insightful)
Eric
Invisible Fence Guide [ericgiguere.com]
Brewed? (Score:2, Insightful)
The author means "percolated," right? "Brewed into the mainstream press" makes absolutely no sense.
Re:Java programmers are more expensive (Score:1, Insightful)
Java / ActiveMQ and more (Score:1, Insightful)
That said, when I was looking around for a nice messaging product, a bunch of java products popped up, but nothing on the LAMP stack looked that good. I'm thinking of things like ActiveMQ here. Or workflow applications
Ironically, for some things Java is also now very performant, while new hot things like Ruby on Rails still suffer a bit. How times have changed, and inevitably Ruby on Rails will get is act (and garbage collector) together performance wise as well.
I'm just curious to see where C# and
Perl and Python are older than Java (Score:3, Insightful)
Perl was always a programmers tool, and never had the mainstream hype that surrounded Java from the start, so I kind understand why a journalist could get it mixed up.
Re:UNIX (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, that was the most disjointed thing I have posted yet! I was about to delete it, but it is so confusing, I just can't. Enjoy.
Mainframes Old and Out of Style??? (Score:4, Insightful)
My clients are very large financial instituions and I don't know one of them who is reducing mainframe capacity. In fact, almost all of them are increasing capacity.
Most managers find it troubling that their mainframe-centric data centers continue to be well managed, predictable facilities while their Open Systems (UNIX, Wintel, Linux) data centers are a mess. Horribly erratic power and space consumption and many other woes that make management and planning a nightmare. Blade servers have not solved these problems - in fact, they have intensified them (powering and cooling 1000+ W/sq' is much more difficult than 50-100 W/sq').
While style is subjective, age is not. There's nothing old about the new systems IBM recently announced. Also, if being in style leads to huge cost overruns or getting fired, many of might choose to be a little less stylish.
Re:Mod submitter -1, Troll (Score:3, Insightful)
Java: Where Components come from (Score:2, Insightful)
That said: I envy the Java guys their component research.
If you want to do anything really cool with components, you pretty much have to use Java. It's not because it's a better language. (It's not.) It's not because it's elegant. (It's not.) It's just because Java is where the people are. That's where just about all the component people are.
Java is hideous, Java is complicated, Java is large, Java is unwieldly, and there's nothing more unpleasant than waiting for a Java app to load. Than waiting for Eclipse to load. (shudder.) But you can't beat their components research.
Just about every single component project I know of, is just copying technique from the Java people. And usually far behind.
(off-mic:) Isn't Perl a fable, these days?
How to have a disaster of a project (Score:3, Insightful)
(Digression: "hip"? Who says "hip" any more? It's so 1960s...)
Re:The real 90s versus outdated 00s software (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Interpreted Versus Compiled (Score:3, Insightful)
Requiring a complier can be a feature in applications that are anything but simple. If you have a syntax error in an interpreted language, and that syntax error is in a branch that does not get executed frequently, you won't know about that error until later, much later, probably early on a Sunday morning. On the other hand, a compiled language will flag the error at compile time.
Interpreted languages are good for quick development, less complicated projects where run-time errors don't cost lots of dollars.
Re:The real 90s versus outdated 00s software (Score:3, Insightful)
> > bad programmers do!
>
> Nonsense. Languages can be specifcally designed to
> encourage and assist programmers in achieving
> different outcomes. PHP - being poorly designed -
> encourages poor practices and certainly does not
> enforce or even encourage secure code. Hence why
> it is an absolute disaster in practice.
I don't think it's really fair to claim that a language which is designed for those who are more familar with strings.h to be the cause of faulty, or buggy pages. The fault is that of the programmers for not doing their home work.
That said, there are some improvements in later versions. This whole article is comparing one type of programming language with a totally different type and thus partly an unfair question as it will slant towards the more popular language paradigm rather than discussing the merits of either.
Re:The real 90s versus outdated 00s software (Score:4, Insightful)
Ahem...
It should be truly wonderful, as-long-as-all-your-customers-use-the-same-version -of-the-VM-on-the-same-OS-unless-you-are-insane-en ough-to-figure-out-how-a-lot-of-different-virtual- machines-crap-out-on-your-code cross-platform
I like Java, but it's only cross platform in theory. You have to have good architecture to make it behave properly cross platform. Sure, it's easier than doing cross-platform in C/C++, but the customer doesn't care that its the VM's fault.
Java not flexible?! (Score:3, Insightful)
Swing components are plenty flexible. It's not hard to add checkboxes to trees, have spanning columns in tables etc...
Where do you feel java lacks flexibility?
The only thing i feel is that it's not ideal for quick and dirty tasks. I write little perl scripts all the time to accomplish one of tasks that would take 5x the time in java. But for real software development that's more or less a non-issue.
Finding its place (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mod submitter -1, Troll (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Having Microsoft release more software that supports their platform doesn't make the platform's industry support any better intrinsicly. So unless you can say companys x, y, and z are all moving strongly behind
2. Just because I disagree with your argument, I do agree that Microsoft based
I think the 'more' interesting finding is that Microsoft has been unable to seriously penetrate these Java / Web markets as much as they'd have liked. All they've done is create a third fraction of the modern development market. Most coders these days fall into three buckets: Java developer, Web developer,
Re:The real 90s versus outdated 00s software (Score:4, Insightful)
love:
object serialization
sockets
everything is an object
i/o
syntax
ability to pass objects and arrays as data types
consistency
threading
hate:
verbosity!!!
dogmatic approach -> there is one way to do anything
swing
overall, i'd say for alot of things, java is powerful enough and useful enough to do most programming projects. without starting a linux flamewar, i see java like linux on the desktop in some ways. it does 98% of what 98% of people need. however, there is no substitute for the remaining 2%. java's security model is limiting as is it's speed. i teach economics as well, and like in econ, there is a trade-off to everything. java trades speed and security for portability and simplicity.
it tried to be everything to everyone. reminds me of the old SNL bit about a desert topping and a floor wax.
however, as c/c++ brings enormous problems and difficulty which java solves, python has OO design and clarity and speed of development like java, yet is far more extendable. (think UI's)
had python the corporate backing of java it'd be more prevalent, which I'd like to see that happen in the near future, especially with the AP test. but, any language still boils down to the best tool for the job. and for many things, java is really good.
I guess it depends on where you came from (Score:5, Insightful)
C/C++ never took the rap for billions upon billions of dollars in lost productivity because of all the bizarre failure modes of memory allocation failures (hey, there's garbage on the screen... or, hey... it's Tuesday, the full moon is out and the app segfaulted again... coincidence?) or having some clever sixteen year old shove 80k up your 256 byte buffer. You can't tell me wrestling with the garbage collector isn't an improvement on this, because it's ridiculous.
Java of course is within spitting distance of C++ already in one or two benchmarks, but in reality nobody cared either way because you got things in trade that made it a good deal even when it was still quite slow. Not sure what "consistency of the output code" means, but...
You got it right about LAMP. The problems were often that the higher level systems (well, PHP anyway) were great for making websites, but didn't enforce enough rules to be a good idea for projects above a certain size. Still and all, a great many companies in the 90's said "OK, we need 8-way oracle boxes with hot swap CPUs and a 50 disk RAID and Oracle and Weblogic, and... now, what are we going to build exactly?" Most of these places could and should have just used PHP on a few pentiums and saved themselves time and money and headaches. On the other hand, I saw plenty of places coast on a slick of Perl and human blood well past the point where they needed real "enterprise" (hate that word) software development.
It seems like Java was only ever a victim of its own success. No one ever wrote a shitty applet or misused the VM in some way, where the whole language didn't get blamed as a result. Basically, it's another tool in the toolbox, and though it drives C/C++ guys to conniptions, it's the right choice to replace many applications programming tasks right now. Not that I wouldn't throw a party to meet its succeesor.
Unlike many big languages past, Java is probably never going away. No one seems to have realized it yet, but as the VM-first-mover it's the ultimate langauge standard. I bet you people will be porting the Java VM long after we're dead.
Re:It is to laugh (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I would, and I did. What other language is going to give you the ability to write one hunk of code that will act as a client and/or a server from Linux/Aix/Solaris/HPux/Windows/Mac/etc?
For us, the best tool for the job was Java. Period. End of subject.
But that's what it's all about... determining the best tool for the job, and dealing with the inherent trade-offs.
To say that one language is better than another, without context, is meaningless.
Java use slipping? You have to be joking (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=12778 [osnews.com]
Java is a popular and versatile language. Software development involves far more than the very restricted aspects covered by LAMP.
programming by popularity contest? (Score:2, Insightful)
have one language under their belt, so everything is solved using it,
even when it shouldn't be. Just my 2 cents
Re:The real 90s versus outdated 00s software (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't prove that incompatibility doesn't happen, but does demonstate that cross-platform is entirely possible.
Re:.NET?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually Jython [jython.org] runs very nicely on JVM. I know there is JRuby in the works, plus several others.
On the other hand, Java runs on Unix and Windows. Is there a working version of .NET for Solaris?
Re:.NET?!? (Score:3, Insightful)
The vast majority of Java app server usage is comprised of exactly two productions: WebSphere and WebLogic.
WebSphere and WebLogic both large companies ready to support you if you run into issues. (Although I think HP is starting to offer support for JBoss, which could help it increase its market share.)
For most mission critical deployments, WebSphere and WebLogic are the only choice for many companies just for that reason. The market share shows it.
LAMP? Why not LAMJ (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:PHP vs. Java (Score:3, Insightful)
I have a certain fondness for PHP as it's the first web based scripting language I used - but I think you will find that creating a large, complex, and scalable application with a web front end will be much easier, and more robust if done so in Java (them fighting words I know!).
This isn't to say writing web apps in Java is easy. Writing entity beans, and even session beans can be a headache and Java can be made unmaintainable if not careful. i.e. session beans _can_ be made very unmaintainable (if used inapropriatly).
This isn't to say LAMP, in particular PHP doesn't have it's place. I think it is a much better solution for small to medium sized shop front type websites for example. i.e. assign right tool to the problem, they both have there use.
One, a manager likes the word "enterprise"
If management are calling shots, and telling you what architecture to use then may I kindly suggest you look elsewhere for a job! Seriously tho, management should not need to micro manage like that, it is one thing that gets on my nerves! Leave it for the techies! :-)
Re:The real 90s versus outdated 00s software (Score:3, Insightful)
Other than that, in a bubble of pre-JIT'd code with only a single data point, Java Rules.
Re:The real 90s versus outdated 00s software (Score:5, Insightful)
No.
There is no JIT startup lag in modern VMs - the JIT is not called at startup - it is a background thread.
There is no bloated memory footprint. Java applications (as in J2ME) can run in only a few hundred kilobytes. The simplest standard Java apps can run in only a few MB, which on machines with 256MB or greater is totally insignificant. Server-side apps can securely share the same VM, so can take up even less memory.
There are no performance losses when the garbage collector kicks in on modern VMs, as the garbage collection can run in the background. As proof of this, Java can now be used for real-time applications (such as in aeronautics) where any garbage-collection delay would be disastrous.
Other than that, you are correct.
Re:Interpreted Versus Compiled (Score:2, Insightful)
"The big issue here is speed of development and ease of use. Java is a bitch to learn, it requires a compiler, and it has a syntax that's byzantine as hell"
What are you on about? Java is a bitch to learn - even the most fanatical Java hater would admit it is easy to learn. The documentation is absolutely brilliant.
"It requires a compiler" - so what. What has this got to do with anything? Seriously? I have no idea what you mean by this - the Java compiler is easy to use and quick. Even if you get into the most complex builds in java with RMI (which no longer requires special compilation now anyway since 1.5) it is still easy. You also never do it by hand anyway as ant/eclipse exist.
"For doing something like simple text process, Java's syntax just gets in the way" By this if you mean doing some scripting - then yes - use perl. Why were you scripting in Java anyway you muppet. You need to get the anti-patterns book and go look up Golden Hammer.
I hate these inane flame wars which inevitably end up in a horses for courses anwser. From the comments I see posted most people with any sense have little inclination to get involved. (Yes I see the irony). Yes people overuse J2EE. I avoid J2EE unless I absolutely need it - and I avoid weblogic like the plague.
And another thing on the speed of development issue - people rarely acknowledge the roles of IDE's in development when talking about languages. I had to do a multithreaded, distributed application with a gui - I used eclipse,jigloo,TogetherJ and the eclipse RMI plugin - its not just the language which aids productivity but the development tools and environment. No development environment I have come across comes close to eclipse - it all just works seamlessly and jigloo is a godsend. Yes the java language is more verbose than some (and less than others ie Ada) but the development environment negates this. It still annoys me that people are still pulling all the Java myths out of their ass from when they last tried it in 1996 using notepad/vi.
I have also looked at Java code written by C/Perl junkies who moan about Java - because they have not updated their skill sets and have written nonsense. They have this nasty habit of implementing data structures themselves as well. Ffs. Geez. The number of times I have seen someone write sorting algoritms in a java app.
People also dont look at beyond base functional (in-out) requirements. Yes I can hack out a perl script. Does it scale? Is it maintainable? Is it transactional? Is it safe? (As in safety-critical applications). Would you fly on an airplane with an avionics system written in perl? Why do you think AirBus/Boeing use Ada?
And dont get me started on all this LAMP crap. All industry Java applications I have worked with have been on Linux some have used MySQL.
Basically I think it boils down to people with Golden Hammer complex and genuinely feeling an emotional attachment to a technology. I hate working with anybody who is an 'X' zealot. Language wise I use Perl/Ada/B/Z/Java with JDO,Spring,Struts,Hibernate,JBoss,JUNG/C/Prolog dependent on what I am doing - and I mean I really think about what I am doing before I pick a technology. If something better comes along I have no attachment to any and will ditch any if it allows me to deliver a better product quicker to the user.
Re:The real 90s versus outdated 00s software (Score:5, Insightful)
False Dilemma (Score:2, Insightful)
Gets eyeballs on stories. It's either Java dominates everything or Java does nothing. While the truth lies somewhere between those two extremes. But the truth in these type of stories makes for horrible reporting.
You'll also find that stories follow the following pattern: X is doing great, X stumbles/fails, X returns to glory
Next year they'll have an article about how Java is still being used all over the place.
Java can co-exist with other technologies. I programmed in Java. I program currently in
Too bad we can't mod the original article Troll (Score:3, Insightful)
I've used most of the technologies people have mentioned here, some extensively. None of them are clearly all-around better than the others in all ways, and the statistics concerning toolset use are meaningless because technical merits are rarely the deciding factor in what tools or libraries a particular project ends up using. It's usually either the project team deciding to use what they're comfortable with (i.e. the I've-got-a-hammer-so-this-project-must-be-a-nail approach), or imposed top-down by management who were sold on the merits of one solution by a salesperson/article/more technically-savvy friend, etc.
Hell, the closest thing to an all-around great-for-most-anything tool for building web application was NeXT's old Objective-C based WebObjects which, despite the fact that Apple let it die a painful death, was years ahead of anything else on the market, and even now after not being developed or supported for several years, is still ahead of many solutions in some respects. But I'm not about to recommend to one of my clients that they should use it, even though I might think it's technically a better solution than something else. These decisions, even when made intelligently (which is rarely), are not, and should not be, made in a vacuum.
Re:PHP vs. Java (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It is to laugh (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually almost any popular language would port to any of those platforms, including (thanks to Mono) .NET. Heck, with anything but Java you could add in the BSDs as well.
Java advocates get really excited about Java's cross-platform ability, but Java isn't even really that portable compared to LAMP stack languages like Python, Perl, or PHP. Like I said, I'm a Java hacker myself, but I think that the days when Java was almost always the clear choice are coming to a close.
Re:The real 90s versus outdated 00s software (Score:4, Insightful)
No, this is not true. What happens is that the code starts up as interpreted so that the program can proceed without any JIT at all. Then, in the background, the performance profiling starts and time-critical sections of the code are translated. This is the way that the Hotspot optimiser works on modern VMs, and it is very effective in reducing start-up times.
Again? (Score:5, Insightful)
On one side you have a bunch of people who have never seen the kind of problems java solves so well.
These people for some reason think it's a horrible thing and must die. This has never made sense to me. I dislike a lot of crap that fits other people's needs and I don't really feel the need to rant against them at every opportunity. What kind of inadequacy drives this crap?
On the other side, you have a bunch of people who need it as is to get their daily jobs done. They are scratching their heads trying to understand why there is even a discussion going on.
If you are on a project with one developer and it's a web project, Java probably isn't for you. In fact, if you are on ANY project where you are the sole developer, don't bother unless you just like Java's syntax or you have worked in groups before and prefer the consistency and clear code that Java offers.
If you are writing a tiny app meant to run on a PC, dump java and write it in C/C++. The VM issues are kind of annoying that.
If you are writing a large client/server app, creating your own protocols, working with a group of 5-50 people, interested in long-term reusable clean code AND willing to spend the extra design time required to make such code, you might consider Java.
Honestly, I think most of the people complaining are trying to use "Java" to write some web app on their home computer and wondering why it's so hard. Like "Why does driving a backhoe have to be so much harder than riding my bicycle?!?!?" This is really for the hard jobs! If you don't have a hard job, if you are making a web app or something, Use your bicycle. PHP works fine.
Java makes a lot of the traditionally difficult issues much simpler, but these little apps typically don't even HAVE difficult issues, so yeah, Java may be a little cumbersome for them. Why did they even choose it in the first place.
My job became immensely easier and more fun by switching from C++ to Java. If you hate java, it may not be the tool for you! Backhoes are not great for tours around the lake, learn C++, VB, PHP, or whatever gets you off and enjoy. Just don't put down that funky looking, fuel guzzling backhoe unless you've tried digging a hole for a pool with your bicycle!
LAMP, the new PERL? (Score:5, Insightful)
Like candy, it is fast and easy. Like candy, if you use it for your meals it will make you fat and rot your teeth.
LAMP looks a quick and dirty approach for sites, that is easy enough to use to be seductive which will lead to a huge base of hard to maintain code the way PERL did.
Re:I guess it depends on where you came from (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're going to do that, you may as well use Objective-C, or as I like to refer to it, "C++ done right".
And threading? (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact is, programming a stateful, multithreaded application on Java is extremely easy, and in certain circumstances, a stateful application with multithreaded capabilities comes in very handy. I'm thinking things like artificial intelligence applications, messaging, delayed database writes, etc.
I have programmed sites that are PHP, with a Java multithreaded application used to handle certain transactions or self-organization of graph structures.
I thought this whole Web 2.0 thing was about open interoperability?
Re:The real 90s versus outdated 00s software (Score:5, Insightful)
Quite a straw man there. Very few real "developpers" will claim to make *anything* run "flawlessly" on even one "plateform". Come back and share your opinion once you're able to write a "flawless" English sentence.
With a parochial attitude, it's easy to introduce an unintended platform dependency. But with a little care about platform issues (especially where access the filesystem is concerned), Java runs smoothly across OSX/Windows/Linux/Solaris/OS400/Mainframes.
Re:The real 90s versus outdated 00s software (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The real 90s versus outdated 00s software (Score:2, Insightful)
Eclipse! Amazing IDE! Handles refactorings, remote revision control, builds & deployment, Javadoc tooltips and it 'knows' Java well. You'll never get compile-time errors and very few run-time errors.
You think eclipse is good? You should try IntelliJ IDEA. It is what Eclipse tries to be.
Re:.NET?!? (Score:3, Insightful)
Forced by who? VS.NET fully supports writing 100% unmanaged C++, and Microsoft is dedicated to supporting their unmanaged C++ libraries for a long, long time. In fact, one of the best parts of
As far as VB, official support ended in March I think, but VB 6 isn't going anywhere for a while. There will be legacy apps for many years, and via COM interop between those legacy apps and
In a couple of years they will all be forced to use avalon and what ever else MS comes up with. MS programmer use whatever MS gives them.
Microsoft has been great, at the very least over the past 5 or 6 years, at listen to developer feedback and changing products accordingly. Microsoft gives developers what developers want (for the most part), and developers gladly use it because it allows us to make lots of money.
Visual studio lets you slap controls on a screen and call it an app.
Sure. It also gives you pretty much the best IDE for software development on the planet. It's great for developing everything from simply utility apps which are 75% drag/drop, as well as developing large scale enterprise applications. It all depends on the developer using it.
Never mind the fact that you have just built an application which will bog down in maintenance headaches for the rest of it's life, you built in a day!.
Huh? What does this have to do with VS? If the developer sucks it doesn't matter what tool they use to write the software... the software will suck.
This "ease of programming" is like crack to a MS programmer. They get a rush out of delivering their unmaintanable application in a week. To hell with a proper layering, logging, configuration, relational layers, and whatnot.
What the hell are you talking about? Come out of your cave man... or, better yet, stay in there and keep your foolish mouth shut.
Re:The real 90s versus outdated 00s software (Score:3, Insightful)
Wtf. Can you name a piece of "single threaded hardware" that provides "web services" (I assume you're talking about SOAP and the ilk?).
My take on this (Score:3, Insightful)
When I used to do simple JavaScripts, or simple ASP pages, or simple Perl scripts, a lot of my solutions also started very simple. Many of these languages did not lend themselves well to objects, so you end up creating a lot of functions and passing data around and doing strange things with the standar data types -- but they also offered a richer syntax which allowed you to more easily accomplish these things without needing to hide anything. Still, I would eventually reach the point where I wanted to start wrapping things up more (JavaScript, now ECMAScript, supports Objects, Perl added OO support, etc.).
My point is that these "LAMP" languages make it very easy to write not-too-complex programs rapidly. However, my personal feeling is that once you start to make that more and more complex, the problems become easier to manage in bite-size chunks with OOP concepts like encapsulation. Since Java naturally urges you to start out OO, evolving the OO is simple. BUt to start with a non-OO programa nd evolve it to OO can be... trying.
Re:The real 90s versus outdated 00s software (Score:3, Insightful)
The Perl Way is to let you do what you want. That you chose to code poorly (or didn't know any better) isn't a reflection on Perl, unless you believe Perl should have forced you to program a certain way.
Larry Wall is a linguist and he wrote Perl.
Linguist Larry Wall wrote Perl.
Larry Wall, a linguist, wrote Perl.
A linguist wrote Perl; his name is Larry Wall.