How Much Java in the Linux World? 601
jg21 writes "Java is 'incredibly heavily used' in the Linux community, according to Sun's James Gosling, one of Java's co-creators. Gosling was debating Stanford's Lawrence Lessig, Apache co-founder Brian Behlendorf, IBM's Rod Smith, and others at JavaOne this week about the possible merits of open-sourcing Java vs the market's demand for continuing compatibility. But Behlendorf seemed not to agree. So who was right, how many Slashdotters are also Java users? Is "incredibly heavily used" an overstatement by Gosling, who after all helped create the language and therefore might be biased?"
C/C++, not java (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:C/C++, not java (Score:5, Informative)
Re:C/C++, not java (Score:4, Insightful)
When it comes to programming, I believe in the right tool for the right job. I predominately program in Java but it doesn't mean I use it to solve every programming problem I have. I use scripting languages and whatever else is appropriate to get the job done.
I only wish more of my peers could understand this :(
Re:C/C++, not java (Score:2)
Re:C/C++, not java (Score:3, Insightful)
Damn right. They said "use Java", which doesn't necessarily mean "write programs in Java".
I use applications written in Java daily, some of them very heavily (Tomcat, Cocoon, Saxon, etc). I don't use them because they're written in Java: I use them because they are tools for the job I do. They could be written in COBOL for all I care.
The pro-Java lobby need to give up this attitude that people
Re:C/C++, not java (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:C/C++, not java (Score:5, Informative)
Why the compounding of a task into another task to achieve the same result. Running the scripts I require to run through Java adds another step to running them that I do not require. Therefore it is a solution to a problem that is more complex than alternate solutions that exist to the same problem.
How is that complex?
It is more complex than what I require. Since you do not know what I do, you are hardly in a position to judge. I on the other hand can readily judge whether running my scripts through Java is something that I require. Believe me, its not.
Is that complex?
No, and this is where things get delicious, I'm talking about scripting, you know, writing text files with commands in them that you launch using a command interpreter of some kind. Not running a command prompt that the so called "Examples" of yours show. Its actually more complex to call a script from Java than your poor examples reflect. How about a link to demonstrate: BeanShell Example - Calling scripts from Java [beanshell.org]
If it is, I think you should be careful about what problems you are trying to solve. Stick to simple ones.
I think that you should perhaps take some of your own advice. I know how to run a command prompt, I know how to run a script, I know how to run Java. Some other advice I would offer would be to actually not insult people in a public forum. You might not be prepared for the consequences.
Re:C/C++, not java (Score:3, Informative)
Because it gives you more power. With scripting languages on Java you have access to all Java APIs - GUIs, threading, collections, network, multimedia, etc. It also allows you to seamlessly mix-and-match bits of code in different languages: You can call your Java code from the scripting language.
Because it allows for code-reuse. If you already have code written in Python, why bother to re-write it if you have to develop in Java
Re:C/C++, not java (Score:3, Insightful)
Adding more power doesn't help anything when lack of power was not a problem in the first place.
Re:C/C++, not java (Score:3, Informative)
You will find that the windowing performance of a SWT Java application far exeeds that of a Java Swing application, for very obvious reasons.
Being a avid Eclipse user, I can spot SWT from 50 feet!
Re:C/C++, not java (Score:4, Informative)
I also say that we had AWT which is very similar in design to SWING. I have done some work with Java clients and found Swing to be a huge pain in the ass.... BUT one thing it has going for it is that you know what the heck the layouts are going to look like. Secifically if you develop something with SWT, and run it on different platforms, the windows will look different. That can flat out suck. From a developer perspective I "might" want to have a common look and feel for this app, and SWING provides that. SWT does not. The only advantage of SWT is that it is suppose to be faster, and have the native look and feel of the OS it is running on. I say show me SWT for NetWare? My PDA? My cell phone... you get the idea.
So again I say show me the advantage of using SWT over Swing. Specifically in performance, that will relate to increase productivity to a user.
Lastly, to be on topic
All of our Linux machines run Java in some shape or way. I would agree that Java has played a large factor in Linux growth. I would also say that a reason for Java's growth in the server world is largely in part to Linux and IBM. Without Linux, we would be an all Windows shop, and then we would have to ask why we develop in Java when we are all Windows. Without Java we would have to pick a language that we could easily develop on our desktops (Windows) and then move to test and production. That would probably be some Microsoft language.
So I say to all the anti Java people who love Linux and open source... We need each other. The Java people want nothing more than for Linux/BSD to become THE OS of choice.
Re:C/C++, not java (Score:3, Insightful)
If I am writing a desktop app, I like for that app to be as tightly integrated with that desktop as possible. Ma
Re:C/C++, not java (Score:5, Insightful)
Excuse me? (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah, yes, but (Score:3, Insightful)
I know this doesn't square with the original poster's second sentence, so I'll concede that you're probably right that TheCoop doesn't grasp that C and C++ are indeed quite different languages (syntax notwithstanding).
But just to get back on topic: It seems to me that Free/OSS server code is heavily slanted in favour of C and not C++ or Java. Actual
Re:C/C++, not java (Score:3, Insightful)
See this is why people don't like nerds, no one said they were the same thing but they often get grouped together because of history, stop being so pedantic.
Re:C/C++, not java (Score:3, Funny)
Re:C/C++, not java (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's the major difference, and it isn't anything technical really:
Programming in C, you will always be writing code in the solution domain. And every little thing that doesn't involve manipulation of a built-in type (think strings or arrays) is a source of pain and a potential hazard.
Programming in C++, assuming you know what you are doing (too many people don't), you will be writing code in the problem domain. You no longer worry about things like strings (you have a class that lets you treat it like a built-in type) or arrays (you have a template that makes sure you do not overrun any boundaries).
Now, I'm _not_ saying that C++ is the perfect language (it isn't), or that it should be used for everything (it shouldn't), or that there are no other languages out there that don't have those features (there are). What I am saying is that C++ is a completely different language from C, and throwing them together like that doesn't make any sense. You might as well say "C/SmallTalk/Python is a bad language for certain purposes."
Picking apart your message a bit, I note that Java also shares many attributes with C++. Does that mean there is almost always a better alternative for it as well?
And I'm not entirely certain what you mean with "you guys might not like to be grouped together", but let me assure you I am not a computer language ;-)
incredibly heavily, not most heavily (Score:5, Informative)
A subtle but important difference.
Java is the most heavily used in business (Score:3, Informative)
If we look at the number of jobs being offered, however, it appears that Java is now the number one language used in business, having passed C and C++ sometime in the last two years.
For example, here are the current numbers of job listings at Dice.com [dice.com]:
8284 - Java
5714 - C
4993 - C++
7967 - C OR C++
Re:C/C++, not java (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is that worth a
All people I know program mainly in Java and script in Python
angel'o'sphere
Re:C/C++, not java (Score:3, Insightful)
Most universities now teach object orientation with java (something I don
Some hard numbers (Score:3, Informative)
No other languages come even close to these numbers, although I still have some hope for the future of Euler. Actually I don't, just kidding ;-)
Re:C/C++, not java (Score:3, Interesting)
The 3 channels I see for business related applications are as follows:
Enterprise applications: Java/J2EE.
Desktop applications: C/C++ Java.
Utilities/support: Scripting. perl/phython/ksh.
Everyone is rolling out J2EE systems even for critical strategic applications.
But bad experiences with Java performance on the desktop are keeping a lot of folks from using it currrently. Hence, a tremendous a
Re:C/C++, not java (Score:4, Insightful)
Corrected SourceForge link - language statistics (Score:3, Informative)
SourceForge Projects by Programming Language [sourceforge.net]
From the page:
- C (13785 projects)
- C++ (13922 projects)
- Java (12588 projects)
That's very interesting. Even though I'm a Java supporter, I was surprised to see so many Open Source Java projects.
Yes at least in Apache world (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Yes at least in Apache world (Score:2)
What do you know about the closed source ones? Of course, the open source ones are more visible, so you just jump to the conclusion that "most" are. But what is most?
1. More apps? Nope, thousands of (not open) companies are developping Java stuff.
2. More money generated? Oh wait...
3. More lines of code? I doubt it.
Well, all in all, I think that most of the Java apps (And most of all the apps in general) are proprietary, and not open source. Sad if you want, but that's still t
Re:Yes at least in Apache world (Score:5, Informative)
True, but many of those 23 items are former Jakarta projects that have been promoted to become top-level projects. Looking at it that way, 11 (Ant, Avalon, Cocoon, DB, Forrest, Geronimo, James, Maven, Portals, Struts & Web Services) top-level Apache projects are purely Java-based. Gavin
Not just for linux though (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly - Java is not about the O/S (Score:5, Interesting)
While I do cross-platform C/C++ development as well, when I need to make sure it's cross platform, I use Java.
Portable, standardized language and interfaces are what gives Java it's power. The community process has provided a reasonable pace of new feature integration, and has abandoned a few implementations that weren't really "ready", much as an orphaned code fork would be.
Open sourcing Java would be a mistake. Unless protected by a strong consortium of members (JCP) or by a strong backer who refuses to sell out to any one interest (M$ platform-specific extensions), Java would rapidly fragment into several code forks and become essentially useless.
It may take time to get features in through the JCP, but it also ensures there are no hastily implemented hacks making their way into the system. Quite frankly, the vast majority of OSS projects which don't come from Linus, Apache, Mozilla, or IBM have proven to be an absolutely disgusting mess of poorly and un-documented code. Java's embedded documentation is an elegant solution to the problem of keeping API manuals and source in sync, but it seems most OSS developers still haven't evolved past the "what, you can't read code?" mentality of the teenage "l33t" programming snob.
OSS means no sanity checks on feature creep, portability verification, documentation verification, regression testing, and all the other enterprise-project aspects of development that make it a useful technology. I've lost track of the number of times I've encountered platform-specific hacks in OSS code that weren't properly #ifdef-bracketed, or which just completely incompatible with other O/S implementations.
In short, Java is critical because it is portable and managed. The fact that Linux is supported is important from a rollout standpoint, but the underlying OS is (and should remain) irrelevant.
Re:Exactly - Java is not about the O/S (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Exactly - Java is not about the O/S (Score:5, Insightful)
-If I want to compare two Classes I have to use the equals-Method instead of a simple operator-overloading which would enable me to use ==
If that is a problem to you, yoou should probably try to understand what the difference between "==" and
BTW: in C or C++ you have the same distinction. Its called comparision by value and comparision by address, == checks for same address, that means same object.
Together is also available as zip file, probably you should just have tried to unzip that one instead of running an InstallShield.
Regarding the incompatible versison
To be fair: all you complaines are somewhat valid, but: don't you think other people had the same trouble with C++ compilers? At any given point in time there where allways about 100 more different versions of C++ compilers plus environments around than we have now Java implementations. Problems like you pointed them out are rather rare!! And you could help yourself
angel'o'sphere
Re:Exactly - Java is not about the O/S (Score:5, Informative)
C++ has this nice thing called Operator Overloading, "==" can be assigned to a method. Java does not do operator overloads, it's a PITA for people who are used to having the feature.
Just to give you an idea, you could take a class like CheeseDoodle, and assign an operator== such that if a CheeseDoodle instance is compared with an integer, it will call a method which compares CheeseDoodle.quantity with the supplied integer. But if a CheeseDoodle is compared with a PotatoChip, you could choose to write a method which would declare it true or false depending on various properties of the particular instance of the CheeseDoodle or a particular instance of the PotatoChip.
Suddenly your; p .snackfoodindex()))...; ...; ...;
if (cheeseDoodle.quantity().isEqual(thingamajig))...
if (cheeseDoodle.snackfoodindex().isEqual(potatoeChi
becomes :
if (cheeseDoodle == thingamajig)
if (cheeseDoodle == potatoeChip)
Yeah, it can be abused an obfuscated, I think that might be why Java avoids it, but it is damn handy.
Re:Exactly - Java is not about the O/S (Score:3, Insightful)
But I do not think operator overloading abuse would be as common in Java as it was in C++ even if Java supported it. I suspect that a lot of the reason why people use operators outside of their original context is because the C++ leader, Bjarne Stroustrup, did exactly that himself when he created the iostreams library, and used the > as I/O operators, a _completely_ different paradigm from their original purpose, which was to shift values either to the left or to th
Re:Exactly - Java is not about the O/S (Score:4, Insightful)
Although I miss it in Java, I do have one issue with operator overloading:
cheeseDoodle == thingamajig
and
thingamajig == cheeseDoodle
conceptually should be equivalent. If you've overloaded the == operator on cheeseDoodle but not thingamajig, this can clearly not be the case. The equivalent in Java
cheeseDoodle.equals (thingamajig)
whilst theoretically having the same problem does have an asymmetry that might get the programmer thinking about it.
Re:Exactly - Java is not about the O/S (Score:3, Insightful)
Ease of use sometimes requires minimizing features (Score:5, Insightful)
I totally disagree that Java has absolutely no aspects of a beautiful/easy-to-use language. I think you're neglecting the fact that when Java burst on the scene in '95, it provided a simple means to write cross platform applications in a way C/C++ did not out of the box.
I worked on a satellite system for NASA written in C++ that was originally spec'd to work on five UNIX platforms. Keep in mind this is in the days before Linux became widely adopted... and this system was a major headache because:
This is not to slam C++ in its current incarnation, but to point out that when Java first arrived on the scene, the restrictions and smaller set of APIs made it easy to ramp up developers who could then build cross-platform applications much quicker.
As for your specificpoints, let me explain where I disagree:
-primitive types and associated classes: When I want to store a variable of one the primitve types like int (the ones you use in every class) you have to wrap them into a class (Integer) which has no way to change the Value later. So everytime I want to e.g. increment a counter stored this way, I have to convert it back to int, increment it und create a new Integer-Object to store the incremented value back into my container-class.
Primitive types are (IMHO) a bit of a hack in Java, but they behave much like primitive types in C++. Granted, lacking generics (pre-Java 1.5), Java cannot support arbitrary collections of primitives, but consider this: if you want to store and manage collections of primitive types, couldn't you write your own class to either "wrap" the primitive type? I'd also recommend wrapping the Collection you're using to simplify the mutators.
-If I want to compare two Classes I have to use the equals-Method instead of a simple operator-overloading which would enable me to use ==
I can't count how many times I ran into incompatibly defined flavors of operator overloading in "mediocre" C++ code where bugs in operator overloading introduced logic errors that were hard to find.
Inn the case of equals(Object) versus the == operator, consider this: in Java they have two completely different purposes. If you want to compare two object references to see if they refer to the same object, use ==. If you want to compare the contents of the objects they refer to, use equals(Object). Consider the ambiguity and potential for flaws when the operator's behavior could be changed to deviate from comparing references to Objects!
This is a case where I believe that removing a feature from a language makes it easier for developers to avoid dealing with obscure bugs while trying to get an application done.
-When I retrieve an Object from a Container it is a java.lang.Object instead of the type I stored which totally negates the advantages of static typing Solved in Java 1.5 [sun.com] with Gener
Re:Exactly - Java is not about the O/S (Score:4, Insightful)
The commercial players are merely standing on the shoulders of the community, picking and choosing what they like and more often than not making a mess of it. Need I remind you of the absolute debacle the rpm package system is, compared to Debian's? What about the semi functional, buggy system management tools each vendor (Mandrake, Red Hat, you name it) bundles with their distro, only to be abandoned and redone differently in the next version, and on and on.
There's certainly absolute utter crap in both commercially backed and hobbyist software, but it's way less simple than Linus, Apache, Mozilla + IBM versus the rest. Most great OSS is NOT company backed, just people doing their best to make something that *works*, however long it takes to build it and damn those share prices.
yeah, look at all the forks of perl/python, etc. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, because gods know that no other language has ever been portable or standardized.
Unless protected by a strong consortium [...] Java would rapidly fragment into several code forks
Just as has happened with those other highly portable, standardized, cross-platform languages like Tcl/Tk, Perl, Python, etc. (Oh wait, I forgot, there are no other portable, standardized, cross-platform languages, my mistake.) Yeah, clearly, every language that isn't under the rigid control of corporate-owned constortia is instantly subject to massive forking by the dangerous denizens of the dark side. Open-sourcing computer languages makes the baby jebus cry!
Java's embedded documentation [...]
Oh, yeah, too bad the perl coders couldn't come up with something like that years before java even existed! Come to think of it, I think the perl guys borrowed it from lisp! Oh well, it's clearly an advantage of Java and of no other language!
And the best part about using java? It's low-level C/C++-like syntax and data structures means that you get to write many times more lines of code than you would need to to code the equivalent in tcl or perl or python. Why is that good? More money for programmers to write and (especially) to maintain all that extra code!
Java, with the support costs of a low level language, the run-time overheads of a high-level one, and the benefits of neither, is clearly the best choice. Just try it, and you'll be sayin', "Wow! I gotta get me some o' dat!"
Whoops, sorry, was I waxing sarcastic again?
Oh yeah, and all three of those other languages I mentioned have all settled on a single cross-platform GUI toolkit to share (Tk). How many GUI toolkits are fighting for dominance in the java world these days? I stopped counting after three. Boy, that there's some good standardization!
Aaaanyway, I don't want to bash java too hard. I actually think it's a pretty decent language overall. I just get so tired of people who think it's God's Gift; people who usually don't have a clue what else is out there. Java's ok, but it ain't All That!
Re:yeah, look at all the forks of perl/python, etc (Score:4, Interesting)
Technically, you're wrong; they're byte-compiled (except maybe tcl). But I understand what you mean. But so what? They're pretty damn enlightened! Check out, e.g., Zope [zope.org] before you sneer at python.
All this extra code allows the programs to be clearer, better organized.
By that logic, assembly language programs must be the clearest and best organized programs of all.
> people who usually don't have a clue what else is out there.
Maybe you?
Well, in nearly 25 years as a professional software developer, I have used (off the top of my head) assembler, basic, C, C++, forth, java, lisp, pascal, perl, python, shell and tcl, and dabbled in ADA, APL, eiffel, prolog, ruby, smalltalk, snobol and more. The biggest gap in my education is probably the functional languages like OCaml and Haskell. I think I have at least a bit of an idea what's out there. How 'bout you?
Re:Exactly - Java is not about the O/S (Score:3, Insightful)
OSS is a methodology, not a technology.
And to claim that only "enterprise projects" are "worthy" somehow is complete arrogance.
While I agree that having centralized control works, there are quite obviously many other ways of doing things, I think to call it the
Re:Exactly - Java is not about the O/S (Score:5, Insightful)
So the whole Sun fear of "embrace and extend" is completely moronic. You can ALREADY extend Java in completely incompatible ways. After open sourcing, Sun's Java standard will still remain the "real" Java, and we know this will be the case because if it were not, then Java would have already lost control. So, if you're a developer, and you care if you're code works outside of Linux, then you'd better use Sun's (or possibly IBM's) Java implementation. And that's how it will be until the day no one cares about Sun Microsystems--a day that will come much sooner if Java continues to stay restricted and everyone's forced to move to Mono.
On the other hand, Java's pace would probably faster (and we wouldn't have had to wait forever for generics.) if it were open. Standards are just as important if not more to Mozilla as to Sun, but being open seems to work well for them.
It would certainly allow Java to be targetted to more obscure platforms. God help you if you want to write once, run anywhere other than Windows, Sun, Mac, or Linux/x86.
It would also mean that I wouldn't have to go to Sun's painful web site and hunt down the SDK and documentation past all the click-thru licenses. At the very LEAST it would be nice if sun let other people distribute their still closed java implementations. Of course, that would just be nice, it wouldn't be enough to head off platform irrelevance.
OSS means no sanity checks on feature creep, portability verification, documentation verification, regression testing, and all the other enterprise-project aspects of development that make it a useful technology. I've lost track of the number of times I've encountered platform-specific hacks in OSS code that weren't properly #ifdef-bracketed, or which just completely incompatible with other O/S implementations.
Yeah, that never happens in closed source software EVER. I actually agree with you that the language choices of OSS aren't all that grand (though lots of languages have embedded documentation, and the ones that don't can have it added with seperate tools)--but if you want everyone to start using Java instead, opening the source is the only way. No one wants to dedicate their time and energy for free to something a corporation has complete legal control over--unlike Mozilla/Apache/Linux, in which the corporations have merely de facto control. To be honest, Sun has made so much noise about their Open Source debate that I can't see how anyone could have any respect for them at this point if they don't announce a plan to open it reasonably soon.
Re:Exactly - Java is not about the O/S (Score:3, Informative)
I think from Sun's perspective this is not a problem because JNI, or things like Apple's cocoa bridge, are fairly insular. You don't *have* to adopt software with a JNI component, and if you do this you pretty much agree that you're being hardware tied to some extent.
I think Sun's worry about "incompatibilities" have mostly come from worries over silent, endemic incompatibilit
Re:Not just for linux though (Score:3, Interesting)
I do this because (1) I like working in an object-oriented, garbage-collected, runtime-typed language, and Java was the most convenient for me when I started all this (I'd probably use C# & either
Re:Not just for linux though (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that it is not particularly the case that Java is popular in the Linux world, but that Linux is popular (as least as a deployment platform) in the Java world, and that is a substantial portion of the Linux world as seen in business.
Re:Not just for linux though (Score:5, Insightful)
"But you could use C, C++, ADA, Perl, PHP, Python, Lisp, OCaml,
And for 3D you could use OpenGL.
There might be a million reasons to use Java (and probably as many for not using it) - but writing portable code is definitely no reason. "
Why not put aside the additional effort of writing portable C, C++ etc etc, and just get on with fulfilling the specs by using... Java?
BTW, Java isn't so much about writing portable code as building portable apps.
For instance, I'm writing (part of) a biggish defense system (> GBP 300 million for HW + SW). It is an absolutely stunning timesaver to be able to develop, build & test on commodity NT boxes. The same jars are then FTP'd onto the target platform, which is not NT (and I'm not saying what it is, either). Guess what: Exact same behaviour on the target machine as on my desktop, but, each target machine costs around GBP100k, so we're happy that about all we need 'em for is soak testing - it's all inventory, you know!
Next, we can FTP the same jars to the training machines, which are commodity boxes running Linux, and guess what: No recompilation, porting or testing necessary - we get exactly the same behaviour here too. Again less inventory, and no added programming effort. Sweet!
The guys working on older products - ones that are in the maintenance phase, and will soon be phased out - are starting to be trained in Java. These guys are used to programming down to the metal, and at best having a C cross-compiler with printf's for debugging. They are, to a man, amazed at the ease with which they can slot applications together, and at the productivity they can attain with Java. One guy made a comment that stuck in my mind: "Things just work first time... this doesn't feel like programming!"
T&K.
Re:Not just for linux though (Score:3, Insightful)
Wonder what else it doesn't do. Does it work on my cell phone? nope, can I use it for free? no. About the only thing that it does that Java doesn't is allow
Its hard to believe that such a bastion of MS hate groups as
Mono/C# (Score:2, Interesting)
Might try Java if the Mono JVM works well, but seems Novell's focus is on C# first.
Of course we use Java (Score:3, Funny)
Java on Linux (Score:2, Funny)
Break out the coffee pot & caffine tabs.It's gonna be a long night.
Careful on how you use the name "Java" (Score:3, Interesting)
If you don't see it heavy used.. (Score:4, Insightful)
simple as that, really. it IS heavily used(along with others).
Incredible, indeed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Incredible, indeed (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm willing to bet that the downloaded total of eg. Python/Perl is bigger than that of Java. Fot C/C++ this goes without saying. The nr. of downloads indicates use, not the nr. of Java projects.
Re:Incredible, indeed (Score:3, Informative)
It isn't. More projects list Java as an implementation language than list C++ or Perl (by a very small margin, see below). But this includes projects largely written in C++ or Perl, which have a small piece written in Java. Number of mentions does not correspond with amount of use.
The most-frequently-mentioned languages on that Freshmeat page are as follows.
Language, # mentions
C, 6334
Java, 312
Re:Incredible, indeed (Score:4, Insightful)
But, perhaps more relevantly, I think the most successful and widespread use of Java these days is on the server, which generally has no GUI unless you count web-page generation.
-If
Re:Incredible, indeed (Score:3, Informative)
Which is why a Java shell is needed. Everything runs inside the shell's VM, so there is no need to load the VM for each command.
I used to be a fan of the Psion 5mx which ran Java. Startup time was horribly slow, and typing in the classpath each time was torture, so I wrote a shell for it, still obtainable here [geophile.com].
This shell did the right thing with ClassLoaders, so that you could edit Java source
Re:Incredible, indeed (Score:3)
$ time java -jar g:/usr/local/lib/jakarta-tomcat-3.2.3/lib/ant.jar
Searching for build.xml
Could not locate a build file!
real 0m1.268s
Not brilliant, I guess. But that's starting it over a network connection on a 400MHz processor, using cygwin's bash which ain't exactly fast to start with. For comparison's sake:
$ time make
make: *** No targets specified and no makefile found. Stop.
real 0m0.353s
not to mention has about the worst syntax for a u
Java / Linux used at least at some places... (Score:4, Interesting)
my team is in charge of the technological foundations for all the Internet related apps pushed by our employer. Linux / Apache / Tomcat is used EVERYWHERE for all our online banking and trading systems.
Access to the legacy system is also done in Java.
I also clearly think we're not alone doing so.
lots (Score:4, Informative)
I Use it Daily (Score:5, Funny)
I think Java should be free. Down with Starbucks!
I know what he means (Score:5, Funny)
How many projects? (Score:5, Informative)
There are 12588 projects in Java. Right behind the 13922 in C++ and the 13785 in C.
So I guess, Java IS used a lot.
Re:How many projects? (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretty much exclusively Java (Score:5, Interesting)
Java and OSes (Score:2, Interesting)
Wal-Mart for example went with Java and Linux for their website in their early history. It's on Java and Solaris x86 today. Now what is it about Solaris x86 that could convince a cost-conscious organization like Wal-Mart to make the switch?
With Java development, the OS is completely marginalized. The question
ermmm hold it folks (Score:2, Informative)
not all of us enjoy java. I have a measly p3-1ghz with 192mb of ram and when mozilla and a few other apps have filled it up for every-day use even the *smell* of java makes me sick, my lappy starts swapping and mozilla crunches to a halt.
That's just j2 plugins in my browser... openoffice with java takes 60+ seconds to start, and you think java is widespread?
seriously java might be nice but for some things it really isn't. Everytime I start a solaris admin tool using java I think "okay it saves sun develop
Personally? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's heavily used in some areas. (Score:5, Informative)
On the client, however, you'll find it far less often. I use a java client when no other alternatives exist. Java has always been an incredible memory hog for me. I don't like using java on the client. It's mostly slow and unresponsive.
Personally I vastly prefer to use C or C++ programs, as they tend to be much nicer to use. In addition, they tend to have the same interface as the rest of the programs in my desktop environments.
Re:It's heavily used in some areas. (Score:3, Informative)
While that's relatively true, in absolute terms it really depends on the spec of your machine. For instance, I use JBuilder at work, and on my machine there it's plenty responsive enough. Of course, I have a 3GHz P4 with a gig of RAM; on my old P2 450 with 512MB it was rather more painful.
Amen to that... (Score:3, Informative)
Now that we've got proper Non Blocking I/O and you don't need a thread for every connection (or to implement your own multiplexor with JNI) the memory usage of our server app has come down considerably.
Looking at the latest stats on my performance monitor it's currently dealing with 463 concurrent connections and using roughly 70 megs o
Actually.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Java on Linux for All (Score:3, Informative)
The key, though, is that we've found we get the best results (e.g., as close to running universally as possible) by compiling on Linux (as opposed to on a Wintel box or a Mac box). Folks using anything from Mac OS 8.1 and Win95 to the latest thing all have access.
Java on Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
I started using Java in 1997 on Windows, and it followed me when I expanded into different operating systems.
I really like C, and use it for some work-related and recreational programming, but when the "rubber meets the road" and I need to get something done within a short time frame, I turn to Perl and Java. Perl, mostly for data parsing jobs, and Java for the more "permanent" programs, especially for graphical network clients.
I've been using Java JRE's since 1.02, and they have really grown in power and speed over the years. I have no problems using Swing apps on my 800 MHz iMac or my 1.7 GHz Celeron Linux system. They even run very well on my 533 MHz Celeron running Windows 2000. While they may not have the raw speed of a native app written in C or C++ (especially graphical apps), the performance I get is more than adequate for the job being performed.
Java on Linux was a priority for Sun (Score:3, Interesting)
Java, because it has that many good working libs (Score:4, Informative)
- There are many very great libraries. E.g. OJB [apache.org] is a great database layer and SWT [eclipse.org] can create nice GUIs. All these Apache Common Tools [apache.org] are also very great and allow quick application development.
- Eclipse [eclipse.org] is the best IDE I ever saw. The great refactoring features and the hot code replace speed up development immensely.
Sometimes I'm not the own who chooses the plattform of a project. In the last years these projects were allBut it's such a bitch to install... (Score:5, Insightful)
We do a lot of Open Source work, but by far the bulk of it (especially for enterprise level applications) is done with Perl.
Of course if we were "bigger" or writing "bigger" applications, Java starts to see some advantages, but the biggest hurdle is to actually get a reliably installable version.
Sure, we can download it from IBM, or from Sun, or from Blackdown, but they all have differences of opinion, differences of quality and differences of ideals.
We use Debian for all of our systems, and every other damn software package we run is built and works for Debian, and plays nicely with everything else. But not Java. There's no standard place that it gets installed - to the extent that some packages will successfully identify that you have it, and others won't. It isn't in synch with the libc or libgcc that's current at any point in time. Since I upgraded my laptop to Mozilla 1.7, Java no longer works: not that it was ever particularly reliable.
So while there might be some wonderful advantages to building applications with Java, the general flakiness of my experiences with applications written to use it, means that I can't develop for it, because I can't inflict that flakiness onto my clients.
Partly, of course, this flaw is because Debian's approach to licensing means that something with the shackles around it that all JVM's will have, will never be part of core Debian. In fact though, that's mostly the case for any distribution, even the commercial ones, because they are all depending on open-source licenses for all the rest of the environment, and to be in synch with those, you have to be part of everyone's standard install.
Commercial distros must have to put lots of effort into making their setup work with their chosen JVM, rather than sticking the horse in front of the cart and making their chosen JVM work within their environment.
I sure would like to see an DFSG free implementation of Java, and I don't understand why this entails Sun "losing control" of the standard, and why they are in such a panic about allowing that to happen.
In the *enterprise*? (Score:5, Insightful)
1. I don't use Java because my machine is too slow, I don't like applets, or perhaps they use one Java app and say its ok. (These answers are from people who didn't read and understand the question.)
2. I like Java == Coffee! (These answers are from people who did read it, but were being funny.. thats good..)
3. I don't see Java used in the enterprise at all. We run a pure win32 shop and block Java at the firewall. In fact, we only drink tea to ensure we are not contaminated. (These answers are from a software company in Washington state mainly.. with a few other unfortunate exceptions as well.)
4. We use Java in the enterprise. (These answers are from people who actually work in an enterprise.)
A definition.. the enterprise does not mean your home network.. your school lab.. sourceforge.. freshmeat.. the internet cafe that you swap sysadmin services for free scones.. it means large corporate systems and infrastructures.
I haven't seen any enterprise-class system *not* oriented towards Java in a long time. Even ones not build in a J2EE model have evolved over time to support many of those components to streamline integration and development. Java has a good solid foundation in these areas, and with newer versions of the J2SE/J2EE specifications, it gets to be a richer server and client platform.
As far as Java on Linux.. I think the question should be more focused on the adoption of Linux as opposed to Java. Many places I work run many Java applications, but have requirements that Unix-hosted systems and applications must live on Sun Solaris, IBM, or other platforms. These requirements simplify management, accountability, and vendor management. That is worth a lot. Getting that Linux box online is cheaper when compared to that Sparc box, but the lifetime of supporting and maintaining the box could be higher if you are already supporting a large Sun infrastructure. This is all irrespective of Java.
Probably one of the biggest deals for Linux in the enterprise is Oracle's push and support of Linux for their entire suite of applications, and for publishing effective case stories on horizontal scaling on Linux systems. This benefits Java, as that is the primary language in Oracle-land now, but its a bigger benefit to Linux. IBM's push for Linux and Java is also very effective... (I rate Oracle higher, since they don't have a hardware issue to bring to the table, and are just pushing software.. IBM does push the software in the Websphere suite, but tends to bring hardware as well..)
So.. Linux is gaining in enterprise acceptance.. therefore Java on Linux is gaining.. but I think Java is set and has proven itself. Its Linux that is doing the proving now.
But how much *good* java software is there? (Score:3, Informative)
Experience building a real application; which JDK? (Score:3, Interesting)
JDK 1.4.2. This worked fine through development and functional
testing. But once we started doing stress testing and scalability
testing, things got difficult.
First we hit the infamous LD_ASSUME_KERNEL problem. The JVM would
freeze up mysteriously on innocuous statements such as "count =
0". This happened in synchronized method, and the more threads there
were, the more frequently we'd hit this problem.
Then we discovered that the Sun JDKs management of memory in
conjunction with nio classes was not so good. Memory usage as reported
by Java was fine, no leaks, and then all of a sudden we'd die with an
OutOfMemoryError.
IBMs implementation seems to be of higher quality on Linux, and that's
what we're now using.
Having gone through all this, I'm still glad that we're on Java. It's
a very nice language, performance is more than adequate (for our
application anyway), the libraries are excellent, the tools are
excellent, and I'm happy not to be dealing with memory corruption
issues.
The Answer (Score:3, Funny)
42
Depend on how you look at it (Score:3, Informative)
no "vs" there at all (Score:5, Interesting)
That phrasing suggests that open sourcing would have threatened compatibility, but the exact opposite would have been the case: under Sun's processes, Java has fallen apart: several different toolkits (AWT, Swing, SWT,
Of course, why any of this is worth worrying about anymore, I don't understand. Java has failed on all its promises: its promise to become a platform-independent way of delivering applications via the Internet, its promise of becoming a universal client development language, and even its promise of becoming a good server-side development language. Java hangs on in education, but as Pascal shows, that doesn't mean much. And some big corporations with too much money still try to use Java for "enterprise systems", but you can sell those guys anything.
nearly none (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless you have a rather unusual and specific need (Tomcat, JSP, Java homework problems, you probably will never need Java on your Linux system.
It's true that people have started a lot of projects in Java: there has been a huge flurry of "X-in-Java", where "X" is any existing piece of software, but few of those projects have been successful. And most Java projects that have yielded something useful are just Java projects to produce tools for Java programming, rather than anything any normal user might want to use.
slashdot poll (Score:3, Funny)
Slashdot editors, in future please accompany such articles with a Slashdot poll.
Simple math (Score:3, Interesting)
Most enterprise apps these days are being written entirely in java/jsp and using web services. The only notable exception to this is the microsoft small business market which uses stuff like IIS/ASP.
So yeah, java on linux makes perfect sense in the business programming world, although not in the way most linux geeks think of programming (desktop).
You get 90% of the prettyness of a windows app, lower memory and cpu requirements, no deployment costs, no upgrade costs beyond developing the upgrade and both the platform and the language are free. Obviously, using something like websphere costs money, but that is optional.
Why java (Score:3, Interesting)
The ability to code on one platform and run your application on anything that there exists a java interpreter for is a wonderful thing. Especially with the upcoming Exodus from the Windows platform to Linux, there will be a big opportunity for java to close the gap on cross-platform solutions.
A long time C++ hacker moves to Java (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been programming heavily in C++ for many years. While I have a love hate relationship with C++'s complexity, I never thought that I would use Java heavily. But I've been working on more web services applications that access a database. The huge class library that is available with Java is a great advantage when it comes to developing these applications. Sure I can pay thousands of dollars to Rogue Wave [roguewave.com] and get some of the same features in C++ that I get for free using the Sun and Apache Java libraries. But why? The higher performance of C++ is of little use to most applications that references a database, since these applications are usually bottlenecked in the database. And when it comes to web services (e.g., XML processing, servlets, dynamically generated web pages), C++ cannot compare to Java. And then there is garbage collection, which makes develoopment faster.
There are still applications that I would not write in Java. For example, compilers or other algorithmically intensive applications that are CPU bound. There are also times when I can simplify my code by using C++ features like operator overloading (see my wavelet packet transform algorithm [bearcave.com] for example). But these applications are now in such a minority in the work I'm doing that I worry that my C++ "chops" will get rusty.
I went to a talk by Stroustrup where he discussed C++ (some cool algorithms to support linear algebra computation), future developments and C+++ vs. Java. He promotes C++ as a systems programming language. For things like operating systems, virtual machines, hardware drivers and compilers. He trumpted C++ as the most widely used programming language. What does not seem to have occured to Stroustrup is that systems level applications, where C++ shines, are a small minority of the code programmers write. My view is that C++'s star is fading.
So yeah, I'd say Java is heavily used on Linux. At work I'm part of a group developing a distributed database application in Java (this runs on top of a relational database, so Java's performance is not an issue), hosted on Linux. I'm in the process of setting up a Linux/PostgreSQL system on which to develop a financial trading application, again in Java, using XML and web services.
Re:OSS Mono to take over? (Score:4, Informative)
Thats funny seeing as SUSE and Slackware DO ship SUNs JDK.
Re:It is the nanobots making him say that... (Score:4, Informative)
The ability to develop for one of the most widely used server systems (Linux) in the most widely used server-side development language (Java).
Re:I'm usiging the original (Score:4, Informative)
Care to back this up with some facts? If Java has done anything, it is trying to stay backward compatible too long. Not a single method that has been deprecated has been removed. There are quite a few Java developers that would like to see the JDK cleaned up of those.
For example, even the entire Swing library hasn't been updated to use JDK 1.2, eg., it still uses Vectors instead of Lists, just for keeping the backward compatibility.
Re:I'm usiging the original (Score:3, Insightful)
The philosophy of Java is, that if you need 64 bit precision, use a datatype that uses 64 bits. IMO, it is a great advantage of Java that the primitives are declared so precisely.
It sure beats th
Re:I'm usiging the original (Score:4, Informative)
*sigh* This is nonsense. Its been nonsense for years. For goodness sake, keep up to date. Java is now comparable to C++ speed. Just look back at recent Slashdot articles.
Re:I'm usiging the original (Score:3, Insightful)
Whatever. This is statement of opinion, not fact.
Write some comparable code, and try it.
"look back at recent Slashdot articles"?
There is a core of anti-Java bias on Slashdot. I assumed that if I pointed back to a Slashdot article that demonstrated Java speed, I might make some progress in countering that bias. However, there are, of course, plenty of independent studies.
Re:I'm usiging the original (Score:3, Insightful)
Its not JIT that I like, its the HotSpot optimiser - it produces optimised code based on what is actually in need of optimising at run-time, rather than what a compiler guesses is in need of optimising at compile time.
Why the hell doesn't Java cache the compiled code between program executions?
Security. Java VMs validate classes and byte codes when they are loaded. Otherwise, someone could write garbage into the code cache, with exciti
I do use Java (Score:3, Informative)
Most people use the latest JDK and that's it. No problem. A C program also requires the right compiler unless it's trivial or you want to descend into ifdef hell.
it doesn't have a #include to keep parameterizations in one file,
It has import.
it is actually write-once-debug-everywhere,
Actually, it's not. At least not everywhere. In my Java experience since 1996 I've yet to see that debug everywhere nightmare. And I've touched a lot of operating systems and Java software proj
Re:I don't use Java (Score:3, Informative)
So what? who says Java is the right tool for that? on the other hand Java is used in a lot of embbeded projects.
it doesn't have multiple inheritance
Thank God for that.
it requires the right JVM
C programs when dinamically linked to runtime require the right version of runtime library. So?
it doesn't have a #include to keep parameterizations in one file
Include is a Bad Thing. Modern languages don't do that. It even makes compiling slower!
it is actually
Re:I don't use Java (Score:3, Informative)
I googled a little and it seems that you are trying to use a full J2SE (standard edition) desktop app in a PersonalJava or J2ME (micro edition) JVM which are meant for differents apps. Just because has a Java somewhere doesn't mean you'll get to run any Java app. There are different specs for J2ME and J2SE, it's has nothing to do with the version, the same way Oracle isn't expected to run in you
Re:Just about every programmer I know... (Score:3, Funny)