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James Gosling on Java 356

Posted by CowboyNeal from the man-himself dept.
prostoalex writes "It's been ten years since the official introduction of Java - a programming language combined with virtual machine and a class library. ZDNet published an interview with James Gosling, the creator of Java, who talks about the project's past, present and future."
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James Gosling on Java More

James Gosling on Java

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  • Want to talk to The Man? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Saeed al-Sahaf ( 665390 ) on Thursday June 30, 2005 @08:28PM (#12956526) Homepage
    If anyone is interested in conversing with James Gosling one-on-one, he (amazingly) hangs out at DevShed.com [devshed.com] in the forums, likes to aswer questions, and my guess is he knows what he's talking about when it comes to Java. Even more amazing is that as smart a guy as he is, his social skills leave a lot to be desired (read some of his posts in the Lounge).
    • my guess is he knows what he's talking about when it comes to Java.

      I should hope so! He did invent the thing, after all! :-)
    • ...his social skills leave a lot to be desired...

      I'm not sure what bad social skills you speak of, but here's how I usually approach that: if someone is really capable, they can be eccentric, even arrogant. If they're stupid, forget it. Gosling is definately a skilled individual, so he gets some asshole points, imho.

      • I'm not sure what bad social skills you speak of, but here's how I usually approach that: if someone is really capable, they can be eccentric, even arrogant. If they're stupid, forget it. Gosling is definately a skilled individual, so he gets some asshole points, imho.

        What I've found is that people who are really, really sharp don't need to be assholes. They're smart, everyone knows they are smart, and they don't have anything to prove. It's the wanna-be's who try to pull off the "I'm a brooding gen

    • Re:Want to talk to The Man? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ari_j ( 90255 ) on Thursday June 30, 2005 @08:46PM (#12956642)
      Even more amazing is that as smart a guy as he is, his social skills leave a lot to be desired

      In what way is that amazing? I think that most of us here on Slashdot are in a reasonably high percentile when it comes to intelligence, and probably fewer than 10% of the members here have social skills any better than an 11-year-old girl's.

      On a side note, I somehow doubt he's going to hang out at DevShed so much after your soon-to-be +5 comment generates traffic. Imagine the personal e-mail equivalent of a good, old-fashioned Slashdotting. ;)
      • On a side note, I somehow doubt he's going to hang out at DevShed so much after your soon-to-be +5 comment

        No, I think he likes attention. And anyway, my guess is that a lot of people already know he hangs there. It's not like it's a private club...

        But yes, my comment about social skills was a little stupid.

      • I never really bought the "social skills" bunk. I think chitchat and small talk is useless and stupid so I usually don't engage in it. Does this mean I don't have "social skills"? As long as you are articulate, and unless you are in public relations, fuck "social skills".
        • I agree with you 100%. The problem is that you've just epitomized "poor social skills" quite succinctly.

        • Highly illogical (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Dogtanian ( 588974 ) on Friday July 01, 2005 @07:43AM (#12959616) Homepage
          I never really bought the "social skills" bunk. I think chitchat and small talk is useless and stupid so I usually don't engage in it. Does this mean I don't have "social skills"? As long as you are articulate, and unless you are in public relations, fuck "social skills".

          Stereotypical pseudo-rational geek attitude.

          The inconsequential "chitchat and small talk" are the manner in which we find out more about the person we're dealing with before things get more serious, allowing us to "feel our way round" when we are unsure. This may apply to both strangers and people we're currently unsure of; don't bring on the heavy stuff first. They're the manner in which we show respect by asking questions about the other person that may not *directly* involve the business we have with them; of course, this may open up opportunities we hadn't considered, possibly leading to friendship and/or greater business involvement.

          Not everyone is equally good at this. Not everyone places equal importance on it. That's part of the healthy mix of personalities that push some people to work in public-facing jobs, and others to work in more "human-phobic" areas (such as the more technical aspects of computer hardware). It's okay to not be a "small talk" person, as you are.

          On the other hand, to criticise it for being "useless" (because it doesn't serve any obvious purpose) smacks of blinkered short-sightedness and the kind of (phoney) rationalisation of their own behaviour that geeks like to indulge in.

          Frankly, the kind of people who come out with this kind of stuff probably consider themselves "rational". Actually, that displays a laughable (and verging-on-the-autistic) lack of self-awareness. Geeks are no more "rational" than a lot of other people; they have their own neuroses and obsessions that are obvious when you take a step back. For example, to use the same surface "rationalisation", what purpose does being fanatical about "Star Trek", an entirely fictitious TV show serve? None. Surely it's more rational or logical (*) to live in the real world.

          Of course, the fan will explain how it represents the problems of today's world in a semi-abstract manner, blah blah... the more insightful will mention that it provides an outlet for the geek personality type. Point is; if they are forced to explain it in depth, they'll put the effort into considering their own behaviour that they won't even waste considering anyone else's. (Although they won't explain it as an excuse to escape the real world or dress in fantasy costumes; that would be too close to the bone).

          So, to get back to the point, your failure to even recognise the purpose of small talk (whether you like it or not) smacks of the most arrogant and deluded abuse of rationality to justify your own shortcomings and behaviour.

          (*) Reminds me of a friend I had in my early teens who was into sci-fi, had a crap geeky sense-of-humour and an obsession with Spock and "logic". He was no more logical than anyone else; in fact, sometimes he was downright weird. In retrospect, I reckon he was (slightly) autistic in some form.
      • 'Probably' less than 10% of the male population as a whole have social skills any better than an 11-year-old girl's. It's unreasonable to hold men and women to the same standard in this area.

    • Re:Want to talk to The Man? (Score:4, Funny)

      by CompSci101 ( 706779 ) on Thursday June 30, 2005 @09:40PM (#12956988)

      ...his social skills leave a lot to be desired...

      Not surprising.

      The bastard took my pointers and templates away. My *pointers and templates*!

      Rude fucker.

      C

    • Err, I don't think that's really him. Sorry to JBurst your JBubble.

  • Not a bad interview (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BronxBomber ( 633404 ) on Thursday June 30, 2005 @08:30PM (#12956541)
    except...

    Why the hell did the interviewer decide to turn it into a "how did/does/will Java work with MS technologies" diatribe?

    I mean, theyre so disparate in ideaology, while I can understand some of the relationships, why on earth bring them up with the creator of a language that MS has deliberately shunned when they couldnt get it to work "their way"?

    Very puzzling. Poor journalism in my opinion.

    • Re:Not a bad interview (Score:5, Informative)

      by Decaff ( 42676 ) on Thursday June 30, 2005 @08:58PM (#12956724)
      Why the hell did the interviewer decide to turn it into a "how did/does/will Java work with MS technologies" diatribe?

      I mean, theyre so disparate in ideaology, while I can understand some of the relationships, why on earth bring them up with the creator of a language that MS has deliberately shunned when they couldnt get it to work "their way"?

      Because neither Microsoft .NET (their "Java") or Java are going to go away. Both will be around for a long time, and both are going to have to integrate.

      Java is evolving to work better with MS technologies in three ways: First, the Desktop Integration APIs, which allow the portable use of Browsers and features like the systray within Java applications, Secondly, by developing Java GUIs to make them indistinguishable from other Windows applications on Longhorn without losing portability, and Thirdly, with the use of Web Services to allow .NET programs to call Java, and vice versa.
      • If you're a typical corporate CTO, you know that you will have no shortage of either Java or .NET developers for the next 10 years or so, which means those are going to be the most important candidates for just about any project you're considering.

  • Ruby on Rails driving change? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jarich ( 733129 ) on Thursday June 30, 2005 @08:30PM (#12956546) Homepage Journal
    Did anyone else that the "ease of configuration" for building applications might be driven by the Ruby on Rails push? (http://rubyonrails.org/ [rubyonrails.org]) Competition is good, isn't it?

    Also, why does Sun waste all the effort on NetBeans? I'm sure it's a very capable IDE, but isn't nearly everyone else using Eclipse? Where would Java or Eclipse be if Sun put all the engineering time from NetBeans into a more useful project? I guess here I don't see the value of the competition as much...

    • Uh, netbeans does lots of things Eclipse doesn't and there is a significant following for NetBeans. Me included. I don't like Eclipse.
    • As far as I'm concerned, everybody (that I know in the java world) is (and has used for some time) Borland's JBuilder. It's an amazingly nice IDE that's of far higher quality IMO than Eclipse (although the swing interface does drive me a little mad)
      • Anyone who says JBuilder is better has most likely never used anything but JBuilder, short of installing and compiling Hello World.

        When I first started using JBuilder instead of gvim, I was pretty impressed - there were all sorts of things it did that you just couldn't do in a standard text editor - code completion, refactoring, etc.

        Then I tried Eclipse, and I saw how good those features can be when they actually work.

        At my workplace most of the other Java developers use JBuilder, because that's what we
        • I couldn't disagree more -- I've used various versions of Eclipse and its editor feels like a toy next to JBuilder (comparing the latest version of Eclipse 3 to JBuilder 2005). Yes, unfortunately JBuilder has a lot of bloat that I don't use. It's the actual coding interface that feels rock solid to me: it gets indentation right and does lots of handy things that make my life a lot easier (fori0foo.length). I could just write my code. It flowed (as much as Java code can flow) right out of me. It should be no

      • jbuilder = eclipse (Score:3, Interesting)

        by dingfelder ( 819778 )
        As I was searching for some info about JBuilder, I stumbled across this juicy bit that I had not seen before.

        Borland announces JBuilder Roadmap; future will be Eclipse-based

        The jist of the story is that in the first half of 2006, JBuilder will ship a new version, code-named "Peloton", which will be completely Eclipse-based !!!

        http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?threa d_id=34246 [theserverside.com]

        below is much of the article text in case it gets swamped.

        Borland has announced their technical roadmap for JBuil
    • Did anyone else that the "ease of configuration" for building applications might be driven by the Ruby on Rails push?

      Not really. Ruby on Rails is in many ways a rather old fashioned approach. While almost all new systems work from the idea that the object model is the centre of design, Rails works from the database design. The idea that objects could be automatically and dynamically created from database tables was done in Smalltalk at least a decade ago.

      Also, why does Sun waste all the effort on Net
      • Not really. Ruby on Rails is in many ways a rather old fashioned approach.

        Abstracting RoR out to the more general JavaScript/DHTML/AJAX stuff, it's worth noting that James Gosling invented this form of application interface. The NeWS [wikipedia.org] system was everything that AJAX is today. If Sun hadn't tried to keep NeWS proprietary, we might have never seen the Web Browser as we know it today, and X-Windows would be nothing more than a footnote in history. :-)
    • More likely driven by competition against MS.

      MS is a one stop shop. You get their .net "framework", their IDE and tools, their database, their webserver, their OS, etc. etc. and managers say you can't go wrong with that.

      On the other hand, the complexity of some of the .net stuff seems less because something like JEE (J2EE) has a lot of little bits that are highly more configurable than in the MS world.

      I'm sure that's it because that's the type of feedback they've received from a lot of big companies (inc
    • Also, why does Sun waste all the effort on NetBeans? I'm sure it's a very capable IDE, but isn't nearly everyone else using Eclipse?

      Using Netbeans here. Don't care for Eclipse. Go figure.
    • Eclipse claims to have about 45% of the Java IDE market, however that is about as accruate claiming that Firefox has 67 millions users. Eclipse uses the download count to get an estimate, I'd guess its closer to maybe 30%. I believe Netbeans is around 15%-25% and rising fast. Netbeans has won multiple awards in many areas for IDE design. Eclipse is really just a foundation and corporations pay big bucks to get in on it. Eclipse's drive isn't the community, the foundation members decide where eclipse is goin

  • underhyped? (Score:5, Funny)

    by wwest4 ( 183559 ) on Thursday June 30, 2005 @08:31PM (#12956547)
    > (Sun CEO) McNealy: We absolutely underhyped [Java].

    Uh, Scott; that's not the way the rest of us remember it.
    • Ummm.... someone needs the ability to spot subtle humour.

    • How about (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mcc ( 14761 ) <amcclure@purdue.edu> on Friday July 01, 2005 @12:26AM (#12957994) Homepage
      They entirely overhyped it in areas where it's relatively useless (the desktop) and entirely underhyped it in areas where it's extremely useful (backend and embedded areas).

      Now ten years later you talk about "java" and all anyone remembers are those horrible, sluggish AWT applets, running on netscape 4.0's broken JVM, which they used during the initial Java hype push. But almost nobody these days knows about the success Java met in unglamorous areas after the hype push had died off.

  • Job Descriptions by Committee (Score:5, Funny)

    by ari_j ( 90255 ) on Thursday June 30, 2005 @08:43PM (#12956625)
    Yep, it's been 10 years since Java was officially introduced. It should come as no surprise that I was being turned down for jobs 2 years ago because the jobs in question required 10 years of Java experience. (And 5 years of C#/.NET experience as well. And I think at least one required post-doctoral work in Physics, Astrology, and Film.)
    • In 1995, I was asked for a minimum of three years experience in Windows 95.

      In 1999, I was asked for a minimum of four years experience in Windows 98.

      In 2002, I was asked for a minimum of six years experience in Windows 2000.

      Thankfully, no one is asking for an amount of TCP/IP experience that predates the protocol as I would have been a kid at the time. Telecom is so much more straightforward to get a job in than end-user desktop support. Though... I did once get asked for twenty years experience in
    • It's funny you should mention that...

      One former professor of mine uses the phrase "10 years of Java experience" as an indicator of when to throw out a resume. He does some consulting work, and companies tend to ask him to go over the resumes of their applicants and junk those that he feels are unqualified. First, those who don't have CS or SE degrees get thrown out. Second, he throws out anything with obvious lies such as "10 years of Java experience".

      When you posted that, I immediately thought of that st
      • Pretty worthless consultant. I have ten years of experience with Java, having used it since it was an alpha version, and I wasn't alone in those days.

        And most skilled developers with long experience do NOT have CS degrees, as most skilled artists don't have art degrees. Those of us from a physics background tend to bring more math skills to a job than those with CS degrees. Those with degrees in other domains are also frequently more valuable that CS degree holders, since most development tasks are more ab

  • Page 2 and scripting languages (Score:5, Informative)

    by MarkEst1973 ( 769601 ) on Thursday June 30, 2005 @08:59PM (#12956728)
    The entire second page of the article talks about scripting languages, specifically Javascript (in browsers) and Groovy.

    1. Kudos to the Groovy [codehaus.org] authors. They've even garnered James Gosling's attention. If you write Java code and consider yourself even a little bit of a forward thinker, look up Groovy. It's a very important JSR (JSR-241 specifically).

    2. He talks about Javascript solely from the point of view of the browser. Yes, I agree that Javascript is predominently implemented in a browser, but it's reach can be felt everywhere. Javascript == ActionScript (Flash scripting language). Javascript == CFScript (ColdFusion scripting language). Javascript object notation == Python object notation.

    But what about Javascript and Rhino's [mozilla.org] inclusion in Java 6 [sun.com]? I've been using Rhino as a server side language for a while now because Struts is way too verbose for my taste. I just want a thin glue layer between the web interface and my java components. I'm sick and tired of endless xml configuration (that means you, too, EJB!). A Rhino script on the server (with embedded Request, Response, Application, and Session objects) is the perfect glue that does not need xml configuration. (See also Groovy's Groovlets for a thin glue layer).

    3. Javascript has been called Lisp in C's clothing. Javascript (via Rhino) will be included in Java 6. I also read that Java 6 will allow access to the parse trees created by the javac compiler (same link as Java 6 above).

    Java is now Lisp? Paul Graham writes about 9 features [paulgraham.com] that made Lisp unique when it debuted in the 50s. Access to the parse trees is one of the most advanced features of Lisp. He argues that when a language has all 9 features (and Java today is at about #5), you've not created a new language but a dialect of Lisp.

    I am a Very Big Fan of dynamic languages that can flex like a pretzel to fit my problem domain. Is Java evolving to be that pretzel?

    • I am a Very Big Fan of dynamic languages that can flex like a pretzel to fit my problem domain. Is Java evolving to be that pretzel?

      It is getting that way, but I suspect that Groovy will get there first.

      Until then, there are plenty of dynamic languages (including LISP) that run on the Java Virtual Machine.
    • Jython has been stable for years now, and is a much better-designed language than groovy appears likely to become. Where'sthe love? [blogspot.com]
      • We considered Jython and Groovy when we were adding scripting to an app, since they were the only two scripting languages that came with licenses that were found to be acceptable by our legal department. We went with Groovy. Although the Jython guys angrily insist that they are still working on the project, it's been 3 years since the last stable version of Jython was released. Since then the only release has been in July 2003, and it was an early alpha. Groovy OTOH has a lot of people working on it who hav
        • How long were /. types calling OpenSolaris vaporware? :P You of all people should know that lack of public release does not equate lack of progress.

          At least with Jython you can check the cvs log and see that commits are indeed happening.
        • We considered Jython and Groovy when we were adding scripting to an app, since they were the only two scripting languages that came with licenses that were found to be acceptable by our legal department.

          Why choose at all? Why not use the Bean Scripting Framework [apache.org] (originally from IBM's Alpha Works [ibm.com], IIRC) and let the customer choose whichever language they prefer? BSF lets you embed any scripting language that has a conforming wrapper. BSF wrappers are available for Groovy, Jython, BeanShell, Rhino,

  • Scripting language talk... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MrDomino ( 799876 ) <[mrdomino] [at] [gmail.com]> on Thursday June 30, 2005 @09:19PM (#12956857) Homepage

    From TFA:

    When people talk about scripting languages, they often talk about things that are more toward having a developer be able to slap something together rally quickly and get a demo out the door in minutes. How fast the thing runs or how well the thing scales or how large a system you can build tend to be secondary considerations. ...

    This is nit-picking, I know, but I was under the impression that scripting languages were actually defined by the presence of an actively-running interpreter during execution, making it possible to, e.g., construct and execute statements at runtime with things like PHP's exec() or Lua [lua.org]'s do(file|string) functions (see: http://www.lua.org/pil/8.html [lua.org] for discussion on dofile and Lua's status as a scripting language). I wasn't aware that capability for rapid prototyping or language speed had anything to do with it.

    Taking that into consideration, then, would Java with JIT [wikipedia.org] qualify as an interpreted or compiled language? I'm not sure, myself---any thoughts?

    That aside, a solid interview. Java looks to be pretty interesting; though in its current form it does bug the hell out of me (System.out.println()? Yeah, yeah, OO, but come on, three nested levels of scope just to get to a command line?), its progress has been impressive, and it's an innovative idea.

    • In java's defense (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jbellis ( 142590 )
      Nobody writes Java with Vim or even Emacs JDE for very long. The productivity increase a real IDE like Eclipse provides is phenomenal. System.out.println is 6 or so characters of typing with code completion. (But the real win is being able to do things like say "show me all the places my constructor is invoked." Text searching isn't good enough when you have a million-line project.)

    • Re:Scripting language talk... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Decaff ( 42676 ) on Thursday June 30, 2005 @09:36PM (#12956974)
      This is nit-picking, I know, but I was under the impression that scripting languages were actually defined by the presence of an actively-running interpreter during execution,

      Not necessarily. There have been many languages that have actively running interpreters, and even compilers that are available to modify code at run-time (Smalltalk and LISP are examples), but they are still not considered 'scripting' languages.

      The definition of 'scripting' languages has become blurred.

      Taking that into consideration, then, would Java with JIT qualify as an interpreted or compiled language? I'm not sure, myself---any thoughts?

      Not by itself, as you can't type new expressions or interact with the code once it has started running. There are some interesting tools such as 'BeanShell', which does allow this to be done with Java code.

      (System.out.println()? Yeah, yeah, OO, but come on, three nested levels of scope just to get to a command line?),

      It makes sense once you get used to it. The 'System' class provides globally available (static) objects. One of these is 'out' - an instance of an output object that is bound to 'stdout'. println() is simply a method of that object.

      Previous versions of Java have required code to be explicit about the classes providing such static objects. The latest version (5.0) allows (after the correct 'import' statements) you to write

      out.println();
      • You can compile new code while java is running, so it kinda does sort-of move towards "scriptness" on that dimension. It's not *designed* to do that as a core feature, but it's doable.
        • You can compile new code while java is running, so it kinda does sort-of move towards "scriptness" on that dimension. It's not *designed* to do that as a core feature, but it's doable.

          Interesting point.

          This is exactly how modified JSP (Java Server Pages) files are translated to Java code and then compiled to Java class files while a Web Application is still running.
    • With static imports in 5.0 that has been resolved once you have imported System out.println should be enough :-)
    • (System.out.println()? Yeah, yeah, OO, but come on, three nested levels of scope just to get to a command line?

      TFA makes it clear that making "hello world" easier was not the priority, making large systems easier was.

  • 10 years (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 30, 2005 @09:28PM (#12956918)
    It's been ten years since the official introduction of Java

    And the damn thing still hasn't finished loading.
  • So you're executing script in a JVM?
    Gosling: Yeah. All the Java libraries are available to things written in Groovy. And Java applications can use Groovy. They can incorporate Groovy scriptlets.

    Scriptable Java! Why wasn't I informed?!? 0__0

    Does anybody have any practical experience/advice using Groovy in a production environment?
  • Maybe its the competetion from C#/ Open java (jcg), or the fact that the java programmers seem to be listening to developers http://www.java.net/ [java.net] . Or maybe its eclipse which is a great ide. It seems java development is picking up steam of late. More people I know are now doing java than c , and thats a good change (&*&*&**&&*&!!!).

  • It's all about the sandbox (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lonedroid ( 888148 ) on Thursday June 30, 2005 @10:48PM (#12957451)
    Of the thousands of security holes that exists, on every OS, how many are due to buffer overflow (buffer overrun)?

    There are other attacks, but most of the "exploits" are due to a buffer overflow (90% of all exploits? 95%?). Heck, if I'm am not mistaken it was a buffer overflow that put an end to the "x years without a hole in the default OpenBSD install" slogan :(

    Now how many buffer overflow did happen in the JVM in the last 10 years?

    I think the answer is zero. And if it's not zero, it's only some implementation of the JVM that was at fault.

    For me it's all about the sandbox. Java, Jython, Groovy, you-name-it... I don't care. As long as it targets the JVM. It's tried, lean, mean, rock solid technology. You just ain't escaping it.

    In TFA (yup, I did read it), Gosling says that "The only serious divide is they (C# / .Net) have this unsafe mode which they use a lot. One of the principles I believe in is there shouldn't be an unsafe mode."

    That's a good principle to believe in.

  • Java is practical for some applications (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wheelbarrow ( 811145 ) on Thursday June 30, 2005 @10:54PM (#12957496)
    Everytime java is discussed on slashdot, I'm amazed at how some junior leaguers try to dismiss it because they can point out one application where java is a poor choice.

    There are some applications where it does not make sense to implement in java. However, I say that java is a great choice for the top layer of a web application server stack. There are a lot of web apps that take the form of:

    1. Gather data from one or more databases.
    2. Perform some consolidation and express the output in html.

    In this example, java is a consolidator of data from disparate data sources. It needs to hang on to several network connections and do some simple IO but it does not need to burn the CPU at 100% because it spends most of it's time blocked on IO. Java is a great choice for applications like this because there is a very large and active community working to make java dynamic web serving better and better. Every year your organization can, for free, upgrade to a new version of java and simple app server like Tomcat and reap the rewards of the communities improvements. Also, in my experience with server applications, the promise of portability is real. I've ported from windows to solaris and then to linux without changing the java application.
    • Yes, it's practical for some applications. Just like Delphi, or Eiffel, or Haskell. It's a decent, somewhat specialised language that's worth knowing and using where appropriate. However, that's not the public perception of it, that's not the PHB perception of it. Java is an enormous triumph of marketing. People think things are better because they're java. People think arbitrary programs would be better if rewritten in java, where it only makes them worse. I will stop dissing java when people stop thinking
  • Java is very important in the research community. I have been a grad student for past 3-4-5 yrs (..have lost count by now :) but I have never used any language other than Java for my projects/experiments . Be it simulation requiring a Knowledgebase of million RDF triples or be it a Medical Imaging Software to be used by Physicians.. it does it all.

    Somehow 'application researchers' like me are fascinated by the extent of its use.. (drawing nice GUIs or plotting graph with existing Jars)

    With regards to ques

  • The little train that should (Score:3, Insightful)

    by el_womble ( 779715 ) on Friday July 01, 2005 @03:46AM (#12958755) Homepage
    Java should be great, but it isn't. For all the 'writeonce, run anywhere' gumpf that the marketing department came up with it failed in the most important test: usability. I can code pretty well in most languages, but as I work with Java, and was trained in Java at Uni, its the language I think most clearly in... unfortunately.

    The fact is I can code a quick app in Java on my Mac, compile and send it my Dad on his Wintel and he won't have a clue what to do with it. I then have to spend 5 minutes on the phone explaining either how to install the JRE, or how to run it from the CLI. Whats worse is that once its running, it looks like I can't code, as Java, by default runs noticably slower as you wait for the JRE to bootstrap and then for the JIT to get all the important bits compiled. Why would I do that to myself?

    Java is a great concept. But it has systematically failed on the desktop. What I want is a write once, compile anywhere. Same scenario, I want to have a compiler that I can target a Wintel platform from my mac and just send my dad the executable or installer, so all he has to do is double click - like he would any other app, and it run as well as a VB app (ie a little slower than native is fine). I would keep a few things from Java. I love GC for quick hack apps, fine grained memeory management has its place, but you can often feel like you reinventing the wheel, and its a gapping whole for the script kiddies to drive their payload through. I also love the central API. I can see the purists arguing against exceptions, but they do make debugging very easy, and they're not that expensive really. I also like the ease you can do threads. I don't like the GUI performance or the end user experience.

    If MS isn't going to play ball, and support various runtime environments from a fresh install, or if Java continue on insisting on a 20MB JRE download I can't see anyway around the byte code problem except to distribute binaries. Qt is a good start. Mono and C# are good candidates, but to be honest I'd be tempted to take Java, bolt Qt onto it, and use GCC to create targeted binaries. Is that out of the question?

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