Departure Of The Java Hyper-Enthusiasts? 678
TomH writes "Bruce Eckel has an article at Aritma, where he posits that 'The Java hyper-enthusiasts have left the building, leaving a significant contingent of Java programmers behind, blinking in the bright lights without the constant drumbeat of boosterism.' Has the previous hype of Java and J2EE moved on to Ruby (on Rails) and Python?"
Switched to decaf, did they. (Score:5, Funny)
Next Question (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Next Question (Score:5, Funny)
Doesn't it get to be on rails too? Or is it going to be limited to that accursed "rubber wheel" we've been hearing about?
This "Ruby on Rails" sounds like a monopoly in the making.
/. should be wary
Re:Next Question (Score:4, Funny)
Ajax doesn't need rails. It flies, both defying the laws of physics and generating a thumping Queen soundtrack in the neighbourhood that makes your car stereo weep with envy.
Re:Next Question (Score:5, Insightful)
Ruby (on Rails) -- yes
Python -- no (sorry)
And the hype will come back to java in about a year or two when people realize groovy has all the benefits of ruby but with a bigger set of production quality libraries (all those from java) and that it can be compiled too.
This is actually the most exciting time for java in a long time:
a) scripting - groovy (JSR 241) & beanshell (JSR 274) & bindings eg for PHP (JSR 223) & BSF
b) New lightweight frameworks are blossoming (eg spring, hibernate, webwork, EJB3)
c) Aspect Orient Programming is blossoming in java (AspectJ, spring, JBoss)
d) Tools growth -- Eclipse plugins, Ant tasks, JUnit extensions, velocity & xdoclet, XML utilities
When groovy hits 1.0 and the people who left for Ruby start realizing they miss all the java libraries, the hype will come back. RoR is popular for two reasons -- Ruby has a very efficient syntax and Rails innovated with the "convention over configuration" idea. Groovy solves the first problem and the second one will be adopted where appropriate by the framework wonks.
Ruby's downsides are it's a raw young language (weird errors, its slow, small set of libraries, and poor tools support). In the end these negatives and the innovative things happening in java will win out.
What is Java? (Score:3, Insightful)
For some it is the byte compiled oo language, these people chose it because it looked like C++ but with no explicit pointers and a GC.
For some it is the platform, in other words they liked the large library of classes that came with it like swing/awt, math, networking.
Others liked it because of the technologies built on top of it or with it: J2EE (EJBs etc.), Applets, Servelets
Yet others liked it just because it is the most port
GWBASIC still rules! (Score:5, Insightful)
10 PRINT "TEXT"
then you would do
GWBASIC FILE.BAS
Beats "python file.py" every time...
Fake arguments involving hello world apps should not be taken as a way of comparing languages.
Re:GWBASIC still rules! (Score:3, Interesting)
I, like many other people out there, want to see this "hello world" problem solved in any new language that I am learning for illustration purposes and because it gives a feel about the language, for example: what are the delimiters?, are any variables declared?, are there any object being instantiated?, is there a need to import any libr
Hype? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hype? (Score:5, Insightful)
2. There are no idiot VC's handing out cash to start Marimba-ish companies based on vague ideas about using Python and Ruby.
3. Python and Ruby don't have an easily-understandable if not really accurate hook comparable to Java's "write once, run anywhere" hype.
Re:Hype? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hype? (Score:5, Insightful)
No other language has ever managed to pull off what Java has. In fact, it was the driving force behind the modern push for cross-platform languages, complete (and free) API libraries, and Object Oriented Programming. I look back at days before Java, and they seem like the dark ages of computers.
If Java has lost its hype, it's only because it's already accomplished all its goals.
Re:Hype? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hype? (Score:3, Interesting)
Python predates Java. When I program in Java, it's always a pain to replicate the functionality I get with Python's default libraries. Python comes with "batteries included."
> it was the first dynamic web server technology that used a multithreaded model in addition to runtime-compiled code (bye-bye CGI)
Perhaps, I don't know early Python history this well.
> it was the first language with reflection designed into its c
Re:Hype? (Score:3, Funny)
What the hell does that mean?
Re:Hype? (Score:3, Funny)
When I write Python I feel like I'm writing COBOL.
If Java were to stop paying the bills and I couldn't get a job doing Ruby, I would rather code C#, TCL or Perl than do Pybol.
Re:Hype? (Score:3, Insightful)
>Python predates Java. When I program in Java, it's always a pain to replicate the functionality I get with Python's default libraries. Python comes with "batteries included."
I think the two packages in Java that really differentiated it were java.sql and java.rmi. It gave you an API to work with numerous databases on numerous platforms. That is still tough to find in other libraries. RMI made it easier to distribute l
Re:Hype? (Score:4, Interesting)
No, Sun's marketing department should praised for the hype. Sun leveraged Netscape to rename whatever they called javascript to be called javascript even though it had nothing to do with java. Sun started calling everything java except coffee. Javastations, javaos, hotjava, $300 Linux computers at Walmart that had the "Java Desktop System", which I cannot figure out if Java is in it or not, I think its just Gnome.
Java's supposed to be hype was because it was a cross-platform, write once, run anywhere language and portable across systems with compiled bytecode that could be run in a jvm. Somewhere I have heard that it was more like write once, debug everywhere. Java has almost died for GUI apps because the implementation did not live up to the hype. Java is now mostly found in app severs and whatnot as a middleware between web severs and databases.
Java's implementation has caused me headaches as a system administrator and computer user for 10 years now, and I've been over the hype for quite some time.
I have no beef with the language. I dabbled in it years ago, but didn't find any use for it, but that has nothing to do with my opinion of the implementation. Its the fact that I have had so many issues with it over the years that has caused my opinion. These issues have been Linux support, Matlab problems due to java, Oracle's universal installer that had issues because of java, Sun's "web installers" that have had problems, Netscape crashing for years because of java, etc.
From what I hear, Java has fulfilled a real demand in the app server market, and I'm fine with that. I don't do that kind of work anymore, so I have no involvement with it. But when I did, we had java problems, but this was years ago.
Personally, I believe that the hype is still floating around as witnessed by:
If Java has lost its hype, it's only because it's already accomplished all its goals.
I'm not sure what the goals were. I was under the assumption that it was a cross platform application environment, completely with a cross platform GUI. If this was the goal, I am unaware of an example of its success. There are only a handful of examples. I believe Eclipse might be a success, but I'm unsure if it is entirely written in java or not. Apple has a java control program for their raid array that mostly works, and there is Azureus, but I personally don't like that either because of its heavy resource requirements, and it would not work on my Mac with two users in two different accounts using it at the same time. Oh, I forgot about OpenOffice. Again, I don't think that is entirely written in java, and I simply do not own enough of a computer to run OO, but I tried. The document that I was trying to open was created on a 700MHz or so PC, but I could not do anything with it on my PowerBook G4. I asked the person to simply export it to a CSV so I could work with the spreadsheet.
Being that computers are so fast, if Java was a working cross platform GUI language and free, I don't see why at least 90% of the programs available for computers are not Java. If I owned a company that wrote a GUI program, and if there was a cross platform GUI language and implementation that worked, I certainly would use it. Even if portability was not a desired goal, why not open the door to 100% marketshare with one writing?
Re:Hype? (Score:3, Interesting)
Java apps run very fast if they are written correctly. Limewire and Intellij Idea both run very well on my ibook. I've even tried a quake 2 port in java. Works great.
As for problems with java
Re:Hype? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think your reasons for the hype really hit the nail on the head. Before Java, programming languages were just languages and usually didn't come with a huge standard API. Especially one that was object orientated , cross platform, and was really powerful.
The concept is so good that Microsoft did their best to copy all the good things about Java (almost everything from Java and a few from VB) with C#. I don't think we would have C# or the .NET framework if it wer
Re:Hype? (Score:3, Insightful)
No it didn't. ASP was interpreted up until ASP.NET.
Servlets were a world changing technology compared to CGI. JSP's just-in-time compiling kicked ASP up between its ears in performance. Add runtime safety to the mix (you can't crash your entire server application by GPFing or dividing by zero) and you have the makings of a revolutionary product for its time.
Re:Hype? (Score:3, Informative)
Actually ASP was server side compiled and cached long before ASP.NET...
Re:Hype? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you call those comprehensive libraries, then I have a bridge to sell you. The 1.1 library (which was where Java first started taking off) had such features as a standard SQL API, advanced I/O capabilities, remote method invocation, GUI support, image handling, standardized complex data structures, cryptographic support, text processing, data compression, and many other features lacking in libc/STL. The Java 2 library and on added a metric boatload of useful new APIs (XML, CORBA, collections, XSL, Logging, Registry, RegEx, Directories, Sound, MIDI, etc.), guaranteed to be on every platform Java was. That's one hell of a feature!
That's mostly a web server issue,
Serlvets and JSP are "standard" Java libraries that made the language well suited to the task. It's irrelevant if it's a "web server" issue or not. It directly impacted its popularity.
and it's technically untrue. You could write a multithreaded C program to handle web requests using pipes or other IPC mechanisms.
(rolls eyes) Well then, KDE wasn't the first Open Source desktop because I could have written one first!
That's a stupid argument, sir. Part of Java's popularity was that Servlet and JSP technology was the first technology on the market with these features. If someone wrote a customer server to do the same prior to Java, it didn't help the rest of the market at all.
Again, what? All functional languages support reflection because functions are first class objects.
Riiiggghhht. So let me just compile this code here, and then have this program I wrote a few months back over here automatically investigate the functions and run them.
No wait, I can't do that. The compiler threw away that information after compile. Plus I need to write a very special loader to get the code into executable memory to begin with. And it's platform dependent.
Java is inherently reflective at runtime. Native languages only keep that information for DLLs and the like.
You looked in the wrong dark corners, oblivious to the superior (yes, even to Java) functional languages that, true, have been ignored by "mainstream" users, even in computer science.
Another poor argument. I said that the other languages failed to bring many features mainstream like Java did. You agree but state that I'm wrong. How does that work, sir?
API (Score:3, Insightful)
If you call those comprehensive libraries, then I have a bridge to sell you. The 1.1 library (which was where Java first started taking off) had such features as
That's because Java is not a language with a standard library: it's a development platform, almost an OS, with an associate standard language with which you reference the imense API. It's almost the same as a sh script accessing the P
Re:Hype? (Score:3, Insightful)
In the past 10 years, there have been at least 6 or 7 big 'waves' that have hit, and if you tried to follow them all, you would never really get to know any of the languages.
What about saying: "Well, this really works for me. It may not be the latest and greatest...but today's latest and greatest is going to be tomorrow's old dirty shoe. So I'll just stick with t
Re:Hype? (Score:3, Insightful)
I suppose that depends on what you mean by "basic web site". A good architect always tries to plan for any likely scenario. Quite often, that "basic web site" may be bound for a long life as a "not so basic website". If you tie yourself to PHP or ColdFusion, you may find yourself with serious performance and scalability problems inside two years. That's not a good situation to be in, and could have been prevented. (I've seen this happen in WAY too m
Re:Hype? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, my CS classes started out with Java. I don't want to start a huge debate, but I think it's a decent learning language, especially good for 100 level courses. Of course, you should move on past that... We ended up having a good mix of five or six languages while dabling in a couple others, but starting with Java was a good way to introduce the concepts of OOPLs without the added difficulty C++ brings with it.
Re:Hype? (Score:3, Informative)
I'm guessing you probably mean procedural programming [wikipedia.org], since as the poster above said, what you're describing isn't functional programming [wikipedia.org].
Re:Hype? (Score:3, Insightful)
maybe to ruby, not python (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:maybe to ruby, not python (Score:2)
I'd personally like a "Python Application Server" that's on a level to compete with J2EE.
Re:maybe to ruby, not python (Score:2)
What's more error-prone about Python as compared to Ruby? I'm curious because I've read a lot of discussions on the differences between the languages, and it's never been an issue that's come up once.
Re:maybe to ruby, not python (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:maybe to ruby, not python (Score:3, Informative)
Eh? That's like saying languages that have semicolons on the end of lines are more bug-prone because programmers sometimes forget a semicolon. Incorrect whitespacing and missing semicolons are both syntax errors that are caught at compile-time, not run-time, so in practise this is entir
Re:maybe to ruby, not python (Score:3, Insightful)
Run time errors are much much badder than compile time errors.
Given that i've worked at only one place where I didn't have to work with people who would make this kind of error, I'd much rather stick with a language that will let me avoid having to debug th
Re:maybe to ruby, not python (Score:3, Interesting)
OK, everyone knows Java's a nonstarter these days. Ack, why did they kill it with Swing instead of a decent lightweight GUI (like wxWidgets [wxwidgets.org] or FLTK [fltk.org] or something)? And they never got the memory usage under control.
But why Ruby and not python? What sort of errors is python prone to that ruby avoids? We have a bunch of python code here (scons [scons.org] and other stuff) and a bunch of older perl, and I'm relucta
Re:maybe to ruby, not python (Score:5, Informative)
If you're writing a web app, Swing is an irrelevance. You won't be needing it and it won't get in your way. Java remains an excellent choice for serious web apps which you're going to want to maintain later. I agree with you that Swing is a horrible mess, but as someone who only writes web apps it doesn't wory me at all.
Re:maybe to ruby, not python (Score:3, Informative)
Re:maybe to ruby, not python (Score:3, Interesting)
Quiet you fool! My employers and clients might hear you! Then what would I do for a job, eh?
Seriously, I have six years commercial experience of writing web apps in Java. Would I recomend it for absolutely every situation? No, of course not. Is it categorically a non-starter? No, of course not.
The right tool for the job; Java has its place, and to deny this with the blanket assertion that it's "a nonstarter these days" is to reveal a closed mind.
Re:maybe to ruby, not python (Score:5, Insightful)
1. I've started using Turbogears and its is wonderful. Easy to setup, very easy to understand, and very powerful. I cannot comment on it with respect to Rails, but as far as I know it is inspired by similar ideas. One major advantage of Turbogears is that it is built out of several existing projects that have had lots of use and development, SQLObject (for Object-Relational mapping) and CherryPy.
2. I can't imagine any reason to believe Python would be more error-prone than Ruby. From a language standpoint they are very similar. However, Ruby is a somewhat immature language compared to Python. Standard library, 3rd party support and performance are all lacking in Ruby. I'm sure these things will catch up in time, but for now it's a much newer environment and it shows.
Re:maybe to ruby, not python (Score:3, Insightful)
As much as I hear this regurgitated ad nauseum in the comments here it still makes me chuckle.
Just did a simple search on a few different cities on monster.com and it seems that there's about 10 or 11 times more positions available to java programmers than ruby and python combined.
I've done a little python and don't mind it so much, and have only read a few tutorials on ruby and ruby on rails. They both seem ok, but neither have a syntax anything like wh
No "serious development" on Python? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't suppose you've heard of this company [google.com] before?
There are dozens of others, too. I'll cite this page [python.org] as a source, though it is by no means comprehensive.
Re:maybe to ruby, not python (Score:3, Interesting)
I work for a large tech. company in the UK and use Python for _a lot_ of my development. Google use it too: "Python has been an important part of Google since the beginning, and remains so as the system grows and evolves. Today dozens of Google engineers use Python, and we're looking for more people with skills in this language." said Peter Norvig, director of search quality at Google, Inc. Go to jobserve.co.uk and type Python into the sea
Re:maybe to ruby, not python (Score:5, Informative)
Re:maybe to ruby, not python (Score:3, Funny)
So what you're saying is that Java is being ridden out of town on a Rail?
Python hype does not exist (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Python hype does not exist (Score:5, Informative)
Back to the topic: based on what I'd heard about how great python was, I'd say python *IS* overhyped. It has its place where it does very well; it's a nice little scripting language. Better than sh or perl in a lot of cases. But it is not even in the same league as java for medium-to-large projects. I'd heard a lot of people call python a better replacement for java, and it just isn't.
Re:Python hype does not exist (Score:3, Insightful)
Just use some naming conventions. Every sane project does. Personally, I use "_protected_member" and "__private_member". It does the trick. And really, if your python dev can't fo
Re:Python hype does not exist (Score:4, Interesting)
You could look at it the other way round; if there's a mistake in a Java class, you can't easily work around it. And I can think of two recent incidents where this has been the case for me.
The speed issue is a factor, but I personally can't see why anyone would prefer Java over Python for developing commercial projects. Java's limitations are pretty frustrating sometimes, and there are times when you need to copy-and-paste segments of Java that could be avoided in Python. Java's simplistic and long-winded syntax means you have to do things the long way more often than would be convinient.
How about this quote? (Score:5, Funny)
My worst write-only nightmare...
*runs screaming from building*
Author's Thoughts on O'Reilly (Score:5, Interesting)
In short, no (Score:5, Interesting)
Java is faster than Ruby and as bloated as it may be, there are a ton of J2EE applications you can purchase and modify to suit your own needs. Not to mention the plethora of development environments - hibernate, JMS, JNDI, torque etc etc. ROR is nice but let's get real - ruby isn't as fast and the few applications around ruby aren't nearly as mature as Java. Having said that I'm hoping Java will get opened up by Sun but I'm not holding my breath.
Disingenuous (Score:5, Insightful)
Please. For years the Java wonks have been calling performance a strawman argument, usually followed with "get a faster machine".
Now they're using exactly the same performance argument to argue against what is now one of the premier up-and-coming programming environments? Now the table turns; if ROR or my fave the Python-based TurboGears [turbogears.org] is too slow -- well then, get a faster machine. That argument worked with Java; now it works with Java's replacements.
Re:Disingenuous (Score:3, Interesting)
Hehe...thanks for the laugh.
Rails is basically a hobby-ist environment. It's useful for internal projects that don't have to be performant or scale up to more than a couple of concurrent users, but beyond that, it's tough to compare it favorably with Java,
Re:In short, no (Score:3, Insightful)
Slashdot Libs (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Slashdot Libs (Score:3, Informative)
No (Score:3, Insightful)
Java isn't going anywhere for a while. It is a fantastic language for large scale projects simply because its very easy to write maintainable code AND its buzzword compliant. That latter fact alone will keep it afloat years after it is truly dead.
Don't get me wrong, I love [sf.net] Python and I have really high hopes for it in the coming years, but to declare that "enthusiasts" have left Java, seems silly
time to make fun of them again (Score:3, Insightful)
They ALWAYS do
Not this discussion again. (Score:5, Insightful)
ROR having (more) hyper-enthousiasts only means it's newer.
Has the previous hype of Java and J2EE moved on? (Score:5, Insightful)
about 10 years ago:
Cast off those old tired relational databases! It's all object databases! It new! It's modern! It's chic!
C++? So passe'! The greatest thing is Java! So trendy, so fresh!
In the past few years:
Object databases are not with it! XML databases are the way to go! So modern! So *you*!
Now:
It's Ruby on Rails! What are you thinking using that dingy old Java! So... last season! Step into the 21st century!
etc.
The only thing I can think of which is more fad driven are diet books and management crazes (E.g. '7 habits of Effective Plan Z 2 Minute TQM EManagement iCommerce Gurus for Dummies (but were afraid to ask)').
Yet another reason to leave IT.
No, the fashion industry has fads well organized (Score:5, Interesting)
You thought fashion fads just happened? It's much more organized than that. The "in" colors for US fashion are chosen 22 months in advance, by the little-known Color Association of the United States [colorassociation.com]. Color forecasts are issued to subscribers, and the textile mills, dye manufacturers, and clothiers start to gear up for the coming seasons. Because there are some long manufacturing lead times to produce fabrics in huge volume, the style decisions have to be organized.
"Pinks and fuchsia were everywhere in spring 2003; CAUS members knew this in spring of 2001."
Here's the activewear color plan for 2006-2007:
Color changes in fashion do not happen by accident.
Re:No, the fashion industry has fads well organize (Score:3, Informative)
Thus they're no different from Gartner pronouncing "Small Form Factor PC's will be hot next year!" or "This will be the year of Ta
VB for the 21st Century (Score:5, Insightful)
However, I don't think either have even registered at all in the commerical job market, so comparisons to Java are especially silly. As long as the Java programming market is so huge, there will be plenty of hype.
Re:VB for the 21st Century (Score:4, Informative)
Java is different in that it has static type checking, but it also has dynamic typing constructs like dynamic_cast which can raise runtime type erorrs, just like Ruby. Static type checking is handy to decrease the number of dynamic type errors, but I don't see how it's any more *secure* than dynamic typing.
All of Ruby, Python, and Java are in a different class than C/C++ which don't guarantee anything about object types.
Re:VB for the 21st Century (Score:3, Informative)
But that gets to the heart of the issue -- Solutions developers learned the hard way with VB that runtime type-checking significantly hurts the "scalability" of a development project, both in size and # of developers. But now that VB has been written off and forgotten, so have the lessons, and a new generation is about to relearn them with new and cool languages.
Re:VB for the 21st Century (Score:3, Interesting)
I, like lots of other dynamic language proponents, come from a background in type-safe languages but eventually I realized that in most cases static type checking did nothing but slow me down. It doesn't matter if your code is correct at compile time, it only matters if it's correct when it's being used and the reality is that type-safe and dynamic language users verify this the same way, wth auto
Re:VB for the 21st Century (Score:3, Funny)
Nope. Still here. (Score:3, Interesting)
Python is an ok language but its interpreter is slow, and that's coming from a Java guy.
So, in summary, suck it, I'll keep writing Servlets for Tomcat.
It's gone to .NET (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the hype has moved on to C# and
I don't blame people for getting excited over
I don't need a drumbeat to follow (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope. I will have another order of java thank you (Score:5, Informative)
Java is stable, mature, and scalable, right out of the package. Python is nice for small projects and scripts but Java's strength is not the language. Its the api's and framework as well as the ton of third party software for it. For large sites Java is still the best way to go. Especially for ecommerce sites for businesses. Php is not there yet and is quite inconsistant with a immaturish feeling. Results vary drastically depending on who wrote what. There are tons of third party java objects and programs that co-exist and integrate with your java based servlets.
Java seems to have found its niche since multiplatform desktop applets never took off. Not to mention java is pleasant to debug and the tools are nice.
Ruby (on Rails) and Python? (Score:3, Interesting)
I would imagine that .NET is gaining much more of the Java base of applications than Ruby and Python combined. That is no disprespect to those two fine languages. Microsoft wrote .NET to compete with Java, and that is exactly what it is doing. I am working on a project right now where the last version of the app was written in Java, and the new in C#. When interviewing for jobs a couple of years ago, I think I interviewed with at least 5 companies that were doing the same. This is hardly scientific evidence, but I have a much easier time believing that companies would switch from Java to C# than to other languages, if they are going to switch.
It's the compromise that is so important (Score:5, Insightful)
C++, which Bruce used to love, made *no* compromises, except to run C code. It wanted to include anything possible as long as it was fast, and it did except that it was so freakin complicated that even to this day sometimes compilers can't interpret the source correctly. In the same way, Ruby (and Smalltalk) also do not make compromises. They say 'everything is an object' even though that means computations are 20x slower even after decades of optimization. They say 'no type checking' (if it acts like a duck it is) even though it is pretty much a necessity for large or reliable systems.
Regardless of the level of hype, the real world of programming is about compromises. It's about Java, and C#. Sure there will be plenty of work at the edges for Ruby/Smalltalk and C++/C, but Java-like languages will be the center of programming for decades yet.
"20x slower" (Score:3, Interesting)
Jacques Surveyor summarizes [theopensourcery.com] Doug Bagley's benchmark opus [debian.org] to shed light on this important comparison:
"What emerges from examining the Bagley Benchmarks is that programming languages are breaking out into 3 speed tiers for raw computing power:"
1. Compiled native code languages C, C++, GNAT Ada95, OCaml are the fastest. No surprise there.
2. Byte code engines such as Java, Mono C# and Python average 7-12 times slower than the first tier...
3. Interpreters such as Ruby, JavaScript, PHP and Rexx
time to move on (Score:3, Insightful)
What are the problems?
First, Java never turned into an open standard like C or C++. Initially, it looked like there were going to be dozens of independent implementations besides Sun's and Microsoft's, but they have all disappeared. The only way to run a compliant Java platform these days is with Sun's implementation or one of its derivatives (IBM, Oracle, Apple).
Second, Java is focused on niche markets; most of Java's real-world use seems to be in enterprise apps, a market segment that by itself is not enough to sustain a general purpose programming language (Java may well be the new Cobol).
Third, related to the above points, Java has failed to evolve sufficiently. Sun has failed to address concerns and needs of the scientific and numerical communities. And many of Sun's changes have been hampered by backwards compatibility with the JVM (e.g., genericity in Java 1.5 is deeply flawed). And Java never acquired a reasonable native code interface, keeping it out of many applications.
Java has made a valuable contribution by demonstrating to many working programmers that features like garbage collection, reflection, and runtime safety are useful, but those features are essentially 1970's technology. Sun has failed to evolve Java beyond that, and that's why it's time for other languages and other stewards to take over. Fortunately, there are many other excellent languages being created. The Java language itself (but not the platform) will probably be with us for a long time, although probably running in many environments other than the JVM.
Java had the potential to be a lot more than just a transitional language from C/C++ to modern, safe, reflective languages, but Sun unfortunately has failed to realize that potential fully.
Re:time to move on (Score:3, Insightful)
So then is Hashtable<B,B> a subtype of Hashtable<B,A> and Hashtable<A,B>, which is multi
With All Due Respect to Bruce E. (Score:5, Insightful)
The bottom line is that the majority of programmers are bad programmers. These move to the easiest fad where the majority of people go. And that's not a horrible thing, it's just a thing most senior engineers don't care much about. Because, and I say this after interviewing tons and tons of developers, real devs dig deep on their own, and do not 'rely' on the work of others. And before I get flamed here, it's not to say they don't use the work of others, it's just that I've seen many seniors spend hours trying to figure out how something works, rather than spend two minutes asking for help.
p.s. I think Bruce Eckel is awesome -- "Thinking in Java" is rockin'
Re:With All Due Respect to Bruce E. (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorta off topic, but can you explain how this
I've seen many seniors spend hours trying to figure out how something works, rather than spend two minutes asking for help.
is a good thing?
What if the two minute explanation includes the fundamental answer to the question? I think a good developer (regardless of years of experience) knows when to ask a question and knows when to improve knowledge in an area. If would be quite unhappy as a manager to pay a developer for hours of research if the answer could hav
Re:With All Due Respect to Bruce E. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:With All Due Respect to Bruce E. (Score:3, Informative)
I think you forgot to mention that "Thinking in Java" [mindview.net] is also a free download, no strings attached. The C++ version of this book, "Thinking in C++" [mindview.net] (also a free download), helped me "get" OOP.
Another Religious War (Score:5, Insightful)
Just another religious war.
C++ vs. Java
C vs. C++
C++ vs. Smalltalk
Lisp vs. everybody
Perl vs. PHP
Javascript vs. VBscript
VB vs. C++
Delphi vs. VB
Haven't we moved past this language is great but this language sucks yet?
You use the tool that will get the job done the best and easiest. If you tried hard enough, you could probably use the Lotus 123 macro language (showing my age) to write a web app, but would you want too? With someone of these languages, Python, Perl, PHP, Ruby, Java they are similar enough that they are all good enough for the same jobs. Languages are tools that programmers use to write applications. Personally, I like PHP and Ruby but I'm not knocking those that like Phython or Java.
Why knock that someone likes another language?
Why another religious war over Ruby vs. Java?
You all need (Score:5, Insightful)
That's exactly my attitude, too. Couldn't agree more.
You know what I liked most about the tech bubble bursting? All of the loudmouths, charlatans, and marketriods went elsewhere for a while. I got to do some real work for a change instead of building demos.
So the hypemeisters have a new favorite platform? Great! I can stop reading the slashdot posts from anit-hype nazis who only love to yell at marketriods. A pox on all of your houses, I say.
I've moved on to python but it sucks in many ways (Score:3, Informative)
The turbogears python webapp framework is a nice bit of tool integration for rapid development.
Python itself is a mixed blessing compared to Java.
On the one hand, it has very nice compact, in-built syntax handling of multiplicity (lists, dictionaries, tuples) as all powerful languages should have and java still lacks.
It has other simplicities and flexibilities that are nice.
However, the "pythonic" philosophy of "anything is allowed if you try hard enough
could be re-termed "moronic". It's just bad design to have multiple ways of
doing the same low-level thing in a language. Complexity multiplies, as we all
know.
Also, Python is not as platform agnostic as Java in issues such as byte-ordering
in data structures etc, nor is it as secure as java in this respect, because
java does not specify the representation in memory of its data objects, making them
more difficult to sniff.
Java also has other code security features that python to my knowledge lacks, such as class bytecode verification,
class loader security, etc.
Finally and importantly, while Java's (and its standard libraries') documentation is only moderately detailed, at least it is consistent and pretty complete.
The same cannot be said for python documentation, which is sloppy and incomplete, and
inconsistent in places.
So is python "progress" from Java? In some O-O and functional programming language respects
yes, but in platform quality, simplicity, platform-agnosticism, learnability, and security,
no.
We still need a new language that combines the best of these breeds.
How about JRuby and Jython? (Score:4, Interesting)
Granted, some of the frameworks, like Stackless and Rails, may not run on these tools, YET ... but there's really no reason to start totally from scratch and throw out a nice VM and a nice set of libraries...
Re:good riddance (Score:2, Insightful)
Please explain your loathing of java.
Re:What about LAMP (Score:2)
Re:nothing (Score:3, Funny)
Re:nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
Cost of CS Professor = CP = ~$100,000 (only salary, does not include facilities, offices, electricity, water, equipment, payroll taxes, support staff, campus police, repairs due to soccer hooligans, etc) = ~$50,000 per semester.
Number of Classes taught by Prof = NCP = ~3 per semester
Cost of in-state tuition = CIT = ~$4000 per semester
Classes taken by undergrad = CTU = ~4 per semester, minimum
Students per class = SPC = Between 10 and 200, say 30 average.
so we have (CIT * SPC)/CTU = FPC = $30,000 to fund any given class, call this FPC, or Funds per Class
FPC * NCP = $90,000 in Funds per professor per semester.
After the Profs salary that leaves $40,000 per professor to run the school.
Now Consider that any given Prof is likely to have several graduate students, either on fellowship or as TA's. At a good school this will be about a 1-1 ratio, so 1 grad student for every professor. Grad students make about 18,000 per year, plus a tuition waiver. Generally there are actually more grad students than professors, but lets pretend that isn't the case.
So $40,000 - $18,000 = $22,000.
That $22,000 per professor left over certainly won't cover even the cost to maintain the facilities at the university, not to mention computer labs, libraries, shuttle bus, payrol taxes, health care, internet connection, etc etc etc.
Then there are the support staff, secretaries, grounds crew, deans, etc etc.
Next add on millions per year in renovation and new building construction. To that you can add the cost of all the University staff, such as the people who review applications, the people who work in the bursars office, and so on and on and on.
Real Bottom Line: The University wants to teach you to be a Computer Scientist, not a code monkey. If you want to learn C++ so badly pick up a book and learn it on your own. Most professors will be very glad to answer your (legitimate) questions on any subject relating to their field. If you can't manage to learn it on your own, then give up and major in PolySci or Communications, because you aren't going to make it in teh real world.
CS Departments shouldn't use proprietary languages (Score:3, Interesting)
CS departments, I think, should be using Python for instruction. Not only is Python an easier language to learn, but it's more
Re:CS Departments shouldn't use proprietary langua (Score:5, Informative)
A university cannot make a programming language choice that introduces unnecessary barriers to blind students. Python does so.
For programming courses in universities, maybe Ruby is a better choice than Java. Maybe Perl even is. But Python is not, because of this one simple feature that completely rules the language out, in my book, regardless of how good the language is otherwise.
Re:CS Departments shouldn't use proprietary langua (Score:3, Interesting)
Nope. I won't agree to that, for one simple reason -- whitespace has meaning in Python.
A university cannot make a programming language choice that introduces unnecessary barriers to blind students. Python does so. Wow, thanks for that bit of news. I guess I will have to tell the blind guy at work [sourceforge.net] he can't use Python [python.org].
Re:A Humble Note (Score:5, Insightful)
ML has a deep, solid formal foundation with type safety and provable semantics.
Prolog has a foundation in inductive logic.
Lisp is based in lambda calculus.
SQL is rooted in set theory.
Now, Java may be the first commercially popular marriage of mainstream (C++) syntax which at least has provable type safety. That's a good thing in itself.
Re:A Humble Note (Score:3, Insightful)
Smalltalk belongs in that list you site- ML, Prolog, Lisp. Especially notable because Smalltalk is where Java gets most of its features.
Best slashdot troll all day (Score:5, Funny)
Well done, sir, I salute you.
-- RLJ
Re:A Humble Note (Score:4, Insightful)
People always brag about their million-line
Java is a nice VM and a solid, mindbogglingly featureful library - but a mediocre language.
Re:A Humble Note (Score:5, Insightful)
For those of us awake at the beginning of Java, Java was anything but a joke. It was almost like manna sent from heaven.
The alternatives were some pretty poor bundled C compilers, GCC 2.x.x, and some pretty lame C++ implementations.
It really gets frustrating waiting five years for someone to actually come up with a C++ compiler that does templates correctly.
> Java is a nice VM....but a mediocre language
If you believe this go treat yourself to GCC 2.9.x. Try to do something with it. It truly sucked.
No.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Bear in mind that most of the "features" not included from C++ were examples of very poor language design.
There are some omissions from Java which are unfortunate, like pre-conditions and post-conditions, however most of the omissions were not present in Java's predecessors.
The only features of C++ which are lacking in Java and which arguably should be included are: operator overloading, and some variant of the const keyword (although not exactly like C++ const, which is hideously overloaded).
No serious programmer ever brags about million-line programs, or claims that lines of code somehow correlates positively with maintainability. You're attributing a point of view to "people" which they don't possess. Perhaps some friend of yours made a comment like that, which you now attribute to "people"? Typecasting containers is not done in Java, since it has generic containers. Re-implementing missing containers is very rare since the Java API has a wide variety of containers already (some even argue the API is too big). Recoding functions for different datatypes is unnecessary since Java has always been polymorphic. And there's nothing wrong with switch statements; they're syntactic sugar for if/else (I assume you're not opposed to if/else).I'll grant that the repetitive get/set wrappers are unfortunate and unnecessary. I don't understand why the designers of Java don't just borrow ideas from Eiffel on this matter. I realize the Java designers are opposed to syntactic sugar in general, but in this case it would be justified, since a huge proportion of Java code wasted is on statements like "public Foo getFoo() { return this.foo; }".
Re:No.... (Score:3, Interesting)
It's worth mentioning though that the language doesn't force you to implement the accessors. If you don't think the wrappers buy anything, you can just make the members public.
Re:A Humble Note (Score:3, Funny)
Was that before or after the designers decided "well, we better make the syntax pretty similar to C++, so there's a chance people might adopt it"?