2007 Java Predictions 284
jg21 writes "Java Developer's Journal has published the results of its end-of-year poll of various Internet technology players, from its own internal editors to industry high-ups like the founder of Apress, Gary Cornell, and including too the thoughts of professor Tony Wasserman of Carnegie Mellon West. Participants were asked to foretell what they saw happening in 2007. Among the predictions — Cornell: 'The open-sourcing of Java will have no effect whatsoever on Java's slow decline in favor of dynamic languages (Ruby, Python) and C#'; Wasserman: 'The use of the GPL 2 for open-sourcing Java will inhibit the completion and acceptance of the GPL 3 proposal'; and Rails creator David Heinemeier Hansson: 'The stigma of being a Web programmer still using Windows will increase.'"
Java's dead! (Score:5, Insightful)
No one uses Java anymore, it's all flash these days.
Umm...what stigma? (Score:5, Insightful)
Attaching a stigma to certain platforms or technologies for certain jobs is just stupid and childish. Are we going to start lambasting publishers that don't use Macs next, or Linux users that do accounting on their machines? Bizarre...
That quote was out of context (Score:4, Insightful)
Trollpost (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ever used Eclipse? (Score:4, Insightful)
The parent makes a living programming J2EE. He might even use Eclipse.
I think for many folks Java is used to write software that does not see the front of a web page.
In fact I have not used Java on the client side since about '98. But I write far more Java now than I did back then. I hope that the work Ethan Nicholas [java.net] is doing to will help, but frankly Flash works fine for many web pages. And as long as I don't have to write the Flash code I'm fine with that. Is it still programming via dialog box? Can I use svn with my Flash code these days? I also hear AJAX is popular and effective for client side work. Anyway, Java is not likely to die anytime soon.
My own predictions (Score:5, Insightful)
Java as Open Source will help in creating smaller versions - perhaps very lightweight browser-plugins - optimized for particular use (media, number crunching, etc.). These browser plugins will help revive Java as a thin-client/web2.0 (3.0?) player in browser-based apps, possibly even making some small inroads against Flash. The 'apollo' project from Adobe may put the kibosh on this, but the increased-eyeballs angle will likely prevent a complete obliteration from happening to desktop Java.
Java will become even faster. Although this has happened in 2006, with the release of Java 6, the full impact will be a refitting of the niche Java apps out there to work specifically with Java 6 and the speed improvements there. This will give some Java some good PR points and case studies with the 'Java is slow' crowd (which I'm definately a member of [fosterburgess.com]).
(As I think one of the panelists in the article said) - there will be a greater acceptance of dynamic languages (ruby/php/python/etc) in Java shops, as Java6's support for dynamic languages (JSR 223 I think [jcp.org]) will help increase productivity for Java devs willing to think outside their javaBox.
JAVA and GLP v3 (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Crystal Ball time... (Score:1, Insightful)
My parents recently bought a new HP computer that came with the SUN JRE preinstalled.
Re:I think they're right (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ever used Eclipse? (Score:3, Insightful)
No Agreement (Score:2, Insightful)
AJAX is dying. AJAX will grow. AJAX has no future. AJAX has a future.
JAVA is irrelevent. JAVA will grow.
Apple is irrelevent. Apple is irrelevent...oh, they agreed.
Anyway, anyone who takes these kind of articles seriously are wasting their time. Our shop does IIS, ASP.NET, SQL2005, Ruby-on-Rails, MySQL, VB.NET, C#, C++, Borland, MS, and Linux OSS flavors. In other words, we have the tools and the skills to do what is necessary to get the job done, the way our CUSTOMER needs it to be done. No tech prima-dona BS of telling the customer that we won't give them what they want. If the customer doesn't have implementation requirements, then we determine what they need, suggest and then build on their approval.
Re:I think they're right (Score:1, Insightful)
You mean like preventing MSFT from writing their own incomptable version? How long have you been following java for? What exactly has Sun been stifling? Name a couple of things.
As a result, Java has numerous technical problems.
Such as?
It's cheaper. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:David Heinemeier is a troll (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh please, use what's right for your environment. And frankly in the web space what's on the back end shouldn't matter one bit, it all pumps out HTML/XHTML/RSS/whatever. Unless of course he's saying that Ruby just sucks on Windows; in which case whose fault is that really?
Re:Umm...what stigma? (Score:5, Insightful)
In most cases, SQL Server is right becasue a company has in-house SQL Server Admins and deploying another database platform is a waste on company resources. That would entail another complete platform and maintenance/admin skillset. In many cases companies don't want this, which makes perfect sense as there's no point having a disparate bunch of technologies that you need to manage. If I was ever deploying a
Personally speaking, I've never had any issus with any SQL Server versions in either performance, scaling or security. A well installed, maintained and managed setup will work really well and be considerably cheaper than alternatives such as Oracle. While MySQL may be cheaper, it's not as fully featured as SQL Server. Off the top of my head, I reckon I've dealt with around 40 or 50 SQL Server setups since version 6.5 and I don't have a bad word to say about them - never had an intrusion, never had database corruption, havce ported databases between machines with no problems, run them on VMware etc. etc. It's certainly one of Microsoft's better technology platforms and though many people would like me to, I can't really fault it. Same goes for MySQL - I like it and I use it where necessary and relevant, i.e. conversely, I'd tend to roll out MySQL in a Linux-house if I were developing PHP on Apache for instance. As I said earlier, you find technologies fit together through experience.
Although as with anything out there, chances are someone's had some really bad experiences with it and couldn't recommend it though personal experiences, YMMV.
Hope that answers your question though.
Re:Java's dead! (Score:2, Insightful)
What makes you think that realising that stands in the way of it becoming more popular?
Re:Java is doing better than ever IMHO. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ever used Eclipse? (Score:4, Insightful)
Other things are better for the front end these days. No big deal.
Front ends change a lot. Business rules tend to be stable. Do you really want to redevelop all your business rule every 3 to 5 years? With java, you write it once and for the foreseeable future don't have to rewrite it. But java is a bit heavy for fast moving stuff.
I Just. Don't. Get. It. (Score:5, Insightful)
But there are a thousand other types of projects for which other environments might excel.
One of my current projects is a desktop app that does real-time signal processing on a live microphone feed, and produces a full-screen GUI with output of the signal that updates at 30+ FPS. Between the signal processing and graphics, it needs to do some hundreds of megaflops, effective - interpreted languages are a couple of orders of magnitude slower doing raw math. Java is pushing the low end of speed for this app.
At the same time, we want the benefit of a multiplatform release, because the project is for the education and music professional markets - there are an awful lot of macs among our target market, and our competitors are PC-only. Java has actually come through on the write-once-run-anywhere promise for us, straight down to the live audio input. We're just 2 developers - how much longer would it have taken us to have to port C++ between different platforms' APIs? Way too long. And we can't even consider platform-specific environments like C# or ObjectiveC/Cocoa.
Use the right tool for the right job. There are times when Ruby's the right tool - and times when it ain't. There are plenty of niches still where nothing else can remotely fill Java's shoes.
Cornell = incompetent? (Score:2, Insightful)
In 2007, apples still won't be oranges.
Re:Umm...what stigma? (Score:3, Insightful)
it isn't to say there are not Linux web developers out there that are not sharp as a tack, but by average --- there is a clear difference.