Google Backs Out of JavaOne 344
snydeq writes "Citing concerns about Oracle's lawsuit against it, Google has backed out of the upcoming JavaOne conference. 'Oracle's recent lawsuit against Google and open source has made it impossible for us to freely share our thoughts about the future of Java and open source generally,' Google's Joshua Bloch said in a blog post. The move may signal eventual fragmentation for Java, with Google conceivably splintering off the Java-like language it uses for Android."
!Good (Score:2, Troll)
Oracle should use their Java related patents to stop this from happening,
Oh wait...
Re:!Good (Score:5, Interesting)
Except that Android doesn't run Java classes - it runs dalvik classes. It's like you taking a .doc file and converting it to pdf so that people don't need the Evil Word.
Java's dying anyway. It's a lot slower than dalvik, and Java simply hasn't lived up to its "write once run anywhere" claims. Just like it hasn't lived up to earlier promises to "reinvent the desktop", or before that, to "change the way we use the Internet with applets - remember them - to add interactivity.
What are they going to do when dalvik is extended to run on regular servers, and all those Java support contracts dry up? Just like is happening right now in the mobile space with the multi-fragmented JavaME? [javaverified.com]. Pretty bad when your core market tells you that the competition already raided your fridge, ate your breakfast and lunch, and took a dump on your supper.
Java won't die anytime soon. (Score:3, Insightful)
From what I've seen, it's still largely popular as a web application language for the server-side. Usually an alternative to
Re: (Score:2)
Php became the #1 web server language in 2002 [lwn.net] - and that hasn't changed since, and isn't likely to. Most web sites don't use jsp/struts/spring/jsf
We call it a LAMP (or WAMP) stack for a reason.
Re:Java won't die anytime soon. (Score:5, Insightful)
The article you link says it became the number one server side scripting language in 2002. While there isn't a really clear boundary of what is and isn't a "scripting" language, Java isn't included in any of the definitions generally used for that category, so in a discussion of Java, PHP's position among "scripting" languages -- server side or otherwise -- is pretty much irrelevant.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
And before we get into *that* argument again ... Java is no more compiled than converting a word doc to a pdf is "compiling" it. You cannot execute the resulting class files directly - they need to be interpreted by the run-time (originally, they were supposed to be interpreted by a special "Java chip" - "write once, run anywhere" was the exact opposite of the original design goals).
Re: (Score:2)
Java is an interpreted scripting language. It's also nowhere near number one - most hosting providers don't even offer it.
And before we get into *that* argument again ... Java is no more compiled than converting a word doc to a pdf is "compiling" it.
Java source is compiled to either native object format, or bytecode. The Gnu gcj compiler is an example of a "native" Java compiler. There are also a few commercial compilers that do the same thing.
You cannot execute the resulting class files directly - they need to be interpreted by the run-time (originally, they were supposed to be interpreted by a special "Java chip" - "write once, run anywhere" was the exact opposite of the original design goals).
You should explain why the original versions of Java had a VM, and why the "Java chip" never went anywhere (hint: there were implementations, but they didn't really offer anything compelling).
If Sun had had any brains, they would have fixed the slowness of Java by including the ability to compile down to native code. Then they could have arguably had the best of both worlds.
I guess you're too uninformed to know that one of the big reasons gcj hasn't taken off, is because the HotSpot type VMs ou
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Java is an interpreted scripting language.
Wow, your ignorance of Java is astonishing.
Java is no more compiled than converting a word doc to a pdf is "compiling" it. You cannot execute the resulting class files directly
It's compiled for the virtual machine. Your choice of PDF as an example is rather interesting. Had you instead chosen PostScript, you'd have had greybeards provide countless counterexamples.
But no matter how you want to look at it, it's absurd to maintain that Java isn't compiled.
Re: (Score:2)
Most of the times J2EE involves using JSP, the Java scripting equivalent of PHP. I've worked on many Java environments in the enterprise, and I've never seen a Java web server without JSP of some sort. PHP displacing JSP and ASP speaks volumes... I doubt those environments are replacing their JSP/Java with PHP/Java.
Re: (Score:2)
The servers that it did take over are now directly threatened (as are the database servers that they communicate with via java) by map-reduce and nosql. Much more scalable, no dependence on Oracle for anything, runs fine on commodity hardware, much easier to synchronize as well as build in transaction isolation and rollback.
10 years. That's an eternity in internet time, but not in human time, and the continued growth of data stores and
Re: (Score:2)
Re:!Good (Score:4, Interesting)
Dream on if yo believe that the JIT is competitive. Even if it were able to pre-compile everything to native methods, you still lack some of the essential programming models that people have been using for decades to make things go faster.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I wasn't asking for proof that native code will be faster than Java, I was asking for proof of your original statement that that Java (I assume you meant the JVM) is a lot slower than Dalvik.
But yes, you're right, there's a hell of a lot of stuff that Java (be it running on a JVM or Dalvik) just won't do well, and anybody wanting to write truly high performance software had really better get used to writing in lower-level languages, or at the very least, understanding their stack right down to the hardwar
Re:!Good (Score:5, Insightful)
... anybody wanting to write truly high performance software had really better get used to writing in lower-level languages, or at the very least, understanding their stack right down to the hardware level.
This has always been the case.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In c, it means that you get in the habit of typing free() right after typing malloc(), then asking yours
Re:!Good (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not that hard - just do like your mother taught you - put things back when you're finished with them.
Two things. First it is hard. It takes an almost anal level of attention to detail especially in a multi-threaded environment. That's something woefully missing in your run of the mill programmer. Second, the bugs introduced can be EXTREMELY subtle and VERY difficult to find especially in a multi-threaded environment.
Anecdote: I was working on a multi-threaded realtime system that involved message queues between objects interacting with hardware. The queuing system was developed by someone else and had gone through extensive testing. I was tasked with adding network communications to the messaging system. With the network communications module added it was core dumping at random times and places generally after days of running. I spent over a month trying to find the problem in my code. All the while, the people who had developed the messaging system insisted the problem couldn't be there and showed me the months of tests result on the messaging system. After over a month, including line by line review of my code, I started looking over the messaging system code I found one place where they were releasing a mutex then freeing some memory. 2 lines of code that were reversed amongst 1000's of lines of code. Their testing didn't reveal it because on their test runs there was almost no random variance in the execution. Everything responded at fixed intervals and the pattern never including something getting a pointer to that memory after the mutex was released and before it was freed. The network communications added randomness which disrupted the pattern and this happened periodically.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, and no. If you are doing multithreaded programming, you can use reference counting. It's not at all hard to do explicit retain/release unless your program is crap by design. In many case
Re: (Score:2)
If it were easy, everyone would be doing it. But the performance benefits of not needing things like reference counts, garbage collectors, etc., make it worth it. After all, you fix the problem once, and reap the benefits the billions of times that code executes.
If we were to truly cost out the cos
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The C version is easy to understand when you are in total control and total understanding of the program flow. However, it's a nightmare for people trying to enhance or restructure the code because they can so easily cause the free() to not get called, get double called or to simply not realize all the places cleanup code is required. This is particularly true for all kinds of exception-like flows, that everything is cleared up in all varieties.
If you strictly adhere to RAII in C++ then things are fairly ok
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep, what garbage collection giveth, everything else takes away. For any resource other than RAM Java is more complex/verbose than, say, C++. eg. You want a file to close in a timely manner so the user can copy it to a USB stick without quitting the program first? Start typing another try/finally block. Same with network connections, database connections, etc., you can't rely on the garbage collector to close them for you.
Even garbage collection of RAM is very overrated, eg. I'm working on a 200,000 line C+
Re: (Score:2)
But yes, you're right, there's a hell of a lot of stuff that Java (be it running on a JVM or Dalvik) just won't do well, and anybody wanting to write truly high performance software had really better get used to writing in lower-level languages, or at the very least, understanding their stack right down to the hardware level.
Which "lower level languages" are you talking about?
Lower level languages are platform specific, and the only one people are using is assembler. I know that you didnt mean asembler.
I suppose you meant C. Its abstract machine has a generic concept of memory as a linear pool. Good enough to write operating system features that manage linear pools of memory, but decidedly not at all low level.
We can't even coerce a C compiler to emit x86 instructions like BT, BTR, and BTS.. instructions which test and m
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Which "lower level languages" are you talking about? Lower level languages are platform specific, and the only one people are using is assembler. I know that you didnt mean asembler. I suppose you meant C. Its abstract machine has a generic concept of memory as a linear pool. Good enough to write operating system features that manage linear pools of memory, but decidedly not at all low level. We can't even coerce a C compiler to emit x86 instructions like BT, BTR, and BTS.. instructions which test and manipulate individual bits (in registers or in memory) and are extremely useful (efficient!) for implementing things like a Bloom Hash, or just implementing bit arrays. In C the best we can do is use clunky full-word operations that can not get optimized down to BT, BTR, or BTS for multiple technical reasons.
Is this a joke? Anything that isn't assembly is a high level language? News to me.
C is very obviously a low level language. It's not exactly controversial.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
C is very obviously a low level language.
What exactly do you think is low level about C? I think that you are confusing a lack-of-features like OO, Generics, Reflection, etc.. with 'low level' ..do you think its low level because it can reference memory directly? Really? Is that your metric?
I'm not confusing lack of features (abstractions) with low level - abstractions are exactly what makes a language high level. Yes, C making you reference memory directly makes it low level. High level languages take you far, far away from such interactions.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I'm not confusing lack of features (abstractions) with low level - abstractions are exactly what makes a language high level. Yes, C making you reference memory directly makes it low level. High level languages take you far, far away from such interactions.
Pointers are an abstraction
Apparently you didnt fucking know this, but C is a programming language defined by a standardized abstract machine which itself was tailored specifically for the purposes of abstracting operating system memory management.
Furthermore, C does not 'make' you reference memory directly. C 'allows' you to reference memory directly.
Did you not realize that BASIC qualifies as 'low level' under your definition of direct memory referencing I guess its PEEK and POKE for the win, eh?
Re:!Good (Score:5, Insightful)
you can't even consider using some algorithms that c programmers use all the time
Like buffer overruns.
Re: (Score:2)
Try such basic stuff as pointer arithmetic.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
lol
True, but thats is the bad side of C letting you do whatever you want.
With C you are not constrained, you can do very clever things you cannot do in Java, or incredibly stupid things that Java will prevent.
The same happens when you remove the trainer wheels on a bicycle.
Re: (Score:2)
This is why sensible programmers moved to C++ and use range-checked, auto-growing container objects.
Re:!Good (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Java, because you can't use pointer arithmetic, is going to be slower than the same code in c using pointer arithmetic, because a non-pointer solution is always going to be slower, in any language, even c.
The lack of pointers was the only way that Java could be implemented. Another reason was to keep both the class verifier the garbage collector simple. You can't "prove" code that can point to something different during the actual run. Both these restrictions introduce behind-the-scenes overhead, as well
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Just enum RED_LIGHT=0, YELLOW_LIGHT, GREEN_LIGHT then either jump to the offset at LIGHT_FUNCS+light*PTR_SIZE, or if you've created an array of function pointers, set lights[NORTH_SOUTH] = light_funcs[light]; Your code becomes more generic, even though the code for handling a red light may b
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Call me back when your operating system is written in Java. Oh wait, Sun tried that - another failure.
You're an idiot.
Re: (Score:2)
... keep saying that Java is dying.
People that have not worked in places where millions are handled by the hour should keep their opinions about coporate grade technologies to their good old selves.
Not at all. The promise of Java is that it would be useful in everything from cell phones to set-top boxes to mainframes, and to an extent that has happened (Android runs a form of Java, and so do some set-top-boxes.) But, in the same way the Cobol is dead outside of a few specific (if important) market sectors, Java is likewise being marginalized. That's what usually happens to anyone or anything espousing the mantra of "one-size-fits-all". Now, I don't understand what Oracle's game is, just yet, but I'm g
Re: (Score:2)
Java will eventually lose ground there as well for several reasons:
#2 is currently the big issue. Once a Java project passes a certain
Loss of confidence (Score:5, Informative)
Looks like we're seeing a new loss of confidence in Java, much like the loss of confidence in mono, for which patent concerns stunted its uptake.
So where to next?
And where is my replacement for open office?
Re:Loss of confidence (Score:5, Insightful)
No, we are seeing a loss of confidence in Oracle. Unfortunately, Oracle now owns Java. That means its future is a little foggy. Oracle has a serious hard-on for Java, which you can see because it is the only major database I know of that allows you to use Java in place of PL/SQL. Disclaimer: I haven't actually done this, but I did read about it while googling some issues I was having with an Oracle database.
I think there is room for two cross-platform environments such as .NET and Java. Right now, those are the players. I don't see the F/OSS community putting all their eggs in Microsoft's basket, even if people do use Mono to some extent. If Oracle succeeds in making Java their pool boy and effectively neutering OSS implementations of the language and JFC, another environment will need to rise to to the occasion. I think it would be a community effort to some degree, but driven largely by Google. I could see them forking Java and realizing that due to trademark and patent concerns they would need to make large changes, so they would make major changes, add a bunch of stuff, and turn it into one hell of a platform for mobile and network development. That was Java's original goal, but it has since bloated up well beyond that and I do mean bloat, not grow. Why do we need a total of three implementations of core JFC classes to do stuff like "read a JPEG," and two of them either don't work at all or only work if you drink unicorn blood while coding? Why are there two GUI implementations, and the one that makes sense is still a zombie built on top of decaying pieces of the AWT corpse?
Sun had so many opportunities to grow the JFC, add value, etc. but due to their intense fear of breaking backwards compatibility, they just layered more and more band-aids and duct tape on top of each other. At some point you need to do it right with new implementations and say "upgrade to version X, and deprecated crap is being removed. You are now warned."
Also, Java EE needs to be merged into Java SE. There should be two Javas. One for memory-constrained devices (embedded), and one for everywhere else. Java EE has been a pain in my ass for some time. Java doesn't need the extra complexity.
Re: (Score:2)
Oracle has a serious hard-on for Java, which you can see because it is the only major database I know of that allows you to use Java in place of PL/SQL.
Most databases have similar features, for example Sybase ASE [sypron.nl] & PostgreSQL [postgresql.org].
Re: (Score:2)
they just layered more and more band-aids and duct tape on top of each other.
I think you're giving the argument why there's a general loss of confidence in Java. Google could (and probably will)
do a lot better with a language that looks "quite a lot like" Java, yet isn't, in much the same way Microsoft did with C#. I'll be happy to see Java die off and be replaced with better. My biggest problem is that there will be several 'evolutionary' new languages instead of 1, but then, at the moment propriet
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Loss of confidence (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
It'll probably get me modded down, but I don't see this as a Bad Thing. When it comes to core Java systems (excluding GUI) it *is* write once run anywhere as long as you use the standard packages. Not only will it run on any JVM, it will also run in a predictable manner on any JVM (and I think this is one place where G
Re: (Score:2)
Lose-lose situation (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, you're missing something (Score:2)
Re:Lose-lose situation (Score:5, Interesting)
Am I missing some great strategic outcome Oracle is hoping for?
Yes, they need Google patents for their database product to not become obsolete in the next few years. Buying Sun got them two things - a) hardware fast enough to get them over the gap b) leverage for patent cross-licensing agreements.
This is a [software] patent (government) problem.
I was confused when they bought Sun... (Score:2)
I don't know what they hope to achieve with this but maybe this lawsuit is connected with the purchase, ie. they planned it from the beginning.
Re:Lose-lose situation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Can Oracle's reputation get any worse?
Re:Lose-lose situation (Score:5, Interesting)
Having a good reputation among the slashdot crowd may be more important than you think. Oracle's name is quickly becoming mud in the minds of of a lot of developers, and while in the short term that may mean little to them, it will probably bite them in the ass down the road.
Developers dont make decisions about the use of Oracle's money stream products [oracle.com], of which Java is not among them.
Its the IT guys that make those decisions, and they pick Oracle because Oracles solutions are some of the best in the business. Oracle's revenue stream is in the same league as Google, Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Cisco, etc.. not a household name like some of them, but their revenue stream is testimonial to the quality of their products and the loyalty of those who do make purchasing decisions relevant to Oracle.
Oracle did not buy Sun for Java. Java was just a bonus. Sun was a direct competitor with some unique IP in the storage solutions space that Oracle was and will continue to be the #1 player in. You see Sun Server prominent on that products/services page, while Java is relegated to only footnote status in the "Related Technologies" section.
Java is a fine language for what its primarily used for, and Oracle certainly uses a lot of Java code, but they barely marketing Java itself. They couldn't give a rats ass as to what developers feel about Java. They sell solutions, not platforms.
Troll? Really? (Score:2)
How the hell is the OP a troll? Or did some fucking idiot mod once again misread "troll" as "I don't like what you're saying!"?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
While the reputation of Oracle might mean something to yourself, myself or others on slashdot, the average joe on the streets of the world do not give a rats backend as to the "reputation" of Oracle.
All they care about is how well their phones work. Ergo, Oracle has very little to lose, since they already have inhouse lawyers anyway, and potentially something nice to gain; a nice chunk of leverage to be used in discussions with Google.
It's not the risk of pissing of slashdotters that Oracle should be concerned about. It's the possibility of pissing off other major players in the enterprise Java space. Should Google decide to move forward with going their own way with a new Java-like language, that's of moderate concern to Oracle. Should folks like IBM decide to collaborate with Google on that, and should some of the major open source projects that are Java-heavy (e.g. Apache) decide to move as well, Oracle may find itself holding righ
Re: (Score:2)
The "average Joe" doesn't give a dime to Oracle. It's the IT/software professionals that give millions of dollars of their departmental budgets to Oracle. The kind with an anti-Microsoft slant are even more likely to be doing this.
Ergo, Oracle should be VERY concerned of the opinion on Slashdot.
Google built VM allegedly infring'g Oracle patents (Score:5, Informative)
Two enormous differences with the Sun/Microsoft case: 1-- Everything Google built for Android is open-sourced; 2-- No Java license is involved
Google built a VM called Dalvik. Like the Java and .Net VM's, it can run code written in a number of languages, including the Java language. That patents at issue are not related specifically to the Java language, but they do cover common techniques in VM implementation, and if upheld could threaten other VM implementations.
Re:Google built VM allegedly infring'g Oracle pate (Score:4, Informative)
Parent is basically correct. However, pedantically, Dalvik does not, in general, run programs written in the Java language. The language is defined not just by its syntax, but also by a certain set of standard libraries being present and implemented according to Sun/Oracle specification. Dalvik doesn't support all of those, and hence doesn't run Java.
However, Dalvik does run a very Java-like language. One that has all the syntax of Java, and *many* of the same libraries. Moreover (as everyone here knows, I'm sure), programs compiled by 'javac' to .class file may be converted to Dalvik executables (as long as they contain only the subset of Java that Dalvik supports).
It would be proper to prevent Google from claiming that Android "Runs Java"... but then, I'm pretty sure they never claimed that to start with. Indeed mostly--almost entirely--it's claims about patents that should never have been granted, or really just about lawsuits to try to mess up competition and technical progress just for the sake of disruption (I doubt Oracle actually cares that much about the outcome, it's mostly FUD).
Time to ditch Java (the language)? (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't this the perfect moment for Google to pass to Scala for Java-like development and Go! for the rest of it (critical native components)? To hell with Java the language. After all, what is really important is the JVM and they've already forked that with Dalvik.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Sun did open source Java, and did wind up rewriting some of the native libraries to make it possible. What would happen, however, is renaming it due to trademarks now owned by Oracle. That brings up questions such as would Google need to rename portions of the code,
Re: (Score:2)
The entire JFC exists in the java.* and javax.* packages.
JFC is mostly a synonym of Swing. What you mean is that the standard libraries (mostly java.*) and extended libraries (javax.*) can not be expanded by anyone except Oracle/Sun/JCP.
Concerning the sun.* packages: these are VM specific implementations - nobody should be using them directly.
Re:Can't they technically fork it? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sun open sourced Java, and you can easily fork it. You can't call it Java unless it still implements the specification correctly, but the license that Sun released the code under means that you are safe from patent problems.
Google's problem is that they did not fork Java, they reimplemented it. This means that they have no copyright problems and do not have to abide by the Java license (GPL + runtime exemption), but they do have potential patent problems. Sun / Oracle has a patent grant that permits the use of their Java-related patents in any complete implementation of the Java spec. Android, however, is not a complete Java implementation. It implements the core language and a number of the java.* classes, but it does not provide the entire java.* class hierarchy. This means that it is not covered by the patent grant.
In summary, open source Java is fine, open source almost-Java is not.
Re:Can't they technically fork it? (Score:5, Insightful)
> In summary, open source Java is fine, open source almost-Java is not.
Where is the difference? Isn't that legal newspeak of corporate lawyers... and why we have a free software movement? I can't see how this sentence makes any sense to an open source developer.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Dalvik still wouldn't run JVM bytecodes, so I don't think it would a conforming implementation regardless. I haven't read the spec however, so I don't know if the bytecode is specified there or separately.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The full Java SE is not appropriate for a mobile phone, far to heavyweight and full of APIs like the AWT, SWT etc.
Sun also produced Java ME for mobile use which they charged phone makers to license. Sun (now Oracle) only open sourced, and gave patent grants for, the desktop oriented Standard Edition where they didn't have any revenue anyway. They were careful in the licensing not to allow a free Mobile Edition which would threaten their mobile revenue.
This was a significant problem for Apache's Harmony pr
Re: (Score:2)
In summary, open source Java is fine, open source almost-Java is not.
If you make a derivation/fork with the open source Java code Oracle only extends patent grants if your fork passes Oracle's expensive certification tests for Java [sun.com]. This certification is impractical for most people or organizations and is inherently impossible for anybody who is interested in making a new language with the code or adapting some of the code for other purposes.
In summary:
stop lying (Score:4, Insightful)
Sun open sourced Java, and you can easily fork it. You can't call it Java unless it still implements the specification correctly, but the license that Sun released the code under means that you are safe from patent problems.
No, you are only safe from patent problems if Oracle determines that your implementation is fully compatible.
Google's problem is that they did not fork Java, they reimplemented it.
Google didn't reimplement the Java platform, they implemented their own platform and used the Java language. Oracle has no patents on the Java language. And the patents they do have, they could have sued over no matter what virtual machine Google had implemented.
In summary, open source Java is fine, open source almost-Java is not.
There is no "open source Java"; open source principles require the ability to make incompatible forks, and as you correctly pointed out, Oracle doesn't allow that and has the patents to enforce their will.
Re: (Score:2)
I've never got the whole "death to java" thing - can you explain why you think its demise is way over due?
For bunnies sakes ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you have a bank account?
Most likely the back office operations are using Java in one way or another.
That is just for starters.
People saying that Java is dead and then refer to what is happening on their home computer simply show a degree og ignorance that is short of embarrasing.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
They're just as likely to be using COBOL but most people regard that as 'dead'.
Re:I'm glad (Score:5, Insightful)
Java's death means .NET and Windows in the server arena. Do you really want that?
Java is the defacto standard for most server apps these days as portals are replacing terminals and Java is used for industrial websites as well. This is truly horrible and no php or perl can not just replace it for mission critical servers. It is not hte language but the 200,000 methods and api's to choose from. Only .NET comes close ... not Mono.
Unintended consequences (Score:3, Interesting)
> Java's death means .NET and Windows in the server arena.
That's an interesting theory and I agree with it. .NET/Windows on the long run to avoid Java?
I'm wondering if this really is one of the consequences Oracle indended with this lawsuit.
What value would the acquired Sun be if everybody switched to
Re: (Score:2)
Java's death means .NET and Windows in the server arena. Do you really want that?
BS
Still, less servers? Less people using Java?! TOUGH for Oracle.
Which portals?! Which apps?!
This is truly horrible and no php or perl can not just replace it for mission critical servers
True. But a mix of tech can. I just hope we don't have to go back to C++
Re: (Score:2)
You can use the JVM with other languages... Scala, Groovy, Clojure, Python, Ruby and more.
"Java" doesn't mean only the language, there's also the platform.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't get me started on the platform.
Okay, I'm game. What's wrong with the platform?
Re: (Score:2)
So was it a good thing or a bad thing when Microsoft did a Google (or rather...) with their version of Java?
Re:I'm glad (Score:5, Informative)
The similarity of android's dev language with Java is only superficial
You mean, aside from the fact that they are exactly the same language and both provide a large number of the same classes in the java.* namespace, they are completely different?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Same language? C# and Javascript have nearly identical syntax. I think it's completely unreasonable to expect someone to invent a brand new syntax for every programming language.
Some of the same classes? Look at how many other languages have analogous classes in their libraries. It's irresponsible not to provide string utilities, for one.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Same language? C# and Javascript have nearly identical syntax
Nearly identical is not identical. At the language level, the language that Google uses is identical to Java, both in terms of syntax and semantics. C# is close to Java, but is clearly a distinct language. JavaScript has vaguely Java-like syntax, but Self-like semantics (while Java has Smalltalk-like semantics).
Some of the same classes? Look at how many other languages have analogous classes in their libraries. It's irresponsible not to provide string utilities, for one.
There is a difference between similar and identical. Google's Java, being the same language as Sun's Java, has namespaces. In these namespaces, there are classes. Android ships with a large num
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The similarity of android's dev language with Java is only superficial
You mean, aside from the fact that they are exactly the same language and both provide a large number of the same classes in the java.* namespace, they are completely different?
Damn, I'm going to do it -- I'm going to make a car analogy. I'm sorry in advance, because I *know* someone is going to helpfully correct it and take it far beyond the point I was trying to prove.
Let's say all cars had a single engine they used. They could manufacture this engine themselves, but it had to conform to the agreed-upon specs if they wanted to call it a "car engine". So Ford and Chevy and Toyota are all happily marketing cars with Genuine Car Engines; they have different trim and options, b
Re: (Score:2)
It's funny how Java and dalvik are more compatible than different vendors' implementations of C++ when I was in college. Heck, even C or Pascal in the 80's.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It wont actually die, it will just become an in-house language for oracle application development.
Re: (Score:2)
There's nothing inherently wrong with Java
So where are all the desktop applications...?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Oracle is sueing for patent infringement, not trademark infringement.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps if you did some research you'd see what the problem is. You can't claim to allow use of the Java programming language and not follow the rules of the company that owns the rights to it. Google borrowed the trademark and
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The only difference here is that Sun sued over calling something "Java" that wasn't exactly Java. Oracle is doing something a bit deeper in that they are saying that Google can't fork the language even if they call it something different.
I think I've missed something - last I saw, Google isn't calling it something different? If they were, I can't see how this would be a problem. But when I look at the Android Fundamentals [android.com] page, this is the first thing I see (emphasis added):
Android applications are written in the Java programming language. The compiled Java code — along with any data and resource files required by the application — is bundled by the aapt tool into an Android package, an archive file marked by an .apk suffix. T
So where do you see that they're not calling it Java?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
> So where do you see that they're not calling it Java?
Where do you see that Google is selling anything called Java? A trademark is not a copyright. Oracle would certainly be alleging trademark infringement if they thought that they stood any chance of convincing the court that their trademark was being infringed. As far as I can tell they are not.