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Oracle's Plans for Java Unveiled at JavaOne 155

msmoriarty writes "Oracle had lots of Java announcements at this year's JavaOne. So far the plans include: 'The availability of an early access version of JDK 7 for the Mac OS, plans to "bridge the gap" between Java ME and Java SE, an approach to modularizing Java SE 8 that will rely on the Jigsaw platform, a new project that aims to use HTML5 to bring Java to Apple's iOS platform, the availability of JavaFX 2.0, a pending proposal to open source that technology, gearing up Java EE for the cloud, and a delay in the release of Java 8.'"
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Oracle's Plans for Java Unveiled at JavaOne

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    Java is clearly not a "dead platform" like some fools claimed it to be. It was quiet for a little while, but it's roaring back to life now that it has some good funding behind it again.

    If you want to talk about dead platforms, look no further than Perl. It has stagnated the worst of all of the once-popular programming languages.

    • by Anonymous Coward
      I guess you didn't get the memo. There was a change in terminology: Any language that is popular and widely in-use in the industry is now called a 'dead language'. Therefore C, C++, C#, Java, VB, Python, Fortran, COBOL, etc... are all 'dead', as in they are widely used. Also Objective-C is now well on its way to being 'dead'.
      • Looks like you got the wrong memo. Any language that is not used by a hipster is dead.
        • by kaffiene ( 38781 )

          Nice. Yeah, you get right to the point. Being cool seems to be more important than Getting Shit Done for a large number of giggling morons. Hacker News seems to be full of them,

    • by zoloto ( 586738 )
      the only reason I have it installed is because of Minecraft.
      • by Hylandr ( 813770 )

        Ditto.

        At work we are migrating clients away from a java based platform as fast as we can. The Oracle/Sun marketing front can infest all the blogs and news sites with it's marketing drivel till the cows come home, only senseless newbs out of college will sacrifice what may have been a budding career to it.

        Yes, you can call me bitter now.

        - Dan.

        • > Yes, you can call me bitter now.
          Lol. I call you a desktop weenie. The Enterprise space is totally pwned by Java. Just cause you don't have it in your start menu doesn't mean that Java (and C) doesn't run all the heavy lifting you can't see behind the Web.
    • It may be quiet on the consumer front, but in the enterprise world, Java remains one of the big things. Ignore the .NET and Python fanatics.

      • by Hylandr ( 813770 )

        No, It's not. If it's in use still, it's because of vendor lock-in.

        - Dan.

        • by afabbro ( 33948 )

          No, It's not. If it's in use still, it's because of vendor lock-in.

          I'm not sure what universe you're in, but Java and COBOL are the dominant languages in big business.

          Yes, the typical dot-com startup uses ruby or whatever, but the Fortune 500 writes a ton of Java code each year.

          • by Hylandr ( 813770 )

            Citations please.

            • by afabbro ( 33948 )

              Citations please.

              Sure, as soon as the previous poster provides some for his claim that Java is not big in the enterprise world.

              • by Hylandr ( 813770 )

                You made the first affirmation, burden of proof to educate is yours.

                • by dkf ( 304284 )

                  You made the first affirmation, burden of proof to educate is yours.

                  I see a lot of server-side Java use round here. I see a lot in the companies I work with, which are of various sizes. I see a little Ruby, but not really very much. I don't see any Python at all. (Not to say it's not there, but I don't see it.) I also see a fair amount of C#, but only really in the Microsoft-based shops. YMMV.

                  Java's big in business. It's mainly big in business because it's already big in business. Yes, that's circular, but what I mean is that there's a large install-base of Java code and no

                  • by Toonol ( 1057698 )
                    I think that C# and the .net platform will continue to grow at Java's expense over the next five years or so. Programmers can do things in .net on their own desktop, personal projects and so on; when they move into industry, they will prefer to use a language they are familiar with.

                    This isn't a preference for C# over Java; they are nearly identical in power, capabilities, and speed. But Java has become irrelevant on the desktop, and that may cause them to eventually lose the server..
            • by Chrisq ( 894406 )

              Citations please.

              here [answers.com] and here [blogspot.com]

              • Citations please.

                here [answers.com] and here [blogspot.com]

                At my current employer who shall remain nameless for the time being we do an absolute metric shitload of image and video processing in Java for the US government. There's definitely some issues that continually need ironing out but you can usually get Java to do whatever it is you want if you don't mind spending enough time with it. We also have started using some C# but that's only to replace some positively ancient Access applications and then is probably going to promptly get thrown in the toilet.

                On

          • by Nadaka ( 224565 )

            And the Department of Defense. Java is vetted for TS and higher clearance systems. Most other languages and platforms are not.

        • by kaffiene ( 38781 )

          Bullshit. My company are producing new products in Java precisely because it is such an open ecosystem.

    • In other news, Mozilla is considering dropping support for Java in Firefox, to fix SSL/TLS vulnerabilities... so yeah, I'd say it's close.
      • In other news, Mozilla is considering dropping support for Java in Firefox, to fix SSL/TLS vulnerabilities... so yeah, I'd say it's close.

        Huh? Java in the browser has been dead for quite some time, as it should be (along with Flash, Quicktime, and all other plugins). You do realize that your Android phone, Blu-ray player, and a large percentage of servers you connect to are all running Java VMs, right?

        • by Toonol ( 1057698 )
          Well, Android really isn't. It's running a similar VM for a compatible language.
        • I don't have an Android phone, I prefer my mobile devices relatively malware free, but you are correct my BlackBerry is running Java. However, if Java in the browser may be dying for the consumer market, it certainly is thriving for the enterprise sector - every vendor out there has taken their management interfaces "to the web", by basically converting their Java-based desktop apps into huge, slow, painful to use, applets. Not sure what point I'm trying to make with that last statement, but I'd say that Fi
    • by lolcutusofbong ( 2041610 ) on Wednesday October 05, 2011 @06:53PM (#37619424)

      If you want to talk about dead platforms, look no further than Perl.

      I love the fact that you're posting this on Slashdot.

      • I love the fact that you're posting this on Slashdot.

        If you take a look at the mess of spaghetti that is Slashcode, then you'll realise it's appropriate rather than ironic. Slashdot took years to actually have pages that approached anything like well formed or compliant to a DTD, and the current site glitches badly on mobile devices.

    • by Eskarel ( 565631 )

      Java was never dead, it was merely on life support. The time gap between Java 6 and Java 7 was in the vicinity of 4 years which is an eternity in programming and gave Microsoft the opportunity to gain a substantial lead on Java. Sun went out of business and nothing whatever could get past the JCP for approval. What with Sun going titsup and Oracle creating plenty of bad blood in the community it was a coin flip if any new version of the Java standard would ever be approved at all. A few months ago, Oracle p

      • by Gr8Apes ( 679165 )

        JDK 7 has some serious goodness in it, for my needs anyways. And I'm fine if there's less bloat. You may see my improvements as bloat, and what I think of as bloat your core needs. Depends upon your viewpoint.

        Microsoft gained a lead on Java? With what? I've done a year in .NET recently, and while it has some ok features, it's still got a long way to go to match the capabilities and dev environment provided by even Java 6 and Eclipse. And never mind the CF underneath the covers that MS calls security....

        • by Eskarel ( 565631 )

          LINQ for one is a major feature that Java doesn't have. Lamda expressions are another. Visual Studio 2010, at least if you have one of the higher license grades and get the write plugins is better than Eclipse in most ways(though I admit Mylin is just dead sexy, and Eclipse is a hell of a lot cheaper). Microsoft has also introduced a bunch of really nice frameworks to play with, at least so long as you're working with them on Windows, they're quite a lot easier to work with than JEE6.

          As for Java 7, I don't

  • Still no love for Java on the desktop?

    • by nurb432 ( 527695 )

      Thankfully, no.

    • Java + SWT is great for the desktop. The best portable runtime environment with native look and feel. What more do you want on top of that?
      • Re:Desktop (Score:4, Insightful)

        by chrb ( 1083577 ) on Wednesday October 05, 2011 @07:39PM (#37620308)

        Well, in hindsight it would have been nice if Sun had adopted SWT and its native widgets instead of pushing Swing on the desktop for years and getting nowhere. Yes, I get it, writing a cross-platform native GUI layer that acts the same on every platform is hard, but they had numerous options. They could have bought or licensed QT. They could have adopted SWT. Or wxJava. Or even GTK (like most Mono LInux desktop apps).

        It would have been nice if they had open sourced the JDK a decade earlier instead of waiting until they felt the heat from gcj. Java could have been the dominant platform for writing cross-platform desktop apps, instead Sun was pushing applets, and it took until SWT before I saw the first Java desktop app that didn't suck (Eclipse). Imagine my surprise when I found that the second Java desktop app that didn't suck (Azureus) was also based on SWT.

        Applications like Eclipse, Azureus, and Banshee show that Java/Mono style languages can do desktop apps, but for whatever reasons the Sun AWT/Swing combination went nowhere. If it were a true open source project I'm sure they would've adopted another GUI widget layer, but they didn't, probably because Sun wanted exclusive ownership rights.

        • Re:Desktop (Score:5, Insightful)

          by SplashMyBandit ( 1543257 ) on Wednesday October 05, 2011 @09:44PM (#37621638)
          Actually, if you know what you are doing then Swing is second to none (to bad most people don't have enough decent knowledge of Swing to use it effectively). With the Nimbus look-and-feel it is also pretty nice (at least that's what I have heard from the users that are used to fugly Windows apps - that are even more inconsistent than the Java ones).
          SWT seems ok until you start to develop it. Then you realise it is awful. Then if you have to develop in SWT off Windows you realise it is even more horrible. Then you have professional projects where you need to extend SWT and you look deep under the covers and realise SWT is really, truly bone-deep-ugly. Then you go back to Swing and life is much, much better - especially ever since Java 1.6u10+ (Nimbus and fully hardware accelerated rendering on multiple platforms).
          • by Raenex ( 947668 )

            As a user, in every Swing app I've used since it came out it always fucks up basic things like being able to double-click. Fail.

            Also, I'm now working via a remote desktop, and Swing apps behave awfully because they don't use native widgets. Meanwhile, over the same connection Eclipse runs beautifully.

            I don't care how ugly SWT is behind the scenes, because where it counts, the user experience, it delivers. Swing sucks for users.

            • you forget to consider that SWT pretty much only works decently on Windows. Most of the digerati have moved or are moving from there. Don't be left behind.
              • by Raenex ( 947668 )

                you forget to consider that SWT pretty much only works decently on Windows.

                I'm actually running Eclipse on Linux. It's quite nice that I can actually do this on a VPN with good response times. Swing apps perform badly.

                Don't be left behind.

                Thanks for the laugh. You sound like a Christian evangelist.

                • > Swing apps perform badly.
                  Who is the evangelist? Java2D (=> all of Swing) is fully hardware accelerated (DirextX shaders on Windows and OpenGL shaders everywhere else) since Java 1.6u10 (came out years ago). Boy you are out of date, still clinging to very old notions (since according to the French scientific supercompting outfit INRIA even several years ago Java is faster than C++ and C for their purposes, and is approaching FORTRAN, please read this article and the linked paper http://blogs.oracle. [oracle.com]
                  • by Raenex ( 947668 )

                    Java2D (=> all of Swing) is fully hardware accelerated (DirextX shaders on Windows and OpenGL shaders everywhere else) since Java 1.6u10 (came out years ago).

                    And how are those hardware accelerations going to transmit across the VPN to a remote desktop? Native widgets work well in the scenario I was talking about. Swing doesn't.

                    Java is faster than C++ and C for their purposes

                    I didn't say anything about Java performance except as to how it applies in using a remote desktop. Sending bits of screen redraws doesn't work.

                    Incidentally, Swing works perfectly for my apps on RDP, but if there is a fault rendering then the fault is RDPs not Swings.

                    I don't know why it works for you. Maybe you have a very fast network on a lan compared to the VPN I run through, which adds encryption to the mix, and is over the Internet. All I can tell you is

                    • > And how are those hardware accelerations going to transmit across the VPN to a remote desktop? Native widgets work well in the scenario I was talking about. Swing doesn't.
                      Don't you know that at the root level Swing *is a native widget* with some custom rendering in it. What you are suggesting is that any native widget with custom rendering in it would break for you in RDP. Somehow you think this is the Java team's responsibility and not Microsoft's? Like I said, use VNC instead of RDP - and it is a sh
                    • by Raenex ( 947668 )

                      Don't you know that at the root level Swing *is a native widget* with some custom rendering in it.

                      It's one big fat widget instead of something like native buttons known by the operating system. That's why remote desktop doesn't optimize it like it does for native applications.

                      it is a shame you are on a slug VPN but that ain't Swing's fault either.

                      The point is that SWT-based Eclipse runs just fine over this connection, whereas the Swing applications do not. That's the penalty of not using the underlying system.

                      That's because many developers are (sadly) 9-to-5 muppets rather than craftsmen.

                      Maybe you mean the developers of Swing, because this is basic functionality that I've seen broken in every Swing app. Double-click should match whatever the native sys

                    • public int java.awt.event.MouseEvent.getClickCount()

                      can be used to get double-clicks. Swing supports it but the developers didn't hook up any events to the double click. The problem is the developers, not Swing.

                      You run Eclipse via Remote Desktop? Madness. Don't you know how to remote debug ? (built into the JVM by the way, there is nothing that beats JVisualVM since you profile stuff, including the JVM, without specifically compiling for it).
                    • by Raenex ( 947668 )

                      Swing supports it but the developers didn't hook up any events to the double click. The problem is the developers, not Swing.

                      The problem is with Swing, because the standard Swing widgets do not do double click right. It's not that double-click isn't supported, it is, it's just that it fails to register quite often. The timing is different.

                      You run Eclipse via Remote Desktop? Madness. Don't you know how to remote debug ?

                      I work for a financial company from home. They have strict security rules about what leaves the network, so I essentially have to work remotely on their machine on their site. What's cool is that Eclipse works surprisingly well, quite unlike the Swing apps.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    All of us who work with Oracle databases know this already. What they plan to do is open source just enough to make it attractive, get you dependant and locked in, then charge like a wounded bull. Notice they're open sourcing JavaFX in stages - the first hit is free, kid!

    • by afabbro ( 33948 )

      All of us who work with Oracle databases know this already.

      What are you talking about? The Oracle Database has always had a closed-source, commercial model. Anyone who implemented on Oracle always knew what they were getting.

      • Re:It's a trap! (Score:4, Informative)

        by lakeland ( 218447 ) <lakeland@acm.org> on Wednesday October 05, 2011 @07:21PM (#37619958) Homepage

        It's more subtle than that.

        For instance using standard Oracle is pretty cheap... and it's not until you start to say 'gee, if only we had partitioning these performance problems would go away' that you really get stung.

        Then you start doing spatial analysis and find the Spatial features easier to use than the crippled Locator.
        Or you try a new database for a new project and because it's still a POC everything is free, until you go live...
        Or you upgrade from dual core to quad as part of a regular hardware upgrade - only to find you need to buy twice the licences.
        Or you discover that sometimes hardware does fail and you need RAC.

        By the time those sort of things happen it's too late to say 'well, it would've been free if only we'd used MS SQL, Postgres or any other vendor'. Oracle's sting isn't the initial purchase price.

        Also, have you ever tried running a system outside support & maintenance? I know a number of companies that keep extra Oracle licences around because they don't dare repurchase them if they ever do end up needing them.

        • by ADRA ( 37398 )

          They have a business model that makes them a f**k ton of money and love em or hate em, they're still one if not the best database on the market. If you really don't like paying a TON of money for a database, I recommend not using Oracle. If you want a database that "Just works" and well, use Oracle.

          • by ADRA ( 37398 )

            Actually, I'll amend that, sometimes Oracle can be a real bitch to setup / configure, but I guess if you can afford an Oracle DB then you can afford a decent DBA to manage it...

          • Yep, I'll give you that (with the caveat about a DBA which you noted).

            The thing which has burned me in the past is I've been able to afford to run a basic Oracle DB, but not to add on things like RAC - so I'm left without features which I would've been able to afford had I gone SQL Server.

    • Um, Java is already fully open-sourced, before Oracle got their filthy mitts on it. OpenJDK is still alive and well and is pretty much the reference implementation these days (and is identical to the Oracle branded one). You gotta keep current on your reading bro (well, catch up on the last two years at least).
  • So basically they are working on everything except what really matters, Java 8.

    • Re:Upshot (Score:5, Interesting)

      by trims ( 10010 ) on Wednesday October 05, 2011 @06:59PM (#37619466) Homepage

      Actually, I'd argue that JDK 8 isn't that important right now. People are still adjusting to JDK 7, and fixing the issues with JDK 7 should have a higher priority than doing all new stuff for JDK 8. Especially since there are very few features slated for 8 that are of broad immediate appeal. Honestly, I was never a believer than less than 2 years between major JDK releases was a good idea. It takes at least a couple of years for vendors to move to the new JDK, and stabilization of a release takes awhile (as the user base of the JDK is enormous, and there's no substitute for real-world running of apps to shake out bugs in the JDK).

      JDK 7 was released 2 months ago. Focusing on making that a better product, rather than jump right into spending all their effort on a future release is, IMHO, the more responsible use of limited resources.

      Of course, nothing is preventing community work on OpenJDK 8.

      -Erik

      • by Gr8Apes ( 679165 )

        Actually, I'd argue that JDK 8 isn't that important right now. People are still adjusting to JDK 7, and fixing the issues with JDK 7 should have a higher priority than doing all new stuff for JDK 8.

        I'd say based on my experience that's there's still a sizable group out there that's having trouble adjusting to JDK 5 or 6. JDK 7 isn't even on the horizon yet.

  • But notice that both the Microsoft and Apple monopolies absolutely hate apps that require any third party runtime in order to run on their respective platforms. For now, Adobe's AIR / Flash is in the fry pan and Java may be next. Not to mention that Oracle have a history of violence with a number of companies and people. Java may still have a future on servers, but on desktops/notebooks/tables/smartphones? Just hit the eject button.
    • Re:Right... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by QuantumRiff ( 120817 ) on Wednesday October 05, 2011 @09:12PM (#37621334)

      Have you tried running a Microsoft App lately without installing the .NET 3.5, 4, 2.2, 1.1, 1.0, and maybe another couple of .Net runtimes? I have a couple of guys at work that are gung ho .NET developers right out of school. And they hate java because you have to install a runtime and its slow.. I laugh every time...

      • by Corson ( 746347 )
        The fact is, .NET is pre-installed on Windows: Windows 7 SP1 now comes with .NET 4.0 (e.g., laptop recently purchased from Dell). Java runtime needs to be installed once and then it will be automatically updated when necessary.... provided it is allowed to do so. On my work computer the sysadmin has set policies that prevent it. In my experience, Java GUI applications do run slower than other programs. I hate that as many programs that I use were developed in Java, mostly by academic developers.
    • Java isn't going away no matter how much competing corporations would like to change it. Apple's desktop share is still niche (different market to gadgets/phones) so they can be ignored (although JDK runs find on my Lion MacBook). Microsoft desktops all support JVM very well (in fact, that's optimized for that platform). Java in the Enterprise is not going away and neither is Java on the desktop. Remember the company that just eclipsed Microsoft in market cap (that is, IBM), well they are heavily invested i
    • by t2t10 ( 1909766 )

      And god, I hope Java is next because it is yet another proprietary platform and the crappiest of the bunch.

  • Oracle (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
    At the rate you're going, I will soon be using Java None.

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