Java To Overtake C/C++ in 2002

jarek writes "ZDNET has an article that talks about latest research data. It talks about how Java is overtaking C/C++ next year. The article also talks about developers adopting linux and putting linux to use in mission critical tasks." It's evidently taking developers from the C/C++, but also the Visual Basic camps, with strong growth overseas.

Comments

Re:Java as a teaching language

[roguerez]

In my university (vrije universiteit in Amsterdam) you get an introductory course in programming in Java, then a datastructures course in Java and a course in x86 assembly.

Then, an introductory course in C/C++ is given and a software engineering course in Java w/ Swing follows. Then you get a large course in plain C, and depending on the direction of your studies, you'll get one or more large courses using C, C++, Prolog, Miranda, Java, or whatever is best suited for the job.

I think the choice for Java for the introductory and software engineering stuff is great, because in these applications you don't want or need the low level stuff in which C is good.

Furthermore Java looks relatively 'clean' and is suited well to learn imperative as well as OO concepts.

The library base and more

[Midnight Thunder]

One thing that I appreciate with Java is the huge library base that it has. There are classes that allow you to do most things without having to hunt for a 3rd party solution or rewriting the wheel inhouse. Also, some of the most commonly used data structures are standard, eg Strings, and you don't need a separate proto-language to put together classes - yes I'm talking about having no need for STL.

Java does have it draw-backs, such as speed, but this is quickly becoming a non issue on modern computers. Of course computationally intensive work will alway be done in C or C++ that can be compiled to take full advantage of the processor. Another draw-back is that it is very difficult to take full advantage of the underlying OS without writing code using JNI, and thus loosing some protability.

Yes I am very much pro Java, though I also realise that it can't do everything. It will always be a question of the best tool for the job.

Re:Less Visual Basic Programmers

[ackthpt]

We've had to adopt VB at work, and it's easy where problems will crop up and how weak documentation for a One Vendor product can be. When I visited Computer Literacy, in San Jose, I expected to see many texts on VB and related subjects. What blew me away was the plethora of Java texts. If the books didn't sell, they wouldn't have them.

On a second thought, Java _was_ wildly popular among many of the dotbombs. Possibly the study is based too heavily on that time period. Does it still hold it's proportion of growth, or are IT shops, like us, drifting toward VB and other M$ development languages/suites?

Depends on your definition of "overtake"..

[Bowie J. Poag]

The study cited in this article refers to the number of people with Java skills, not the number of programs released. To quote:

"Java usage is even stronger outside North America, with almost 60 percent of developers expecting to spend some part of their programming time using Java."

This is one of those misleading statistics, like "Half of all marriages end in divorce".. What most people fail to realize is that the statement is not factually concise.. There are idiot-men and idiot-women who get married and divorced several times, which accounts for a disproportionately high "overall" divorce rate. The percentage of successful marriages is actually much higher, just the same as the number of coders actively writing in C all the time is much higher than the number of coders actively writing in Java all the time.

Lame article.