James Gosling On .NET And The Anti-Trust Trial

gwernol writes: "There's a short but interesting interview with James Gosling over on ComputerWorld. He talks about the differences between J2EE and .NET and also about the Microsoft anti-trust trial. Some interesting perspectives from the founder of Java."

Comments

"Hi kettle, my name's pot!"

[Anonymous Coward]

"They certainly could have been more creative about the language."

This coming from someone who tries to pretend he was inspired by smalltalk (since its more OO pure) even though its plainly obvious to anyone who knows jack shit about languages that the Java object model is a strict subset of C++'s. I mean, in smalltalk, things like reflection and introspection fall out of the way the object model works. In Java, its a bag on the side, because Bjarne didn't design it into the C++ object model, which Gosling stole wholesale.

Then lying about it and criticising others... This man is obviously incapable of feeling shame.

The worst part of it is that there are millions of "developers" out there who only know Java (or more often: switched to Java from Visual Basic) who simply accept Sun's marketing as fact.

Java on OSX

[BWJones]

From this comment in the article: And from a personal point of view, I personally actually read the [Windows] XP license and decided I couldn't sign it. So I've been shifting over to Mac.

This is very interesting and parallels what we and others have been experiencing. There is this slow but dramatic sea-change taking place in the community of scientific computation and programming communities. Folks that never before would even look at a Mac are moving to the platform for a variety of reasons including its UNIX core and ease of use. Additionaly it seems that Apple is actually listening to their users these days. They include features requested and the open source Darwin allows for significant development from the community (assuming you are old enough to sign the agreement :-P) and there is even a movement to create a Trusted Darwin http://www.stosdarwin.org/ . This could be a real opportunity for university CS departments to adopt a platform that really does support Java instead of the Win boxes that so many universities seem to be purchasing for their CS programs.

Interesting, how?

[szcx]

Some interesting perspectives from the founder of Java

Oh yes, very interesting. The founder of Java doesn't think competing technology is as good as his technology.

This is Sun propaganda pure and simple. I can't wait for a headline on the front page telling us that Coca-Cola says new Pepsi is disappointing. When Microsoft have made less-than-favorable remarks about Java in the past it has instantly been flagged as FUD.

I suggest folks take Sun PR and Gosling's remarks with a grain of salt. Evaluate the technologies for yourselves and decide accordingly.

Re:Interesting, how?

[Anonymous Coward]

uh, gosling doesnt speak with a Sun PR guy looking over his shoulder. want proof? read the article, take note of what's on his desk these days (hint: last word of the next to last question)

SUNW against the wall, this time for keeps

[Ars-Fartsica]

Gosling and McNealy need to tone down the vitriol - Sun is in major trouble. Not just a bad quarter (although they've had many of those), but key aspects of Sun's market position and future directions.

Linux is totally chewing up their low end. They don't want to admit it straight out - they have been playing nice with open source folks while quietly taking Cobalt off of the market and making it a bit player.

Meanwhile IBM is taking it apart at the high end with a proposition that focuses as much on services as hardware and software..because IBM knows billable hours are where the real renewable revenue is.

On the architecture side, Sun is pitting itself against an entire enconomy - Intel and Microsoft. Sun simply can't outresearch, outspend or outmarket either of these companies, let alone both of them and their attendent co-competitors (Dell, AMD, HP, etc). Once Microsoft gets Win2k up to par in every respect with Solaris (it will happen), they will start peeling high-price clients off of Sun with little contest (meanwhile linux will chew up Sun's low end more and more).

On top of all of this, they're playing mindshare catch-up with the half-hearted JavaOne. Sorry James, MS beat you to the punch on webservices by a year.

I just hope Java can't be opened up enough that it doesn't evaporate along with its owner.

Re:SUNW against the wall, this time for keeps

[elmegil]

They don't want to admit it straight out - they have been playing nice with open source folks while quietly taking Cobalt off of the market and making it a bit player.

I guess you missed the part where Sun announced that they'll be shipping Linux and supporting Linux sometime midyear. I'd say that amounts to "admitting it straight out".

Once Microsoft gets Win2k up to par in every respect with Solaris (it will happen)

By the time Win2k reaches Solaris 8/9 levels, Solaris will have moved on. They haven't caught Solaris yet; the only chance they have is if Sun just goes out of business.

Re:SUNW against the wall, this time for keeps

[s390]

Microsoft needs to make money to survive... and they are running out of ways to do so.

That's perceptive, but Microsoft (M$)is not a business (like IBM, say) that makes money and pays dividends to stockholders. M$ pays zero dividends but pays a substantial portion of employee compensation in the form of stock options (which it _doesn't_ expense against revenue but _does_ write off for tax purposes). M$'s employees exercise their stock options and take profits because the stock price is higher than the options' strike prices. This works because the market perceives that M$ will continue to expand and grow, thus its stock price remains high. Mutual funds and ordinary investors buy M$ stock from M$ insiders based upon an unrealistic belief in Microsoft's perpetual growth.

M$ is a very sophisticated pyramid scheme, but it is _just_ a pyramid scheme. They hide revenue and income in good quarters in order to prop up the numbers in poor quarters, thus creating the illusion of financial stability (and the SEC is investigating this). In prior years, M$ made nearly 10% of total revenues from selling Puts on its own stock (knowing that it could manage its numbers to keep the stock price high enough to make those Puts expire worthless or at least worth less than they were paid for them). In fact, M$ would have _lost_ money in all of the past several years if they'd had to expense their stock option grants to employees! That's why M$ is a pyramid scheme. Still with me?

M$ doesn't just need to make money to survive - they need to _grow_ to survive. Once their growth flattens for a few quarters, the big mutual funds will notice the lack of dividends and start selling their stock. Financial reform laws relative to employee stock option grants moving through the US Congress and likely to pass, post-Enron, will further depress M$ financial results. One of these quarters, M$ will have to pay off on all those Puts they sold, also cutting net income. The fall of Microsoft will be truly spectacular, although in slow motion like Enron, but much larger. Mutual funds, 401k plans, and individual investors who don't get out early will lose billions of dollars. Microsoft's current market capitalization - the total value of all stock outstanding - is over $325 billion; in contrast, IBM's market cap is only about $17.9 billion, but IBM annual revenues and profits are about 10 times Microsoft's. Begin to see the problem? This explains a lot about Microsoft's savage actions.

Re:SUNW against the wall, this time for keeps

[andynyc]

Finally a geek that understands financials.

He doesn't understand them that well. Bigger is not always better. Anyway, IBM's revenue and profit are NOT 10x that of MS.

Focus on the top-line numbers. IBM's annual revenue in 2001 was 85.9b, Microsoft's was 25.3 (Note: MS's financial year ends June 30), about 3.5x. Since IBM sells a lot of hardware that is expensive to build, though, their cost of sales was 54.1b, vs. just 3.5b over at MS, leaving gross profit at 31.8b at IBM, 21.8b at MS.

Now why is MS stock so much higher? Stock price is all about growth. MS's gross profit is 116% higher than it was 4 years ago. IBM's has grown just 3% in that same time period. And the fact that MS has $40b in short-term assets, just $11 in short-term debt, and NO long-tem debt, makes portfolio managers sleep soundly at night.

I'm not knocking IBM... it's a great company, but that's the benchmark you chose to compare to Microsoft.

And IBM reported net income at $7.7b in 2001, vs. $7.3 at MS. So please explain where the 10x figure you stated comes from.

Re:SUNW against the wall, this time for keeps

[dgroskind]

Microsoft resembles IBM, not Enron.

Microsoft resembles the IBM of old in size and market dominance but not in weaknesses. IBM's fall came about because its core business was undermined by microprocessors. Despite open source, Microsoft faces no such threat. It is continuing to enhance and expand its product line and adapt to new trends as they arise.

But I do not believe that they are going to be number one for more than a few more years

And who will replace them? There's no single company that can duplicate Microsoft's complete product line, certainly not in a few years. One can imagine a number of vendors replacing individual products but could any of them, or instance, exterminate Word the way Word exterminated WordPerfect?

The history of business is one of industrial giants falling and even disappearing altogether. Presumably Microsoft's turn will come as well. However, consider General Electric. It was one of the original Dow Jones Industrials over a hundred years ago and it is still there today. Like Microsoft, it glommed onto a fundamental industry (electricity) and rode out the ups and downs of the business cycles, diversified, and marketed itself well.

When you look at Microsoft's strengths (astute management, large cash reserves, overwhelming market dominance, diverse product line, brandname recognition) and the fact its market is still growing, it's hard to imagine it losing its number one spot in our lifetime. The most likely scenario is that it will use its huge cash reserve to diversity like GE and become even bigger, although perhaps not as a software vendor.

Re:Speaking of .NET...

[blank]

wish i could look... what will happen if i start working on a GNU project and the code accidentally looks like something from microsoft? i don't want to find out. =)

Semi-OT: Vengeance and Revolution

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would he be relieved that MS puts out mediocre stuff? I hate that the world is forced to use boring, insecure, ugly, embraced-and-extended software from MS. I want them to be creative.

It just comes down to this: which would you rather have happen?

1. the Bad Guy sees the error of his ways, and turns to Good.
2. the Bad Guy suffers his deserved damnable fate, and his victims are avenged.

The second one makes the best pop fiction and is the most emotionally satisfying. The first one is good in a morality play and is the most attractive to a cold objective intellect who just wants to make the world better.

But before you choose the first option, consider this: the real world is complicated, and there are shades of gray. The Bad Guy will never fully convert; he'll just do enough to get off the hook.

It's not realistic that a Creative Microsoft would create good software and make computers stop sucking. It's a lot more plausible that they would come up with something that most people consider "good enough", and there is little that can damage progress more than that. The secretary in my office has trouble with MS Explorer (the desktop .. well .. actually the web browser too, but not as much) and the boss has trouble formatting stuff in MS Word -- but they never give up and decide to try something else. Maybe if MS products were 1% worse, everyone would be using something 300% better.

I'm glad MS products are so unusually poor instead of merely being average in the face of great alternatives, and I sometimes just can't help snicker with satisfaction when people struggle with that crap. Sure, some of it is due childish pettiness and bitterness on my part, but it's also due to the hope in my heart that the user's pain will be so great that he will finally wake up from the nightmare. Nothing would thrill me more than to hear someone suddenly scream, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" So keep sucking, MS, because the more you suck, the sooner, louder, and more glorious the chorus of screams will be.

Re:Mac user?

[roseanne]

Sun has a poor record in using its own products. Sure, McNealy uses a Sun Ray, but most of the Sun sales folk seem to be very attached to their Windows 2000 laptops, MS Office (though Sun internally supports only Star Office) and IE (which is a shame -- Mozilla's mature enough, I think).

Who knows, maybe Apple could convince Sun to turn into a major customer now :-)

Re:Disappoining

[Reality Master 101]

Indeed. There is no doubt that Gosling is a very bright guy, and has a track record of interesting technologies. But all this interview proved is that even smart people can have blind spots and be stupid.

I mean, he can't find ANYTHING positive to say about the technology? How about the multi-language support? And most of even the strident critics of Microsoft who are honest have to admit that there are some interesting ideas in C#.

They might have done something creative around ... integrating business logic into the language ...

Business logic in the language??? Hey Gosling -- that's the advantage of MULTI LANGUAGE SUPPORT. There's this language called COBOL. Maybe you've heard of it. It has PILES of business logic built into the language.

And, I mean, the fact that the syntax [of C#] is so much -- is like exactly the same, or just about exactly the same [as that of Java].

That's such bullshit. Yeah, and I could also say that "... the syntax [of Java] is [...] just about exactly the same as that of C++". Their both C++ derived languages. Of course they're going to look similar.

The difference is that C# has fixed some of Java's brain damage, one of which is the lack of an unsigned data type which is just unforgivable.

All that proved to me is that Sun is really, really frightened about the potential of .NET. Java is an interesting platform, and an interesting language. But there's a huge opportunity for someone to come in with better solutions, and Sun knows it.

This article

[the eric conspiracy]

While I am certainly biased against anything Microsoft tries to cram down my throat, I don't think this article is any better than the crap we usually see from Microsoft flacks.

Slashdot should really try to find some better quality articles if they want to have a content rich site.

Relieved? Not Hardly.

[ackthpt]

I had to already head off some gee-whizziness at work. We've got interdev, the vb and vc toolkits and someone was plowing through some books and started thinking, "Gee why don't we just upgrade to .NET and start developing everything from that framework, rather than in VB 6 and then have to convert later."

The answer was too obvious, but too often ignored and the question, if not met with an informed response soon enough would have painted us into a corner. We have to support users on a variety of platfroms, hence Java, or simple HTML forms with asp or servlets on a server will accomplish our goals. Writing client apps in .net means we can only support that portion of our customers who use a current enough OS to support .net Yeah, looks pretty until you start looking at the fact there's a few million legacy computers and macs in the world you won't be able to do squat with. No thanks. .net is dead and buried for now and I mean to keep it that way.

Microsoft's damnable marketing buzz is dangerous, because too many people hear it and just leap at it, because it sounds like a great solution. Too few stop to think things through, often those who know too little about their whole market and end users.

Now this isn't necessarily a Java good, .net bad, thing, it's more of a 'don't jump on the latest bandwagon' thing. For my 2, though I'd be happy with J2EE because it's established, which .net is far from and risky because of it.

Re:Right, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

Kind of like how Java is just about exactly the same as, say, C++?

You've got to be kidding!

C++: Multiple inheritance is allowed, and there is no singly-rooted hierarchy.

Java: Classes can inherit from only one base class but can implement an unlimited number of "interfaces". The language imposes a singly-rooted hierarchy. The root class is java.lang.Object, whose instance methods include equals, hashCode, and toString.

C#: Classes can inherit from only one base class but can implement an unlimited number of "interfaces". The language imposes a singly-rooted hierarchy. The root class is System.Object, whose instance methods include Equals, GetHashCode, and ToString.

Sure, Java and C++ have some syntactic similarities between them, but nowhere near as many as Java and C#.

MS Stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

A few things here:

#1: To the person talking about financials and MS being a "pyramid scheme." In a way this is true, but this is common practice today. If you look at a company like Cisco, if you count stock options they lose huge amounts of money, but if you don't count them they make money. Stock options are very easy to abuse from a financial reporting standpoint. The key is, when people cash in those options the company has to either buy them back at the market price, or must simply have the options on hand, when they could have sold the shares for much more. Paying someone in options is like paying Hershey's employees in candy bars - in the end it's still money spent.

#2: What Gosling was saying about C# being a rip-off is true. Java may not have done anything new but it at least combined some syntax and pieces in a new way. C# is a straight port of Java for the most part. Java is NOT a copy of C++, it is a copy of a hodgepodge of things. Whereas C# really is just a copy of Java.

#3: Safe vs. unsafe code. People are being very naive about this. How many web pages do you go to that give you the warning "this page blah blah unsafe..." Yet you still enter that credit card number. Marking code as "safe" or "unsafe" is irrelevant. This is what will happen: people will write unsafe code, and it will be common enough so that end users will have to use it. The same thing happens with ActiveX controls. How many people honesty won't run an unsafe ActiveX control? Or a program that uses unsafe Word macros? The other day I had to change my security level in word so I could use a documentation tool - and I went right ahead and did it, and so will everyone else!

The fact is, if it's easy to write unsafe code, people will write it, and then users will have to run it if they want to use that product or service. Marking it safe or unsafe makes no difference at all, the typical user will run unsafe code.

#4: Sun really does need to get it's act together. Good god there are so many Sun products, so many APIs and old APIs and new APIs and different "initiatives" it's impossible to tell what's what. For example JavaOne, how many people can figure out what actually is in there and what it does?

#5: .NET in general is just another in the cycle of forced upgrades. Before you used VB, now you use VB.net. In another 4 years you'll use something else. Of course, all the good ol MS apps will still be written in C++ all along. The primary reason to use MS products is always the same: "everyone else will." Which of course is self-fullfilling prophecy.Everyone believes that so everyone jumps on board.

#6: MS has been found guilty of anti-trust violations multiple times. And they still get worse even as the trials go on! If I were a judge I would say "stop mocking these proceedings or I'll throw your ass in jail!" Most people who are for another weak settlement are people who just make vague arguments against the entire notion of anti-trust, something like "they're just trying to do what every company wants to do and be the leader. Stop whining!" Well, we *have* antitrust laws! And we have them for a reason. And if they apply to ANYONE, they apply to MS. MS protests that a harsh penalty could destroy the company? Well, when you get arrested for murder and put in jail for life that pretty much destroys whatever you had going at the time. It's called "punishment." That's the point! If you can't stand the punishment, don't commit the crime, not once, but twice even! That logic is akin to saying "I can't go to jail because jail is a nasty place." MS was found guilty, they didn't stop, in fact they got worse. A breakup to me is the only logical thing to do, they've shown they can't play by the rules. Yeah, that's "harsh." But, there is a simple way to avoid penalty: don't break the law! Yes Virginia, it really is that easy!

Re:"relieved that it wasn't creative"

[Corrado]

It will be years before we know whether non-Java-like languages actually run better on the .NET runtime than on the C# one. Don't believe Microsoft's PR.

Hmmm...given that only "managed*" code will run in the CLR, I don't think that non-Java like languages will ever run in .NET.

*NOTE: I use the term "managed" here to refer to the fact that Microsoft has invented skinable languages. All CLR code must conform to certain rules before it will compile. This includes the single parent & no pointers stuff that keeps C/C++ from being used. This is also the reason that VB.Net is totally new and only looks like traditional VB. Basically, VB.Net is a skinned version of C#.

Re:Gosling's and Sun's markting fluff

[SashaM]

And Sun really has a double standard there: when Apple exposes all their native platform APIs to Java, that's fine. It's just not fine when Microsoft does it.

Uff, how many times must this be explained - it's ok to expose any API to Java code - it's not ok to put that API in the java.* libraries fooling developers into thinking their code is pure Java when it isn't.

Imagine someone adding their own functions to the C standard library and advertising them as standard, portable C. How would you feel then?