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.

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

[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.

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.

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?