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

[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.

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.