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Interview With James Gosling
Def Mango Raygun writes "There is an interview with James Gosling of Sun. He talks about some language features and why they happened. It's short, but informative"
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James has a homepage here, for your perusal. There are some really interesting things on it, like the fact he is Canadian and likes pies in Bill Gate's face to name a few.
ABOUT JAVATM TECHNOLOGY An Interview with James Gosling March 28, 2002 -- It happens a few times in life -- the chance to ask a question of an exceptional person who has contributed to the evolution of technology, and as a result, has significantly influenced many people. Members of the Java Developer ConnectionSM [(JDC) program] recently took this opportunity when the JDC posted a poll, "Ask James Gosling." James Gosling, vice president and fellow at Sun Microsystems, also known as the "father" of the JavaTM programming language, created the original design of the language and implemented its original compiler and virtual machine. He is a recent contributor to the Real-time Specification for the Java platform, and is currently a researcher at Sun labs, where his primary interest is software development tools. Gosling sat down with the JDC and answered some of the many questions received as a result of the poll. Read Gosling's insight into the future of Java technology and more. JAVA DEVELOPER CONNECTION PROGRAM (JDC): If you could start again, would you make everything an object rather than the current int, boolean, byte, etc, viz-a-viz object disconnect? JAMES GOSLING: No, actually I tend to go the other way, which is to say, a way to make classes behave more like primitives, so that they can be optimized and become extremely efficient, and maybe have a way to do autoboxing so that they sort of go back and forth between being objects. There are a lot of subtle problems around autoboxing that always make me nervous, and the big one being questions around identity. JDC: The Java language adds features with every release, and this is generally good, but the whole thing is getting pretty large. If you could take a few things out, what would they be? JG: The Java language actually doesn't add very many features. The Java language itself has been very, very stable, and relatively few things have actually been added in any release. What has really gone nuts is all the different APIs that are part of [the Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition,] J2SETM. And this question, in some sense, is unanswerable. It says, if you could take a few things out of [the] J2SE [platform], what would they be? One of the tragedies we have is that we've got so many customers and everything that is in the platform is critical to a pretty large group of customers. So, for any particular person, any particular developer, not all of [the] J2SE [platform] is going to matter. But for every developer, the slice of the platform that they care about is different. It's always a constant struggle to try to avoid putting things in. And actually, if I had to pick some API that I've never used - honest I've never used the [Java DataBase ConnectivityTM] JDBCTM APIs. I've never written a piece of code that used the database stuff. So, personally, you could delete [the] JDBC [API] from [the] J2SE [platform] and it would not affect any code that I've ever written. But lots of other people would be really upset. JDC: Where do you see Java technology in the next five years? JG: I think the most interesting trend that's going on right now is the sort of really pervasive use of Java technology in all kinds of interesting places that are on the edges of the network. A lot of the infrastructure stuff that is in the enterprise has gotten really well established, but there is a lot of upcoming stuff in the way that people use Java technology in sort of embedded systems; things like cell phones, automobiles, realtime systems that are getting pretty interesting and giving people this ability to build systems in an end-to-end way that I think is getting very compelling. JDC: About realtime: This developer is building some kind of ship simulation...I am writing a ship maneuvering simulator. It should simulate the trajectory of a ship and present its view to the user in approximately real time. Do I need to use the reference implementation of the realtime spec? JG: I would say not. If you are doing simulation at all, that's not what the realtime spec is about. The realtime spec is about doing things predictably with very exact timing. And so, the hard part of this question is not the actual simulation part -- because that's not really relative to realtime -- but the display of the trajectory of the ship on the screen. And boy, every ship I've ever seen moves pretty slowly. The stuff that's in the Java [platform] realtime specification is really only important if your timing constraints are very tight: if you are down in the sort of regime where you can't tolerate delays of more than a millisecond or so. With most things that people do in the Java programming language, you can just do regular Java [technology] code on a regular Java VM, and you'll be pretty close to realtime. Certainly within seconds and almost always within tenths to hundredths of seconds, you will be accurate. Things around garbage collection can become difficult, but with the incremental garbage collector in a hot spot it's rarely an actual issue. JDC: I'd like to see more tools that enhance developer productivity, we have Unified Modeling Language (UML) modeling tools, and wizards to help us generate code. Can we tie these together better? JG: In some sense that kind of thing has been the goal of the NetBeansTM [software] Project from the beginning. The really interesting thing about NetBeans [software] is that it has an API for things like UML modeling tools and cogeneration wizards to fit together in the same platform. People have done a fair amount of this in the past and been quite successful. JDC: What do you think is the most important area for students to study in order to be successful in the computer industry? Not just the Java technologies, but what other disciplines? JG: Certainly there are a lot of various things that are generally called software engineering that you can find in all kinds of books, like the refactoring books, and some of the pattern books are very good. Personally, I think one of the areas that's really important to understand is algorithms and the analysis of algorithms. There's a lot that [subject] gives you in terms of insight about how things behave. JDC: Why is Throwable not an interface? The name kind of suggests it should have been. Being able to catch for types, that is, something like try{}catch (), instead of only classes. That would make [the] Java [programming language] much more flexible. JG: The reason that the Throwable and the rest of those guys are not interfaces is because we decided, or I decided fairly early on. I decided that I wanted to have some state associated with every exception that gets thrown. And you can't do that with interfaces; you can only do that with classes. The state that's there is basically standard. There's a message, there's a snapshot, stuff like that -- that's always there. and also, if you make Throwable an interface the temptation is to assign, to make any old object be a Throwable thing. It feels stylistically that throwing general objects is probably a bad idea, that the things you want to throw really ought to be things that are intended to be exceptions that really capture the nature of the exception and what went on. They're not just general data structures. JDC: Is it possible to submit the Java [technology] bytecode specification to a standards body like ECMA [and the like]? JG: Well, we actually tried to do that; to submit it to ECMA. And that exploded and turned into a rather bizarre episode. And actually, after that exploded, ECMA did an internal investigation and published a report, which is very interesting reading. end.
Correct me if I am wrong, but Java does not specify native support for decimal arithmetic. Had this been included, Java would have been in a very good position to replace all that Cobol out there. As it is...
sPh
He neither confirms nor denies that there is a secret preprocessor for Java that can take cleanly indented code, a la Python, and add braces. But I know there must be one.
So the JDC interviewed James Gosling. Surely he [has] contributed to the JDC and has a log in, thus making him a part of the JDC collective...
Next week on Slashdot: Taco interviews himself.
-... ---
I myself code just about everything in a server-sided web application. I can extend this to the desktop using Java, but to date have not seen a need. I know it takes more time this way than to fire up Visual Basic and create an application that way, but I don't run Windows, and my programs work on just about any system.
As for the imbedded market, Java has the capabilities, but I don't know if developers are going to embrace it much with licensing issues, code changes between releases, and the increasing number of non-Java tools that effectively get the job done.
Five years? Java will be with us, and there will be more of it out there. That might really be its peak usage before it falls like RPG, COBOL and other great languages that revolutionized computer program development.
Click here or here.
ABOUT JAVATM TECHNOLOGY
An Interview with James Gosling
March 28, 2002 -- It happens a few times in life -- the chance to ask a question of an exceptional person who has contributed to the evolution of technology, and as a result, has significantly influenced many people. Members of the Java Developer ConnectionSM [(JDC) program] recently took this opportunity when the JDC posted a poll, "Ask James Gosling."
James Gosling, vice president and fellow at Sun Microsystems, also known as the "father" of the JavaTM programming language, created the original design of the language and implemented its original compiler and virtual machine. He is a recent contributor to the Real-time Specification for the Java platform, and is currently a researcher at Sun labs, where his primary interest is software development tools.
Gosling sat down with the JDC and answered some of the many questions received as a result of the poll. Read Gosling's insight into the future of Java technology and more.
JAVA DEVELOPER CONNECTION PROGRAM (JDC): If you could start again, would you make everything an object rather than the current int, boolean, byte, etc, viz-a-viz object disconnect?
JAMES GOSLING: No, actually I tend to go the other way, which is to say, a way to make classes behave more like primitives, so that they can be optimized and become extremely efficient, and maybe have a way to do autoboxing so that they sort of go back and forth between being objects. There are a lot of subtle problems around autoboxing that always make me nervous, and the big one being questions around identity.
JDC: The Java language adds features with every release, and this is generally good, but the whole thing is getting pretty large. If you could take a few things out, what would they be?
JG: The Java language actually doesn't add very many features. The Java language itself has been very, very stable, and relatively few things have actually been added in any release. What has really gone nuts is all the different APIs that are part of [the Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition,] J2SETM. And this question, in some sense, is unanswerable. It says, if you could take a few things out of [the] J2SE [platform], what would they be? One of the tragedies we have is that we've got so many customers and everything that is in the platform is critical to a pretty large group of customers. So, for any particular person, any particular developer, not all of [the] J2SE [platform] is going to matter. But for every developer, the slice of the platform that they care about is different. It's always a constant struggle to try to avoid putting things in. And actually, if I had to pick some API that I've never used - honest I've never used the [Java DataBase ConnectivityTM] JDBCTM APIs. I've never written a piece of code that used the database stuff. So, personally, you could delete [the] JDBC [API] from [the] J2SE [platform] and it would not affect any code that I've ever written. But lots of other people would be really upset.
JDC: Where do you see Java technology in the next five years?
JG: I think the most interesting trend that's going on right now is the sort of really pervasive use of Java technology in all kinds of interesting places that are on the edges of the network. A lot of the infrastructure stuff that is in the enterprise has gotten really well established, but there is a lot of upcoming stuff in the way that people use Java technology in sort of embedded systems; things like cell phones, automobiles, realtime systems that are getting pretty interesting and giving people this ability to build systems in an end-to-end way that I think is getting very compelling.
JDC: About realtime: This developer is building some kind of ship simulation...I am writing a ship maneuvering simulator. It should simulate the trajectory of a ship and present its view to the user in approximately real time. Do I need to use the reference implementation of the realtime spec?
JG: I would say not. If you are doing simulation at all, that's not what the realtime spec is about. The realtime spec is about doing things predictably with very exact timing. And so, the hard part of this question is not the actual simulation part -- because that's not really relative to realtime -- but the display of the trajectory of the ship on the screen. And boy, every ship I've ever seen moves pretty slowly.
The stuff that's in the Java [platform] realtime specification is really only important if your timing constraints are very tight: if you are down in the sort of regime where you can't tolerate delays of more than a millisecond or so. With most things that people do in the Java programming language, you can just do regular Java [technology] code on a regular Java VM, and you'll be pretty close to realtime. Certainly within seconds and almost always within tenths to hundredths of seconds, you will be accurate. Things around garbage collection can become difficult, but with the incremental garbage collector in a hot spot it's rarely an actual issue.
JDC: I'd like to see more tools that enhance developer productivity, we have Unified Modeling Language (UML) modeling tools, and wizards to help us generate code. Can we tie these together better?
JG: In some sense that kind of thing has been the goal of the NetBeansTM [software] Project from the beginning. The really interesting thing about NetBeans [software] is that it has an API for things like UML modeling tools and cogeneration wizards to fit together in the same platform. People have done a fair amount of this in the past and been quite successful.
JDC: What do you think is the most important area for students to study in order to be successful in the computer industry? Not just the Java technologies, but what other disciplines?
JG: Certainly there are a lot of various things that are generally called software engineering that you can find in all kinds of books, like the refactoring books, and some of the pattern books are very good. Personally, I think one of the areas that's really important to understand is algorithms and the analysis of algorithms. There's a lot that [subject] gives you in terms of insight about how things behave.
JDC: Why is Throwable not an interface? The name kind of suggests it should have been. Being able to catch for types, that is, something like try{}catch (), instead of only classes. That would make [the] Java [programming language] much more flexible.
JG: The reason that the Throwable and the rest of those guys are not interfaces is because we decided, or I decided fairly early on. I decided that I wanted to have some state associated with every exception that gets thrown. And you can't do that with interfaces; you can only do that with classes. The state that's there is basically standard. There's a message, there's a snapshot, stuff like that -- that's always there. and also, if you make Throwable an interface the temptation is to assign, to make any old object be a Throwable thing. It feels stylistically that throwing general objects is probably a bad idea, that the things you want to throw really ought to be things that are intended to be exceptions that really capture the nature of the exception and what went on. They're not just general data structures.
JDC: Is it possible to submit the Java [technology] bytecode specification to a standards body like ECMA [and the like]?
JG: Well, we actually tried to do that; to submit it to ECMA. And that exploded and turned into a rather bizarre episode. And actually, after that exploded, ECMA did an internal investigation and published a report, which is very interesting reading.
JDC: You mean, Sun wants Java on a short leash, and standardization doesn't allow that? Microsoft will wipe your [deleted] with the [C#] CLR.
JG: [delete] you!
already capped, just providing my fellow readers with some info.
Not that static object cheap imitation crap that you can't put in switch statements. Or the int crap that we live with in existing Java classes.
This interview is worth reading if only to get a laugh out of the way Sun's marketroids obviously sanitized it. In at attempt to make the text of the interview (which is just a transcript of a spoken exchange, after all) comply with Sun's trademark guidelines, they ended up with sentences like this:
So, personally, you could delete [the] JDBC [API] from [the] J2SE [platform] and it would not affect any code that I've ever written.
And this:
That would make [the] Java [programming language] much more flexible.
And this:
Is it possible to submit the Java [technology] bytecode specification to a standards body like ECMA [and the like]?
Sheesh. This interview was brought to you by the letters "[" and "]".
Anyone got a link to the ECMA report Gosling mentioned?
From the article:
JDC: Is it possible to submit the Java [technology] bytecode specification to a standards body like ECMA [and the like]?
JG: Well, we actually tried to do that; to submit it to ECMA. And that exploded and turned into a rather bizarre episode. And actually, after that exploded, ECMA did an internal investigation and published a report, which is very interesting reading.
Does anyone know what he's talking about? I saw this interview a while ago and have looked around in vain for the report he mentions. This would certainly be interesting, especially if, as I somehow suspect, Microsoft did something to prevent Java from becoming a standard.
The interview was very short and I did not find much information. Here are some related links:
4 7_ STO69691,00.html -- on .NET and J2EE
v iews/james_ gosling.html
d efault.asp
g os ling/
http://www.computerworld.com/storyba/0,4125,NAV
Gosling on netbeans -- (03/2002)
http://www.netbeans.org/articles/inter
An old interview from 2000 -- more on java http://www.devx.com/judgingjava/articles/gosling/
Another from 1999 --
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/features/
S
I think [that] the [person who acted in the capacity of the] editor [of this article] who keeps [repeatedly] butting in [to the questions and answers] for no [descernable] reason [or benefit] should just shut [the f*ck] up.
Well, I like java, but it's still special purpose to me. It excels in ecommerce and dynamic web stuff. It may someday excel at distributed systems since it will be easy to move code around various devices on a network.
It's not a general purpose platform or language, imho, however. But there is one thing that would make it that way... hardware VMs... which would be JavaMs, of course, since they wouldn't be virtual.
Where are the processors that run the java code on the chip directly?
-pyrrho
It runs on linux too!
I may be a little biased though...
I don't fear computers, I fear the lack of them. -I. Asimov
I just couldn't let this one pass: Visual Cobol for .NET does in fact already exist, except it's made by Fujitsu, not Microsoft, and it's called NetCOBOL.
... look at me, an Old Fart(tm) at 35...
COBOL was the first high-level programming language I learned, over 15 years ago, and promptly forgot. Ah, the memories: punch cards, batch processing,
I can't say I found a lot of information in the article... Still, here are some questions about the design of the language:
;)
1) Why are classes like Integer so weird? It is such a pain to, for example, increment them... Change of this would conflict with absence of operator overloading, true (I don't like that too much either, but at least can imagine why it's (not) there). However, why not make them magical like String's "+"?
2) Several times I got caught on the fact that there is no way to pass an int by reference. And I don't like Integer (see aboive)...
3) One (public) class per file. This especially bugs me with small interfaces. Such a waste of screen space and disk space (each file takes up 4k on the file system)... Why not allow to put a hierarchy of interfaces (and, preferably, classes) in one file?
This wasn't intended to be troll, even if it looks and feels like one.
--
I like '...' (and (nested) parens)...
I looked at the topic of this article and saw the usually witty one liner below that says:
from the learning-more-about-hjava dept.
And I thought to myself, what is this new fangled hjava that I have heard nothing about and what is there to learn?
Then in my excitement, I realized it was just a typo...
I have read that one good thing about Java is that it does not rely on pointers for memory management. Is that true?
Also, I recently have begun a C++ class and on the subject of pointers, the textbook says this:
Never dereference the "NULL" pointer.
Well, after reading that, I decided that -- being a total programming geek after all
Unfortunately, the textbook did not go into detail about how this could be accomplished -- no surprise there.
So can someone tell me what the probably outcomes of dereferncing &NULL would be? Is it really as dangerous as the book's author suggests?
(It occurred to me that it might have a similar effect to something that I read about a while, back -- "Tao of Windows Buffer Overflow" -- this article. )
So does anyone here know how to "dereference the NULL pointer"?
I would appreciate some detailed sample code.
If I am going to dereference *NULL, I want to make sure that I am doing it the correct way.
1. Why is Java so damn slow?
2. Why do so many Java developers get so upset when you point out how damn slow Java really is?
3. Why is it so much fun to pick on Java developers when there really are slower languages out there?
4. If you could make Java fast, would you voluntarily leave it slow just so we could give Java developers apoplexy by mentioning how fast even PHP is for certain tasks?
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
I think the most informative thing about this interview is that Sun is Trademark-happy! That's one of the most annoying transcripts I've ever read -- unless the guy says TM after every fucking word, leave them out of the main text and acknowledge their trademark status at the end in fine print!
JDC: I'd like to see more tools that enhance developer productivity, we have Unified Modeling Language (UML) modeling tools, and wizards to help us generate code. Can we tie these together better?
Another way to enhance productivity is to manipulate the Java source code itself (rather than generate code from the outside.) A good example of tool doing just that is Moka. In short, Moka is a Java-to-Java translator which allows you to extend Java in many interesting ways. For instance, there is a plug-in that allows you to remove any method or class whose name begins with 'debug'. There are other examples on the web page. I believe it's easy to use, and it makes up for various shortcomings of the language itself.
-- Did you try Tao3D? http://tao3d.sourceforge.net
that's a good one!
Less funny is this:
how long it will take the Microsoft PR department to issue a press release using this statement out of context to bash Java?
The March 2000 JavaWorld has an interview with ECMA officials that, as Gosling says, makes for interesting reading:
"They just don't want to give up control" of Java, said Jan van den Beld, secretary-general of ECMA. "It is 100 percent my opinion that Sun is publicly saying they want to make Java a standard, but privately not making it happen."
Wassap boy-ees! Anal Mice! Woohoo!
A to the izzo! H0t Gr17s! Yeah buddy!
I read this. What a joke. Before I am considered inflammatory, I'd like to say I like Sun, and only hope the best of them.
Sun is deep shit. For example, the successful integration of GNU, particularly GNOME into Solaris is imperative - yet they fail to do this continually, with any measure of aptitude or efficacy.
I run both Solaris SPARC and X86. I am appalled at how this has turned out. I used to run SunOS 4.1.4, and now I've been through Solaris from 2.6 to now.
On top of this all is Java, whose IDEs are severely lacking. I see more Java crap out there. In fact, I work with Java now. It's such a kluge, so close, yet they missed the mark, badly. I can't explain it. I don't see why the OO programmers ever liked this stuff. Its confusing bloated, and the abstraction makes the developers dumber and dumber every day. They wave this GARBAGE COLLECTION flag all over, and they have ceased to understand what garbage collection even is.
We have this one guy who doesn't use an IDE when using Java swing. The windowing he created is useless. It's inconsistent as hell, and it takes him forever to implement anything. I'm not a big fan of this stuff. I don't understand if he a bad programmer or not, but I though the point of this OO stuff was to recycle classes and reduce work, but it seems only to create it.
Back to Sun. SPARC is so far behind at this point, they need to do some serious work. We benched out some Alphas, SPARCs, AMDs and Intel's here, and let me tell you, the price performance for Sun is a joke. It's laughably horrible. This Opteron will make Sun's life very difficult.
I once found a show stopper bug in Solaris, and I couldn't figure out how to call them to report it. I remember when the Cobalt support was free, it is no longer.
Sun is full of dead wood. I know several alumni and a few people still work there, these are my friends, I live in the Valley. We all think Sun is screwing up so bad.
Only time will tell. I hope Sun lives. They have a tact for doing things well, or t least they did. At this point, as the stock points out, the future looks grim. They have a huge opportunity to trail blaze now that Compaq and HP will be floundering around, Opteron isn't out yet, IBM is having some problems delivering, and Dell isn't quite there just yet, almost.
I will bet they will squander this opportunity. They will let Dell catch up, and supercede, as dell already has in the 1U department. They will let IBM finish Linux and start being the ones that define Java. They will let HP and Compaq figure out how to not go out of business. They have no good leadership.
I think its high time Solaris be thought of as a Kernel, and GNU needs to start pouring in. Solaris x86 needs to come back. Suns forte should be free. Its not worth much to tell you the truth. The compiler frankly sucks. They should write optimizations for GCC. They should bank on GNU. This resistance to and this adherence to this completely ridiculous System V is pathetic.
They also need to start getting the Java community more involved in making Java and stop changing the APIs every 5 minutes.
We tried talking to sun about being a VAR, as we are already a Dell VAR. The sales and marketing people there are pathetic. They know nothing.
I'm still in shock that they have made support for Cobalt suck badly, and that I could never tell them about that show stopping bug I found in Solaris. I know former employees who will tell you this: "I don't know how to file a bug against them when you don't work inside the company, and I worked there."
Sun, wake up. Start making use of that GNUish thing you bought Cobalt, and start acting like you give a shit about the little people. Your disgusting arrogance has pissed everyone in the Valley off. And get a new CEO for Christ's sake. I love McNeely, but he has the WORST case of ADD *ever*. He is good at shitting on MS, but the sad thing is. Microsoft is more in the bank than Sun's whole Market Capitalization. Yes, MSFT has more in the BANK as CASH, than all the shares of SUNQ multiplied by the current price.
Now, if that isn't a sign for Sun to get OFF their high horse and start doing WORK, I don't know what is.
Sun's inability to execute, to be competitive and to be innovative and to be connected INTIMATLY with even its TINY customers will kill it in the end. I know I wouldn't buy SUNW right now.
Radon Flux
Is it just me, or does Java seem like a NIH of C++? Especially now that .NET has shown it is possible to have generic portable virtual machines (and actually the USCD p-code machine long before that), there really is no reason to invent yet another language. This whole Java hype has probably cost the industry untold number of years redoing APIs and recoding perfectly fine code into the slower Java language. It seems Java is just C++ with all the features that Goosling didn't understand left out, like templates!
"I'd like to talk about verbs. Verbs came about because people started doing stuff. It became apparent that people doing stuff could not be described with nouns, so we invented the verb. This was a radical concept. Now let me tell you about adjectives. Adjectives were my own personal desi..."
I digress, what language features again? Java!? Java is a place and a coffee... langauge? That'll be Javanese...
You forgot to mention the forcibly widened layout. It's so wide even Klerck didn't bother to post something.
What they really mean here is this: Q: What are the minimum system requirements to play Eyeone.com games? A: Minimum requirements: Pentium/AMD 400Mhz or higher. Microsoft 95 or higher. 32 MB Physical RAM. VGA 256-color, viewed atleast at 800x600. 8bit soundcard 56 Kbps Internet access. Mouse or other pointing device Internet Explorer 5.5 strongly recommended click here to download. Java 1.2 update recommanded - click here to download. eyeone.com games are not compatible at the moment with Mac platform. we strongly suggest you to run them from the system configuration mentionned. Q: DO I NEED ANY PLUG-INS? A: No. You need a java capable browser. The game is supported only by Internet Explorer 4.0+ .
Good language/idea, bad implemtation, I think it could have been done better...Better luck next time
ahh, the egg in the basket..
I think if Microsoft hadn't done everything it could think of to sabatoge Java, it would be a lot closer to compile once, run anywhere...
Java.
For all of the posters who are going to respond with "Java can possibly be faster than C"...well, a color television could also possibly spontaneously appear at the event horizon of a black hole, but that doesn't mean that this actually ever happens.
2. They're not upset; that's the sound of Java developers rolling around in the large piles of money they make writing software that people actually use.
3. Because it's easier to nitpick the best product than it is to find all of the memory leaks and bad pointer refs in the C++ code written by l33t hax0rs.
4. Yes; if you can amuse your inferiors at no cost to yourself, why not bring some joy into their sad lives?
-jon
Remember Amalek.
Sun, you made a big mistake integrating SVR4 into SunOS. Now you're about to make another big one integrating GNU shit into your product line. Come back to the one true BSD way.
The real answers are :
1. So that Sun (and IBM) can sell more hardware in order that Java developers can even run a "Hello World" type program.
2. This is human nature. The Catholic church behaved the same way when Galileo pointed out the error in their doctrine.
3. Everyone has their own reasons. I like picking on the unthinking masses.
4. Thats a bit like asking "If you could make a perpetual motion machine...."?
There is no such thing as luck. Luck is nothing but an absence of bad luck.
It may be on the site somewhere, but I sure didn't find any cost or license information at your site. Not a promissing start from my viewpoint.
Also, it wasn't clear whether or not it was entirely aimed at embedded systems, or whether it supported some kind of Swing-equivalent library. Or, perhaps Swing was what you were supposed to use. But would it work? You mention that you have your own JVM, but you don't say anything about "binary compatible" etc., and even awt contains a lot of compiled code.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Funny how Sun revises its history after all their execs get busted for raping 13-year-old girls!
Java is actually very good, and yes, very fast. I fail to understand why anyone would prefer Microsoft's poor imitation. Java is still growing very fast and getting better all the time.
Ignore it at your peril. Or better yet, just laugh at it...that is until you're in the unemployment line because you don't know it.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
HTML
(Yes, I can use Google, but that didn't seem to be much use. Oh, but did find this googlewhack while trying to get info.
Too big to fail? Does that make me to small to succeed?
security model
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
C and C++? (see counter troll above instead of responding).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
PHP
Hello my friend! I was wanting to help you better write code in the Java programming language.
"try getting the absolute value of an Integer"
int x = y;
if(x < 0)
x *= -1;
System.out.println("The absolute value of x is " + x);
"You can't iterate over collections without explicitly creating a superfluous, temporary Iterator object."
ArrayList arl = arl2;
for(int i=0;i<arl.size();i++)
{
String s = (String)arl.get(i);
System.out.println(s + " was retrieved without the use of a superfluous, temporary Iterator object.");
}
As you could see, these codes are easy to do. If you are having more questions then ask.
The thing is, Java's strength is it's very weakness. Java is a platform neutral by design, so it's rather clunky when compared to a platform specific language. You won't ever see a game written in Java, not because Java is slow, but because you can't use Direct X with it(or whatever platform specific lib you want).
I think Java is going to own the embedded market. A cell phone company can create Java software and it can happily switch around the cell phone hardware as much as they want and still use the same single piece of software.
Palm Pilots are still popular for this same reason. There are tons of Palm apps that run on them and the new Pilots are software compatible with the older ones.
.NET appears to be different than Java in that it makes no attempt at being platform neutral, rather it tries to be language nuetral. Python.NET, VB.NET, C++.NET all compile down to the same CLR. And a VB.NET developer can use Python.NET libraries.
I think this will dominate the application market.
JDC: Is it possible to submit the Java [technology] bytecode specification to a standards body like ECMA [and the like]?
JG: Well, we actually tried to do that; to submit it to ECMA. And that exploded and turned into a rather bizarre episode. And actually, after that exploded, ECMA did an internal investigation and published a report, which is very interesting reading.
ARM's jazelle core and others (do a google search or go to SUN's website) do this and supposedly it is already being implemented by mobile phone makers.
Every interview I read on James Gossling, I read "how people are doing all sorts of exiting things on the desktop with it" and some other stuff such as how it is getting into "the embedded space". (what is embedded space? Did an astronaut get some vacum in abottle and bring it back with him?).
At the same time I read how SUN marvelousy manages to fuck things up with respect to their favourite language on the client side. Granted, it is huge on the e-commerce side of things, but things like JSP are too complex for simple backend applications that are far more easily handled in PHP or ASP. The mobile market seems to like it and it might become big there too, given that ARM and others are making processor core that handle bytecode natively, but that's not yet a given.
What stresses me is that, from the beginning, SUN mishandled Java and played into MS' hands for a number of reasons:
1.When it first came out it became very popular very quickly because of it's ability to provide pixelated aliased dancing Dukes and and sound to web pages. However Sun never bothered to push the point and try to improve performance and load times. People got very tired of seeing pixelated images floating across the screen that took minutes in some cases to load on early modems. They just sat there on their butts and ignored the fact that AWT was hideous, ungainly, and in no way worked very well across platforms (I mean on the Mac or Unix for example) and lacked important controls.
2.One of the things that played into MS' hands was the above and the fact that SUN made Java native interaction very difficult or at least non-trivial to implement, so that people who would have otherwise been able to make GUI controls and interface in C/C++ were put off having to slog through JNI. Along came MS with their JRI (or whatever it was called) which enabled all the hordes of MS developers to easily call MFC and other Win32 stuff directly from the classes. It was an easy picking and whose fault was it. It was or should have been obvious that MS would try to scupper anything that anyone else did (Custom ActiveX never became very popular but it did serve the purpose of making more FUD enter the arena) and the need for easy native access was defintely there. I know that it might have neccesitated changes in the security model but SUN didn't listen or was too confident or just too plain stupid when you look at the ugliness of their desktop for example.
3.Eventually they did listen and came up with Swing, which was so slow on machines of the time (ever run the Swing demo stuff on a 223MHz x86?) that it put off many companies and developers, who just carried on using VB because it was a no contest in terms of GUI response. And this although Swing looked very good.
Why did SUN ignore all the compaints? Why did they make native access so difficult? Why didn't they just improve AWT? Why didn't they try to look at it from a consumer point of view, which is what all those people watching the moronic applets of time were. Applets have all but dissapeared on the web and 99% of interactive shit is done with Flash today. Why didn't they try a trick from the MS book and try to implement things like the JVM starting up on boot or browser launch to make Applets start faster? Why did SUN make such a huge fuss of MS ignoring Java in XP when they couldn't even be bothered to make a marketing push for, IMO, some pretty neat stuff like WebStart?(who actually uses this?)
MS may be an abuse monopoly but SUN has it's head in the clouds up with the bosses of big banks etc and seems too dumb to try to see things from a consumer point of view.
(Sorry for the rant. I think they need it.)
Just so you know, if you attempt to dereference the null pointer in C, you will also get a well-handled exception which either launches an error routine defined by the programmer or causes the program to terminate politely. It's called a fucking catchable fucking signal, which can be fucking caught by fucking signal().
Oh come on, that's bullshit. Microsoft had no control over the way Sun handled Java, which was horrible. Sun fucked Java up every step of the way, no thanks to Microsoft. The fact that Microsoft benefited from Sun's ineptitude doesn't mean it's Microsoft's fault that Sun was foolish.
The fact that Gosling has never used the JDBC classes goes some way towards explaining some of the brain-dead "features" of those classes, such as the two main glitches outlined above.
-OzJuggler
Life's a buffer; you can only get out of it what you put into it! C:-)
array[i] = i++ + ++i;
is there a strict rule for how this should be evaluated?
"Copy-pasted" and then obviously modified it so that it would compile in C - such as not making a class out of the whole app, not passing a String[] to main(), not having main be "static" etc. :) Nothing essential such as the actual algorithm and math code was touched, however.
What about /. interview of Gosling? Surely people
here have Java related issues and questions...
They didn't improve AWT because it is just that bad. Every control is heavy-weight, represented by a native window. Put six buttons in your applet, it looks like one window, but it's seven. The only way to fix it was a redesign.
Swing is alot better, every control is light-weight; they are all just painted in the root container. They designed Swing to be as much like AWT to the programmer as possible.
You can find more information at http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/docs/api/index.html
Just look for javax.swing, it has a fairly good explanation.
That interview has been published in March. So it's not NEWs any more, methink.
minatrix.com
Go there and take a look at least. It's a java gamin g site on the basis of applets. Register (horror!) and take a look at the games. There are two 3D games last time I looked and a host of single and multiplayer tetris, galaxis and backgammon knockoffs etc.
This site is very interesting for a number of reasons:
1.It is immensely popular. When you play a game a window of all the other users online at the time pops up, and it blew me over to be honest.
2.The games look extremely good visually, are based on simple premises that make them adictive and are playable even on slower hardware.
3.It works best in Explorer's MS JVM of all things. JDK1.2 Browsers are not supported well and don't even work in some cases. This raises the question as to where they will go now that MS has dropped having it's own JVM in XP?
sumea
Go here and see what you can do with a well written ava 3D engine that needs no hardware acceleration. Take note of the site design. It makes an impression on consumers.
Sun has given that response because it is correct. If they hadn't listened to what people wanted, we'd still be using AWT.
You can use most, if not all, controls in JTables. For example: you could use text fields, buttons, or combo boxes as table cells. You can also extend AbstractTableModel to create a custom table model, a very useful feature.
Creating a JTable like the one you described is quite easy.
Then just add it to the applet or application. You would need to make a custom table model to be able to acctually edit the fields, but those are pretty basic.
WebObjects, JDBC, PHP, HTML, Javascript.