Sun To Give StarOffice Java Flavor

ilovestuff writes "Sun Microsystems is building a Java-based development kit for its StarOffice software to help corporate programmers customise desktop applications, a move that better pits it against Microsoft's dominant Office. The software development kit will be available in the middle of next year as part of a minor upgrade to the business version of Sun's StarOffice 6.0, said Joerg Heilig, director of engineering for StarOffice at Sun."

Comments

Java blows

[jmd!]

Of course this is the price for writing code that work on windows, linux, mac, and random unix, so it is a tradeoff many accept.

I don't think it is. Perl, Python, and TCL all run under UNIX and Windows. Hell, they're even compiled at runtime. And somehow they still use much less CPU and memory.

I use several java apps on my P2 300, so I think you are exagerating.

I have 128M of memory. If that's not enough, then that's ridiculous. XNap, a Java napster client, takes ~20 seconds to start up. Java applets in Netscape take 15-30 seconds to start. Oh, and Sun's java plugin likes to crash Mozilla constantly, so I don't even bother enabling it in the first place.

There are now more jobs programming java than any other language.

And they're all boring enterprise level applications. While you may consider that a success, Java didn't change anything. Had it never been invented, though would have been written just the same, in C++.

Most of those apps are likely written so poorly they only run on Windows anyway. I've heard Java's cross platformness is mostly a myth.

Java has done nothing to make consumer apps cross platform.

Java was invented a few years ago

It was invented before Flash. It has Netscape's backing. And it still has less market penetration.

Re:Java blows

[BadBrainDay]

Most of those apps are likely written so poorly they only run on Windows anyway. I've heard Java's cross platformness is mostly a myth.

There's nothing like using the words "I've heard" in an argument to expose yourself as ignorant.

So you're saying most enterprise Java apps only work on Windows? Are you on crack?

Re:Java blows

[bwt]

I don't think it is. Perl, Python, and TCL all run under UNIX and Windows. Hell, they're even compiled at runtime. And somehow they still use much less CPU and memory.

All of the languages you just named are slower than Java. This is common knowledge, but if you need proof, go to Bagley's language shootout. I think you should check your facts instead of making them up.

Don't get me wrong, I like Perl and Python and have used each of them for various tasks. Python's java implementation Jython is quite a nice way to fully mix java and python. I also like Ruby which you didn't mention.

I have 128M of memory. If that's not enough, then that's ridiculous. XNap, a Java napster client, takes ~20 seconds to start up. Java applets in Netscape take 15-30 seconds to start. Oh, and Sun's java plugin likes to crash Mozilla constantly, so I don't even bother enabling it in the first place.

I just downloaded XNap to have a look. I got the splash screen in 6 seconds on my P2 300 with 384 MB. I've never had mozilla 1.1 crash on me, and I often play a java/jython net game called wyvern that is a graphical 2D mud with real time combat.

I think you would do well to get more memory. No amound of memeory is "enough" -- memory always makes things go faster by avoiding swapping, especially if you like to have a lot of apps open at once.

And they're all boring enterprise level applications. While you may consider that a success, Java didn't change anything. Had it never been invented, though would have been written just the same, in C++.


Enterprise applications are boring, huh. I think that says a lot about the your perspective.

Most of those apps are likely written so poorly they only run on Windows anyway. I've heard Java's cross platformness is mostly a myth.

I think it is becoming clear that you are making assertions based on hearsay. My experience is exactly the opposite. In fact, it sounds more like you are describing VB than Java. Java's strongest point is that it really does steer you towards good programming practices. That was the biggest selling point for enterprise development, and the main reason C++ was mostly abandoned for enterprise apps.

Most of the hard parts of enterprise apps in java are written by specialists and offered to the world to reuse. Take a look at the Apache Jakarta project. The open source tools there are the driving force behind most of the enterprise apps out there.

It was invented before Flash. It has Netscape's backing. And it still has less market penetration.

Huh? I'll wait for the citation on that amazing claim. But in the meantime, go and do a job posting count at monster.com by keyword. I did and the results were as follows:
flash 652
java 3518
Frankly, flash is about to find itself completely outdated when SVG takes over.

Re:Scripting language for StarOffice!

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, let's call it Javascript.

JavaScript was horribly named by inept marketers at Netscape back in 1995. Its real name was "LiveScript" but they changed it at the last minute so they could coast on Java hype. It has nothing to do with Java and the name has been confusing people ever since. And "JavaScript" was a good name, too. It would be nice if BeanShell, for example, could be called "JavaScript" because that's actually what BeanShell is.

It's like the .NET debacle at Microsoft. Every single marketing manager decided that his own projects needed to be part of the .NET initiative. They all hopped on it and diluted its meaning. For all practical purposes ".NET" is basically the name that Microsoft is now associating with every latest version of most of its products, so it means nothing. (Yes, there is a very nice JVM ripoff in there somewhere, if you can find it without getting lost in the slick glossy .NET bullshit.)

IMHO if it's obvious that a programming language has been named by a marketer, that's a red flag. Java and C# were named by marketers. But at least nobody will confuse Java with coffee; that would be silly. But "C#" is as bad a name as "JavaScript". It's going to cause confusion with C and C++ (which are already confused for one another, and with Objective C, especially when HR managers scan people's resumes looking for keywords). And C# is nothing like C, or C++, or Objective C. I have to admit "C++" was a clever way to name a programming language that aspires to be (almost) a superset of C. But in that case the new name was a legal expression in the old one, it was a short, extremely descriptive name, and it made sense. C# fails on all three counts. They should have just named it "Me Too C".

Re:Java?

[Daleks]

My other thought is this particular example plays right into the strength of Java's JIT. Since the same code is run over and over, it can be compiled once at runtime. The code is very short, so the just-in-time compilation doesn't take much time. And it can fully exploit Java's key performance advantage: the ability to incorporate runtime profiling information into the optimization process.

Static compilers make "eduated" guesses as how to best optimize code. When it comes to a fork in the road it, since they don't have actual run-time information, they have to do the best they can and move on. Java can leverage run-time information against the statically compiled bytecode and utilize dynamic optimization. Granted completely linear code will always run better when statically compiled to machine code, but if at any point in the compilation process the compiler has to make an "educated" guess, a better decision can be made at run-time through dynamic optimization. General information on dynamic optimization can be found here.

Re:Java?

[AJWM]

Which shows how lousy C is at recursive functions. (And how bad recursive calls can be in general).

Rewriting fib(int n) along the lines of

int fastfib(int n)
{
int i;
int f = 0;
int fm1 = 1;
int fm2 = 1;

if (n < 2) return 1;
for (i = 2; i <= n; i++) {
f = fm1 + fm2;
fm2 = fm1;
fm1 = f;
}
return f;
}

(and similar in Java), I get times of 0.004 seconds for C and 0.567 seconds for Java -- most of which is the time to load the JVM (ie the difference between 'time java fastfib 40' and 'time java fastfib 0' is lost in the noise).

Proving that choice of algorithm can make far more difference than choice of programming language.