The Future of Java?

Todd AvErth writes "Judge Motz recently ordered Microsoft to distribute Sun's JVM with every Windows product. Salon decided to pipe up about it with an editorial musing about whether or not it's too late. Most of it isn't all that interesting, but some of the comments from Ximian developer, Miguel de Icaza point to the advantage of being able to compile from multiple languages. Anyone know of any projects to compile JVM bytecode from other languages?" Update: 01/23 16:00 GMT by M : Comments were disallowed when this story was originally posted; fixed now. My mistake (although KDE3's stupid mouseover-activates-form-elements user interface, now finally fixed in the latest versions, has to take some blame too).

Comments

The Future of Java? Even Brighter!!

[smd4985]

I like the article, and I think it is easy to see that Java is going to continue to be a force.

On the server side it has always been a great solution (great for building complex applications, no performance degradation with 'backend' code, and very stable and safe).

On the client side, the MS/Sun ruling will be a huge boon to the applications side - of course developers will start building client side apps! "If the JVM is there, they will come" :) Sure Swing is a little sluggish, but when everyone is running a p4 2GHz, it really doesn't matter....

Java is NOT in danger, sun is.

[zaqattack911]

I think it is important to make this distinction. Don't fall victim to Salon's BS. Granted they have a talented team, and they are good writers. But so help me I am sick an tired of their political twist on everything, and their constantly playing devils advocate on every topic. The more leftist they get.. the more they alienate many of their readers.

Heh.. ok now that my rant is over...
What if Sun goes under? This could be a good thing. What if the java platform became GPL ? I think this is an important distinction to make.

Perhaps the only thing holding back the Java platform is sun holding onto it.

I have nothing to say about .NET :)

--noodles

Java Stays Alive Despite MS

[Spencerian]

It's never been too late for Java, any more than its too late for other less popular but powerful languages. Just because Perl is around doesn't make TK, or AppleScript, or Python any less useful, for instance.

I've found that Java is great for complex applications that need cross-platform ability when programmers can't spend too much time in making that compatibility happen. Mac OS X is among the strongest Java clients around, and it shows every time I download a raw JAR and just use it. YMMV, but Java has a lot of warmth left in its cup, and, if other platforms aside from MS continue to support, we'll all get free refills.

(Sorry for the many metaphors. Haven't had my cup of coffee this morning--ack, I did it again...)

perspective from a CS student

[ShatteredDream]

My first two programming classes were in Java. I really think we would have had more fun learning the same concepts in Python. The thing that I've come to love the most about Python is that it doesn't force you to build an entire class just to test a feature. It's a great language to encourage CS students do their own experimenting with.

I'm personally ambivalent to Java. I like it for some things, but the only real reason I want to learn it is because so many use it. I just recently discovered wxPython and think it's probably easier for me than Swing or AWT.

The best thing that could come from Java for development as a whole IMO is Javadoc. If that tool were extended to support C++, C#, VB.NET, Python, PERL, etc it would make everyone's lives easier. Seriously, has anyone seen better documentation than Sun's Javadocs from something so big and complex as Java's libraries?

I'm really excited about Mono because I really like VB.NET and C#. I think the ability to use any language you want with the same libraries is a very important strength that .NET has over Java. I know there are other languages that __can__ targe the JVM, but Sun doesn't exactly seem to be pushing that. I'll never understand why though. Java could be made into their platform's equivalent of C# and they could develop their own clone of VB for Java. Hmmmm VB-J? It'd be great if they'd build VB and ObjectPascal compilers that target the JVM.

Universities

[SnAzBaZ]

I think Java's future can only get better, not because of the recent ruling against Microsoft - which to be honest I don't think is all that important. Rather, the fact that all the universities (at least over here in the UK) seem to be adopting Java as their main language for Computer Science and related courses. It won't be long before a whole generation of enthusiastic Java coders emerges.

Another issue is that as linux becomes more widely used, code that can easily be run on multiple os's becomes far more valuable. And developers may turn to Java for this reason, especially with all the cheap, fast, hardware we're all running nowadays where speed and efficiency arn't as important as they used to be in many situations.

The client doesn't control the Future of Java

[jeremy_a]

I think people make a bigger deal of MS shipping Java than they should. Java on the client has been in pretty sad shape for a long time, yet Java's popularity has grown. It's used a lot for server-side applications, and apparently in embedded applications as well (although I'm not as familiar with that side of things). Whether or not MS ships a decent JVM on Windows doesn't change this -- Java will continue to be used just as it is today.

Does it make a difference for Java on the client? Maybe. Although most of my Java work has been on the server side of things, I have written a couple of Java client apps as well. But those were for use inside the intranet, so it wasn't a big deal to require users to install a JVM. It certainly won't solve all of Java's client-side problems. Performance is much less of a problem than it was in the early JVMs, but most Java clients are still slower than their native counterparts. Perhaps more importantly, there are quite a few bugs in the GUI libraries (both Swing and AWT) that make it difficult to write highly polished applications. And with Swing you get problems with the look-and-feel not matching the native platform, which is a problem for some. But I think that part of the reason why these are still problems is because Java on the client hasn't really taken off -- maybe more of these issues will get solved if people start looking at Java as a valid client platform (because MS is shipping it with Windows) and start writing more client apps.

But regardless of whether it makes a difference, I think the ruling does make sense. MS had a contract to provide a compatible JVM, and they didn't hold up their end of the contract. (At least that's my understanding -- I don't know the complete details of the contract.) Therefore they should have to make ammends -- maybe it is too late to "save Java" on the client, but it shouldn't hurt.

Java is the new COBOL

[The Famous Brett Wat]

Slightly off-topic, but I'm in the process of perusing the job ads again, and based on the proliferation of J2EE/EJB and other Java stuff I'm seeing, I think that Java is the new COBOL. Not that the languages bear any similarity whatsoever, but Java seems to have found a niche as the new lingua franca of business apps. It has competition, to be sure, but based on the history of COBOL, I would be so bold as to put my pundit hat on and say, "Java programming will be a safe bet for long-term employment in the computing industry." The jobs aren't necessarily all that interesting, but they look a whole lot more secure than the bleeding edge tech jobs which come and go in a flash.

The whole C# and .Net thing is a potential competitor in the same arena, but I don't think that Microsoft's inclusion (or not) of Java is going to matter much. I always figured that Java was intended to allow cross-platform desktop app programming, but the niche it seems to be filling is a back-end role. Personally, I had expected Perl to fill this role as the new COBOL, but demand for Perl seems to be way down, except as one of those "we also expect you to know Perl" type things, which never actually turns out to be important in the job.

Re:Languages for the Java VM...

[malachid69]

I own two. I have the TINI board (www.ibutton.com) and the PTSC chip (www.ptsc.com).

Also, it is very common on handhelds and cell phones. My Handspring has Sun's JDK and IBM's JDK on it, as well as Java3D.

Personally, I am still debating making my own PDA using an open-core java chip and OLED touchscreen.

Malachi

Re:Yes they did...

[sketerpot]

But language-specific processors have always been losers and this was always a stupid idea.

I think that it's important to draw a distinction between the Java language and the Java bytecode. The language, IMHO, isn't very good; I much prefer Python, or if I'm developing for the Java platform, Jython. But Java is a form of bytecode that can be compiled to from all sorts of languages, so programs compiled for picoJava cold also be run transparently on many other OSes. Although I think that JIT compilers and Hotswap optimization have made this less important, it still might be nice to have a processor that could run Java bytecode natively.

Still, I'm not too enthusiastic about it.

Java has it's place, but it has problems

[jamieo]

Java has it's place, but if you come across someone with the opinion that Java is the be all and end all, avoid them.

The very best thing about Java is the marketing hype Sun have managed to create. It's only Mac-o-philes who seem to be more obcessed (a Mac-Java geek is something to behold!).

Java's a decent clean OO language, it's got a good set of standard/accessible powerful libraries, it's handling of libraries is good (compared to say C/C++), it's simple to learn the language basics and the GUI toolkit (swing) is reasonable.

However for me Java has not delivered on it's promises. Performance generally is poor, compared to say Perl, and is dire when compared to C.

Java also failed to deliver it's platform independence - you just get so many problems running on different platforms and different VMs. Compare this to say Perl - if you avoid platform specifics, Perl just works. Even compare to C when using a library to abstract platform independence (e.g. things like in Gnome/Gtk or Qt), it's not so hard and at least the mistakes are usually yours. I know it's not the fault of Java as a language, but if it can't be implemented well, it won't be much good.

The final major reason Java has not delivered is because it's not made programming any easier or error prone - and much has been made of this promise. Yes, gc does save some bugs (it does cause some more, but on the whole it's good). Java does not save you from uneducated developers or people who simply suck as a programmer. I've seen some steaming piles of turds writted in Java by people who really should be better. This can be said of any language, but much was made about Java being a language to make people make less mistakes - they just make different ones.

So use Java with your eyes wide open, it's decent, good in some areas, weak in others and eventually you'll move on to the Next Big Thing TM.

Jamie

Miguel missing the point?

[Rinikusu]

I know I'm probably missing his, but here's how I view his decision to go with .Net/C#:

MS made the "important stuff" standardized and "open." It still leaves MS in the position to close off the rest of the "non-important" stuff and that could break compatability. If you're looking for "cross-platform" advantages, .NET and it's VM are dependent upon MS's decision to release a VM. Yeah, you could write your own, but what if MS invokes the DMCA and prevents you from implementing a "full" VM due to patents and the like? Then you're screwed, writing applications that run on a perceived "broken" VM that lacks those things that MS has deemed fit enough to lock in. "Yeah, great, OpenSource to the rescue, we'll port our VM to every platform!" Sure, and getting people to use it? Good luck. Tell Joe IT Manager that he can use a "free, OpenSource VM" from a bunch of anonymous guys on the internet or the "official VM" from MS, what's he gonna pick?

And that leads us to:
The key is to ultimately remove the dependence upon MS products. We've all stated that time and time again. People run MS for Outlook. For Exchange. For a relatively easy sytem to administrate and patch. For Support. There's a million and one papers, editorials, /. comments, etc that do a good job of explaining all of that, but imagine this:

What if Evolution had been written in Java? OpenOffice, if I'm not mistaken, is written in Java and if I must say so myself, it runs VERY nicely on my machine and does everything I need it to do as an Office Productivity Suite. With OpenOffice, you see lots of people switching from MS Office, avoiding the licensing fees and troubles, and generally LIKING it (there are exceptions.. there needs to be a nice Access competitor or at least a great frontend for something like PostGRE or the like). That's one less reason to use MS, right? Great! OpenOffice runs on Windows, Sun, Linux, OS X (with X11 installed). Most importantly, see Windows? Millions of people can now look forward to using that $500 they'd spend on Office to doing SOMETHING ELSE with their money. Millions of companies can still do business without outlaying a chunk of cash for Office. There's the example.

Now, back to Evolution. If Evolution had been written in Java, like OpenOffice, you wouldn't just have people on *NIX platforms using it. No, you'd be able to use it on Windows, the biggest, most important, and most influential marketplace in the computer industry. What would that mean? Let's say you're Joe IT Manager. You've already switched your desktops to OpenOffice. Now, you could replace Outlook with Evolution, on your Windows systems at work (and saving on the licensing, to boot!). See, it's hard to convince upper management to switch to Linux whole-hogged. But if you do it, one app at a time, eventually you run OUT Of reasons to continue to pay the exorbitant licensing fees to support an Operating System that you no longer need to run the apps you run. Dig it? Dig it! Your users use the new apps, already acclimated to them. Change comes slowly, and for the better. And all that time Ximian spent on working on MONO could have been spent tweaking the interface, developing advanced calendaring functions, developing server-side calendaring/schedule making software, etc. And then Linux slips in quietly through the back door and MS is left to send armies of marketdroids to help woo the companies back, losing their marketshare inch by inch.

I may have Ximian's and Miguel's intentions completely wrong. Linux "desktop" penetration may not be his ultimate goal, although as a Linux vendor it might behoove him to think this way. Linux is inching it's way into the server rooms of corporate America (and the world), and the desktops will be a hard fought battle. Java is the kind of technology that allows you to provide the replacements that will make the transition EASIER.

To conclude, I applaud Miguel for his hard work on MONO (and Evolution, it does fucking kick-ass). Unfortunately, I think it's misguided and ultimately futile.