Slashdot Mirror
Even Sun Can't Use Java
cowmix writes "It turns out that Sun does not eat its own dog food. Specifically, this
internal memo from Sun strongly
suggests that Java should not be used for Sun's internal projects.
More interesting still, they go on to state which other languages
fullfil Java's goals better than Java does itself. Finally, the
memo states Sun's own Solaris is the cause of many of Java's woes. Yikes."
Their primary concerns may be about Solaris 7 or 8, but they certainly have more fundamental concerns regarding Java. For example, about modules:
I am tempted to quote the rest of item #3 of "Defining the Java Problem" for you here, but that would merely annoy those who have actually read the article rather than skimming it. These are not Solaris-only issues, are they?
Their fundamental reasoning for writing this memo may have been concerns with the Solaris implementation of Java, but I think they raise some very good points w.r.t. Java in general, and whether or not you wish to debate virtue of their complaints, statements such as "The Java system for evolving the interface (deprecation) does not serve production software very well" clearly are not Solaris-only issues.
It would seem to me that they talk mostly about Solaris because they are Sun employees primarily concerned with the success of Sun and its Solaris platform. That makes sense. Clearly they also suggest that the Solaris JVMs in particular have had inexcusable problems and a lack of support and responsible managment, but your statement that "what they were really complaining about was Solaris 7 and 8" is a rather broad generalization, wouldn't you say?
As I have been programming primarily in C for the last year, I have not struggled much with the idiosyncracies of Java for a while. Don't get me wrong. I love Java. But I think this article raises some really good issues, and honestly, makes me worry about the fate of Java when its creator can't even make it an acceptable language platform for their own internal application development.
I have no special gift, I am only passionately curious. --Albert Einstein
My school recently replaced a bunch of dual boot windows/linux machines with some Solaris workstations. All I can say is "What the fuck?" The damn things are running CDE for gods sake.
I was waiting in line the other day to use a 'burning station' where you can get CDs made for site-licensed software, and I tried using one of the machines. It was ridiculous. The only browser they had was Netscape, and Java didn't even work! I mean, this is a sun machine!
Solaris may make a good server OS, but for a desktop OS I'd rather stick with windows or Linux.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Lisp has one of the best object-oriented paradigm implementation, Meta-Object Protocol among languages with both scripting and bytecompiling capabilities.
Scheme has been proved as a good language for GUI and configuration: GIMP, Sawfish, TeXmacs.
OCaml has all the power as Lips, just in syntax conviniect for many Java/C-poisoned brains to read faster. No wonder there are many real-world applications on it.
Haskell... I just love how it demonstrates that OOP is not everything (and even not enough) :)
Sun works for telecom industry - why not consider Erlang?
And don't ignore Mozart - it's multi-paradigm pradigm might be just what we all will thing as the best in 3-5 years.
The list is not complete, of course. And it's inspired by Functional Programming.
My main point here is: each of above languages, would it be in hands of Sun marketed instead of Java (with all that money invested to), would have quality of implementation much better than Java.
In fact, I am impressed how such poorly designed language as Java succeed so far on the market. It wouldn't without so much money behind. And without so many classes written by Sun to compensate the poor design of the core language itself.
Would Sun invest so much efforts and money to FP language then the result would be much better. Because quality is why FP matters.
Less is more !