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The Faded Sun
jlowery writes "Robert X. Cringely seems to
think so. Forget the hardware side: what does this mean to the future of Java? Will there be enough incentive to continue to develop the language for whoever acquires Sun? Or will Java developers have to swallow hard and submit to the whims of the dark overlord? Maybe I'll switch to Mac development, after all."
The Java specs are done by the Java comminity process, if Sun goes down (I really hope not and I will be one of the first to jump on their desktop machines) someobody else (possibly IBM) will take over Suns role in the JCP. There is too much investement especially on IBMs side to let it go.
I don't think it is that abstract though. .NET framework might not be that bad, or even very good.
Purely technical, the
The problem is not with the technical side of Microsoft, but the contracts and legal-issues associated with licensing their software.
Microsoft has a tendency to create contracts and agreements which bind you not only by hands and feet, but which will also "dictate" a predefined Microsoft-approved-certified-blahblah direction.
Perhaps the problem is that the distinctions in the computer market have altered and Sun has no place for its hardware? It used to be that there were servers/mainframes, workstations and then puny PCs. PCs have grown in capability, however, essentially absorbing the workstation definition and market, leaving Sun with little room in that segment. IBM chose to make servers the core of its business, while Microsoft and Intel dominate the PC market.
.NET and the hype machine is in full force - and still Sun has failed, to my knowledge, to respond.
For quite a while I've been wondering exactly what Sun is up to. They calmly sat back while people kept repeating the mantra that Java is slow (even though it isn't; JIT-ted code and better GUI techniques improve performance markedly), allowing it to lose mindshare to competing products. Now Microsoft has shipped
Even if Cringley's article is wildly inaccurate, it does reflect the concerns and questions of a number of people, particularly those who do not use Java as part of their job. What the hell is Sun doing?
I must agree that Sun is really in trouble. Solaris is not the blame but the hardware price and performance is.
I work in a semiconductors startup. Two years ago when the company was founded Sun hardware was the default when it came to choosing CAD servers. Sun even had a nice discount program for startups.
These days we can get a fast Pentium4 or Athlon (running Linux) to do the same work for a lot less $$$. Maintenance is also much cheaper.
All the big CAD software vendors now support i386 Linux and the platform is stable and FAST!
In fact, the only reason Sun hardware is still worth keeping around is because it supports large (>4GB) memory. When somebody finds a way around that (AMD Hammer comes to mind) Sun will loose its last asset.
It's a pitty, cause Sun is a good enigneering company. They invest heavily in research and are a major source of innovation.
They just can't keep up with the falling prices of that huge i386 market. No one can (not even Intel's own Itanic!)
You can't (well you can, but I'd rather drill a hole in my hand) script an enterprise app in PHP. Yah, PHP is great for a scripting language, but it's just that.
:)
I grow tired of everyone predicting or shouting for one thing over the other - there always has to be just one. Yah, right.
PHP is great for the non-ASP/*nix programmer. ASP (and I'm choking a little here when I say this) is great for the m$ programmer. C is good. Java is good. Jeeze, they all have their strengths and weaknesses. I'd much rather have a CHOICE when using a particular technology than not.
The Java VM exists for a reason. Just because PHP doesn't have one doesn't mean much. They're both written in C too - so what!
In the end, sure the user wants the most responsive app. But I'll say this, get a big project and try to have multiple devlopers script it and it'll probably die on the vine. You can do just as bad of a job with JSP (and believe me, I've seen it) but there are some really great frameworks out there that help fix problems like this.
Plus, with PHP and the like, they're tied to HTTP. It wouldn't be a very good idea to script a server app in PHP with multiple different types of clients accessing it. It's possible, but I can't see someone writing a Win or Linux native client that accesses a PHP server app. Java works well with the web, but is not build solely for it.
Plus there are other things, if you wanna compare (I don't know even why I'm doing this). There is no PHP message queueing, no or little 'enterprise features', no 'compile PHP to a console application', no PHP 'enterprise' transactional components, etc. Anyway, anyone who's ever had to really use both knows what I'm talkin about.
And besides that, for me, *nix and network programming are still like wide open spaces to me. There are still plenty of things to discover out on the Montana plains and I'm not gonna get all bent outta shape about a rock not being a tree and a tree not being a clear blue sky.
What have they done for the company recently?
Seriously, Gosling has been involved in a lot of visionary technology before Java, but none of it got anywhere. NeWs was squished by X-Windows. Gage did net day, but what has he done for the company recently? Come to that what does Whitt Diffie do for Sun beyond consume cafe latte?
Unfortunately there is a major difference between technological firepower and technological leadership. The problem isn't with the technologists, it is with the management. They have simply failled to construct a business plan or environment that can utilise the firepower they have.
In that sense, Sun invented workstation.
My DEC Alpha was far superior to anything sun had to offer. Come to that SGI provided better firepower and a slicker integration package. Sun invented the cheap engineering workstation, mainly for the education market. Real engineers used VAXen. Now VMS didn't survive too well but it was the DEC/MIT X-Windows system that defined the workstation interface in the end.
As the author claims, Sun might be gone; on the other hand, Sun might be ruling the world by then.
I doubt it. IBM is rulling the commercial java space and OSS is rulling the freeware space. There is not much of a gap between the two.
The apple/Sun issue is key here. Apple is very well positioned to take huge bites out of Sun's core server market. They simply don't need Sun technology at this point. All they need is a hot processor - which sun notably lacks.
For Sun to survive it has to start focussing on its business, not Microsoft. Meetings with Sun engineers are painful, you get a 45 minute whinge about Microsoft. Which is pretty sad when they know you are one of Microsoft's closest allies in the industry. Even if Sun makes a billion in the lawsuit they will lose big, the suit is costing them far more than that in lost business and lost opportunities.
The first step to save Sun is to sack McNealy. Unfortunately Sun does not have a Steve Jobs figure waiting in the wings.
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Who cares?
I believe that one of the causes of the dot-com implosion is that many companies discovered that their customers will actually put up with pretty crappy service. And therefore the market for co-location services and monster data centers never actually appeared and companies like Exodus were doomed. 24/7 uptime just isn't needed by that many companies.
Why pay big bucks for hardware support on a box from Sun when you can buy 5 cheapo boxes for the same price and have your own in-house monkeys do the board swapping within one hour rather than waiting for board-swapping monkeys from Sun that might not actually show up within an hour anyway?