Industry Leaders Discuss Java Status Quo

prostoalex writes "JavaPro magazine published a wrap-up report on Java discussions at the recent JavaOne. If you missed JavaOne, the video Webcasts of McNealy, Schwartz, Gosling et al. are available from this site. The round table mentioned above gathered people from Sun, Oracle, Borland, Novell, Motorola and others. The discussion topics included: Java vs. NET, integration issues, the impact of open source and top problems that Java is facing today."

Comments

Re:The IDE's baby

[MojoMonkey]

www.eclipse.net

Re:The IDE's baby

[durdur]

IntelliJ is an excellent Java IDE.

Re:Hey They Mentioned Me!

[stoolpigeon]

It was a java app that really swung me over. I needed a GUI based telnet app that would allow a user to click on buttons that would send control characters to the host. (I work in a call center). I needed it to run on linux and I wanted something open source that I could modify. So I headed over to sourceforge and ended up with something that is working very well.

You can find it here

It can be run as an applet or application. (Something else I like is how easily you can move java to web stuff and vice versa) I run it as an application. It works well. And it didn't do everything just the way I wanted- so now I am fixing it to do just what I need. (that's an open source thing more than a java thing- but I love it) My IDE- Eclipse, is also a Java app that works well, on both platforms by the way. It does not seem slow or buggy to me.

Hardware acceleration

[agslashdot]

javachip was prototyped, but never marketed - yet another execution failure at Sun. At on point, Sun declared "Java implemented right was not slow". It then hired coders to implement a "Java compiler in Java". Result ? The Java compiler in Java was 20 TIMES SLOWER than the Java compiler written in C! These were never widely published, but just do a search on Technical Abstracts on sun.com, you'll find them.

Re:Hardware acceleration

[Kombat]

First of all, the Java chip was and is marketed. It is present in thousands of mobile devices and dumb terminals.

Secondly, you clearly demonstrated your total and utter ignorance when you said:

[Sun] then hired coders to implement a "Java compiler in Java". Result ? The Java compiler in Java was 20 TIMES SLOWER than the Java compiler written in C!

Why would Sun "then" hire Java programmers, when they already employed the very creators of the language? Who knew Java better than those that already worked for Sun and who had created it? Why would they then go out and hire some more Java programmers to re-write the Java compiler?

Finally, also picking on your last, ludicrous statement, the Java compiler was always already written in Java. Its in the com.sun.tools.java.Main class. The Java compiler is a circular-recursive parser, but I wouldn't expect you to know what that means, so let me break it down for you. It means that the language's compiler is written in the language itself.

The Java INTERPRETER is the one that's written in C. You know, that little java.dll file - that's the Java interpreter. It's written in C. When you run "javac" to compile some Java files, all javac.exe is is a native bootstrapper which loads and executes the Java compiler from the tools.jar file. How do you think they ensure that the Java compiler behaves exactly the same on every platform? Because it's the same compiler - the exact same code - written in Java!

Either you're an incredibly ignorant moron who knows just enough about Java to cause some damage, or I've just been successfully trolled.

Re:Hardware acceleration

[Kombat]

One final slap in your face: on my system, almost all of the .EXE tools in my jdk/bin folder are within a few hundred bytes of each other in size (they're all about 29 KB). Don't you think that's pretty amazing? First of all, to fit an entire compiler in just 29 KB of executable, but also, for 20 different tools and utilities, which perform dramatically different tasks, to all be almost the exact same size???

Do you think maybe it's because they're all just native bootstrappers for different Java programs, and thus, are all almost the exact same, identical C source code (just calling different Java classes)?

How could you make such an ignorant post and not know this stuff?

Re:Hey They Mentioned Me!

[Ribo99]

What apps have you been using?

I used Borland's JBuilder 4 on Linux at my last job four years ago for all of my developement with fantastic results.
Most of the developers at my company use Eclipse for their development, a pure java IDE that beats the pants off of any other IDE I've used or seen. The only reason I don't use it is because of the lack of VI keybindings, I use good ol' Vim instead.

The point it moot anyway, Java really shines in the Enterprise side.

Re:One issue with Java vs. .NET

[peterdaly]

Two Points:
1. I believe Java is great for applications that do not have a fat client GUI. "Server-Side" components, and web applications, etc. seem to perform just fine.

2. Java is used the most by in house development teams. Many times in this evironment, the advantages of developing in Java outway the speed problem experienced by the users of a FAT GUI.

As a side note, I use IDEA for Java development, which is an IDE written in Java. The UI seems very responsive on my 1ghz linux laptop. Not sure what they do different than everyone else.

-Pete

Re:I still don't get the allure of Java

[CoughDropAddict]

The "portability concerns" you mention are really quite minor, have you ever attempted to write a semi-complex cross-platform piece of software that strayed beyond the Standard C and C++ libraries?

Yes, I am a significant contributor to the audio editor Audacity. It runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. It uses cross-platform libraries to do:

• GUI (wxWindows)
• Audio I/O (portaudio)
• PCM sound file i/o (libsndfile)
• mp3 decoding (libmad)
• id3 tagging (libid3tag)
• pcm resampling (libsamplerate)
• time and pitch stretching (soundstretch)
• vorbis encoding and decoding (libogg/libvorbis)
• XML parsing (expat)

Also, with Swing, you can make your app fit in perfectly with the underlying OS

Swing does not fit in perfectly by any means. Even someone who knows nothing about computers can tell you it looks different and feels different.

How is integrating your Java app into the system any different than making an InstallShield wizard for your C++ app on windows?

You don't even need an InstallShield wizard for apps written in C++, all you need is a .zip with the app and the DLLs. You don't even need that if you link statically, all you need in that case is an .exe! There's no comparison with the chore of making sure a JRE is installed, that it is a new enough version, and that your app can find the java vm and all it's libraries.

Re:The IDE's baby

[zeno_lee]

I've used Visual Studio, Eclipse and IntelliJ IDEA

Eclipse www.eclipse.org is excellent and is backed by the industrial strength of IBM. It's open source and it's completely free.

IntelliJ IDEA www.intellij.com is also excellent, but it's not free.

Never tried Borland Jbuilder.

In my opinion as far as IDE's go Visual Studio, IntelliJ IDEA, and eclipse are on the same level.

Re:Multilanguage support would be nice

[Anonymous Coward]

Convert VB to Java
http://www.diamondedge.com/
http://www.blac kdirt.com/

JRuby
http://jruby.sourceforge.net/

Jython
http://www.jython.org/
http://today.jav a.net/pub/a/today/2003/06/10/jytho n.html

ack

.net interoperability issues -- bigtime...

[kremvax]

Now that MS is dropping IE support for Mac entirely, and has never offered anything workable for linux, .net component interoperability issues for non-windows systems should be a glaring problem for enterprise deployment.

I mean, if you're using .net for what .net does best (prebuilt rapid deploy compenents), there are *lots* of .net components that just won't work without ie.

Java isn't a perfect language, but at least it supports linux, mac, solaris, atari, commodore, ti-99, etc.

Re:The IDE's baby

[lokedhs]

Like others have stated, take a look at IDEA.

I doubt there is a single feature in the .NET IDE that IDEA doesn't do better (except for GUI builder, of course, since IDEA doesn't have one. It's a tool for developers, after all[1]. :-) ).

Check out this review. Or this one.

[1] Actually, a GUI builder is coming in the next version, but it's still in alpha state.

Re:Java 1.5

[Captain Bumpsickle]

You could always use SWT instead of Swing - it looks like it belongs on Windows (or it blends in with GTK, if you're under Linux).

Re:Hey They Mentioned Me!

[Anonymous Coward]

QtJava
ScribbleWindow.java example

It also work on Windows.

Re:The IDE's baby

[faaaz]

jEdit would be the tool for you. Plain and simple at first glance, install some plugins and it will blow you away.

Re:I still don't get the allure of Java

[Wraithlyn]

"Can you think of even one Java application that you use on your desktop and like?"

Sure... Borland JBuilder, versions 3 through 9. Awesome IDE.

"Do you deny that it still takes a shell script to start most Java apps on Unix?"

Yes. Package it in an executable JAR. Runs on any Java system. Hell, with JBuilder 8 Enterprise I can easily build native executable wrappers for Win32, Mac, Linux and Solaris.

"Do you deny that developing and building Java apps requires that you adjust you CLASSPATH in order for the compiler to find the locations of third-party libraries you are linking against?"

Yes. See previous point. Or, do what we did, write our own dynamic ClassLoader bootstrap which searches out required libraries and loads them automatically.

This is really the heart of your pet peeve against Java, isn't it? You struggled with some annoying CLASSPATH crap, it frustrated you, and you decided you hated the entire language? I do understand... that stuff is tedious when you're trying to get into it.

"Do you deny that running Java applications still requires you to obtain a JRE from Sun?"

You don't have to go to Sun. There are plenty of third party JREs.

"And that many applications require at minimum a certain version of the JRE?"

All software has system requirements, what's your point?

Got some more questions?

Re:You can make a portable C++ app.

[__past__]

Macro? Crossplatform? GUI? Better Backends? Did I hear lispworks?

Oh, it's about static languages. Never mind.

Re:Hey They Mentioned Me!

[stoolpigeon]

I use it every day. Sorry it didn't work for you.

.

"Who ARE these guys?" Well, where was IBM?

[Stefan of Orange]

I wrote this piece for Java Pro magazine and had no role in the selection of the panelists. As a reporter, I wanted to add a couple comments of my own.

Here's the link again for those who are curious:
http://www.ftponline.com/reports/javaone/2003/roun dtable/

1. I have heard that Gosling says he works so much on forward-thinking projects at Sun that he'd prefer others to comment on the real-world use of Java today in industry.

2. As for why IBM developers weren't there, all I can say is that they were invited (as they were last year, when they participated in the roundtable discussion). However, they refused to come, and indeed boycotted JavaOne entirely.

The person who began this thread should've read further down the first page of the article: "Moderator Simon Phipps began by welcoming some new faces at the table and arching his eyebrows in surprise at the one big no-show this year: IBM's apparent boycott of JavaOne. Despite IBM's absence, they were not ignored in the ensuing conversation."

Later during the Java Technology Achievement Awards, cosponsored by Sun and Java Pro magazine, Mark Bauhaus, vice-president of Java Web services at Sun, commented on IBM's no-show at this year's JavaOne, despite their wins at the event. Although this line didn't make it in the final report online, I heard him say, "All of the other J2EE players are here with enthusiasm: BEA, Oracle, Borland, you name it. It is too bad that one of our important partners evidently chose not to participate."

The report on that event is here:
http://www.ftponline.com/reports/javaone/2003/awar ds/