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

Java is the new COBOL

[The Famous Brett Wat]

Well, it got modded up to 5 last time, but it looks like it needs saying again. Here's the cut-and-paste of it.

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:Make JavaOne Open Source!

[kill -9 $$]

I'm personally a little tired of the argument that Java is bad because its not open source. While Sun's implementation of the JVM is closed, Java as a language is light years from being a closed source, completely under Sun's control kind of thing.

1) JVM is an open specification (how you implement it and whether that is open or closed is up to you) There are many JDK's/JVM's that you can use to run Java programs other than Sun's (IBM, Kaffe, or whatever the open source one is (and I'm sure there are more than just that, etc)

2) You get the source code for all of the classes/libraries that come with java when you download Sun's JDK. These include the core classes like java.lang.String, etc, etc. The only thing missing, as stated above is the source code for the compiler/interpreter and other tools.

3) There are open source JVM's (i.e. kaffe, etc) although I've found them to be lacking, but they'll get there

So the argument that Sun has control of Java is moot, you can build/run/install and entire Java application without ever touching Sun tools.

Is Java/JVM totally free? Depends who you ask. Its free/open enough for me, personally, but I can see how some open source fanatics can get their panties in a bunch over this.

Also, unlike M$ products, I think the design of Java's classes shows insight, and well thought out design, so in a way I for one am for Sun keeping a bit of control over the language and "core" classes, but thats my opinion of course.