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

Enough!

[cK-Gunslinger]

Java Script, Java Beans, Java Swing, Java Status Quo!? Enough!

Hey They Mentioned Me!

[stoolpigeon]

I'm a full time VB programmer who is looking to move away from microsoft tools as well as microsoft platforms.

I started out not knowing anything but ms products- learned VB in school and landed my first job writing database apps. As I learned more, and my employer's needs grew- we started realizing that MS was too expensive and we looked for alternatives.

Now we use linux and open source tools. I am learning to handle a system and use software that has been built by the open source community. I've even tweaked some code here and there for our own purposes.

While all this has been going on- I've been trying to look to the future and work on some projects of my own. I really wanted to learn a language that would be portable, and have good tools I could afford. I've finally opted to go with Java.

Java seems the simplest way to be able to work cross platform and have access to sufficient resources without having to shell out big bucks. In fact my development platform right now is a RedHat box with eclipse and Sun's JDK. I'm about 2 months into what I hope will be a long relationship. I think the article is right in that what is good for Linux is also very good for Java.

The IDE's baby

[glenist]

Maybe Iâ(TM)m ignorant, but I donâ(TM)t think there is an IDE for java that comes close to Visual Studio. While VS.NET might have its problems, it is integrated very tight. As a developer I donâ(TM)t want my time taken up with simple tasks, Iâ(TM)d rather work on the interesting bits.

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.

Java is not just client apps.

[niola]

I see a lot of the usual anti-Java posts on here. "It's slow", "The screen flickers", "The widgets suck."

Just like any other technology, implementation is more key to the quality than the technology itself. I have seen some REALLY bad Java client side applications, but then there are some that are awesome. The GUI installer for Oracle is Java Swing. It looks identical on every OS you install it on (aside from options that may or may not be available to install on a given platform), and it works really well. Another example is Veritas' VMSA software. It is Java Swing, allows you to run it on multiple platforms, and you use it to manage your Veritas volumes on multiple hosts, networks etc. If an organization spends a $100k+ on a storage system, you can bet your ass that they would be mighty pissed if they had some "slow shitty client software" messing things up.

And don't even dis Java on the server side either. Java on the server side does not have to be slow like everyone thinks. One example is the application server Orion. You want to have some fun, go to http://www.orionserver.com, download it, and install it. Then do some apache bench comparisons between it and even a tuned Apache and Orion will serve static HTML pages faster. For even more fun, whip up a JSP with a database call to Postgres or Oracle, and bench that against Apache still serving static content. Orion will actually serve dynamic DB-generated content as fast or faster than Apache can handle static HTML.

I guess the point I am trying to make is don't just make blanket statements and put down a technology because of a bad experience. It is all about the implementation. Best technology with a shitty implementation will suck no matter what.

--Jon

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.