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Sun's "Java Powered" Campaign
scapermoya writes "eWeek is reporting that Sun has started blitzing consumers , trying to increase public awareness about Java, with everything from accosting pedestrians to "Java Powered" logos begining to appear on some devices that are J2ME (Java 2 Media Edition) compatable. Tiny cup logos will now be pasted on everything from cell phones to microwaves." But not on Space Invaders clones.
...does that mean Sun actually has a Marketing Department?!
Sun's a little slow, I've had one of these stickers on my coffee machine for ages.
Why would you blitz the general public? I don't think your average Mom walking down the street wants Java shoved at her unless it's in a cup and warm.
-Teiresias
Consumers don't care what language there application is written in as long as it does what is requested. I am a Java programmer and Sun seriously has to start doing something relevant with the language itself as it is loosing developers at an extremely fast pace. Java powered stickers will do no good when they have no developers left.
Well Microsoft - or better: the vendors do this with every nearly every x86, printer, mouse, soundcard, usb stick, external harddrive.... nerly every piece of hardware sold today. I'm waiting for a tux- and an apple-sticker (sometimes you can see the "finder-face" on certified compatible hardware (like I already saw on some newer laserprintes)
Spelling mistakes: My is english spoken not tongue of mother.
....of 1998.
"We've got one million customers!"
"For what?"
"Our, er, free service. But I'm sure they'll give us money if we ask!"
The Army reading list
...that Sun is not going to release Java under the GNU General Public License anytime soon.
We must be alert to the danger that public policy could become captive to a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower
I feel sorry for all of the over caffinated students that are going to get branded when this is all over.
Well the onlly marketable named product Sun has right now is Java, and they are whoring out their youngest child for crack faster than you can say Sweet Zombie Jesus. I like Java, I really do, but it's alphabet soup family of products reads like intrest groups at gay pride parades. J2ME5, J2EE5, JDBC, JWS, JNLP, J2SDk,J2RE, etc. Maybe they should focus on their other marginally successful products like... umm.. well... umm...
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
Looks like a sign that Sun is getting a little worried about their hardware business. You can still make money off of free things, right?
From the article (a quote by Sun):
"When consumers see the name 'Java,' they understand that has stuff that makes it work better on the Internet."
That's just stretching it a little far. Java is (so far) a programming language, this JDS nonsense not withstanding. It only has stuff that makes it work better on the Internet if the developers design and code that stuff (using Java or something else).
I wonder if Sun is going to dilute its brand among developers (where the Java brand really buys them something) by pushing the brand into a consumer light. I can understand Sun's desire to have a strong consumer brand, and maybe it's easier to start with an existing brand than to build one from scratch, but I just think they're going the wrong direction with this. If they want a consumer brand, why not try to revive "Star" or just build from the ground up. IF they have something serious to offer consumers, building the brand shouldn't be that hard.
Last time I checked, J2ME is Java 2, Micro Edition, not Java 2 Media Edition. The point being that it is a very small virtual machine (as far as memory footprint and storage required)
"Give away the stone, let the oceans take and transmutate this cold and faded anchor." - Maynard James Keenan
Just what we need another SPAM portal to target people who have no idea that the ads for SUN and Java are not about a vaction for caffine addicts!
Seems like SUNs marketing department is no brighter then anyone elses, just... a... little... slower...
Protect Yourself no one else will;)
Argh! A BASIC programmer! In English there is no such word as "goto." :-)
Stick Men
It's called brand awareness. The point here is to make sure that people (and in the case of mobile phones, young people) equate "Java" with "cool games" and an "i need it" attitude. In the end this will (hopefully) mean that in order to be able to sell a phone, you need to support Java. In turn, this means that MS will have a that much harder time trying to get everyone to use the mobile version of .NET.
In fact, here in europe we see this happening already. Every new phone that comes out has J2ME support, and when a phone doesn't have it is reviewed, it's always mentioned as a big minus point.
I suppose (hope) we'll see the same thing happen in the US.
By the way, didn't the latest MS "smartphones" have J2ME support these days?
It may seem like a lot of stuff will have Java powered stickers. However, the vast majority of microprocessor-controlled consumer electronics could well have a "[processor] Assembly Language Powered" or "[processor] Machine Language Powered" sticker - even the "Java powered" ones.
Even if the knowledgable geek cares, Joe BestBuy consumer does not care and will not preferentially select a Java powered item.
Have you Meta Moderated t
In other news, Starbucks will start its own awareness campaign by placing stickers of coffee cups with "$10" printed in the middle of them on various CDs, Office supplies, video games, and books.
Shashdot has also announced that it will start an awareness campaign of its own that has the experts puzzled. Robert Potter of NetCraft says "I dont understand how the hot grits, levis, and slashdot could be so big, this was totally off our radar! totally!"
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
[accosting J Random Pedestrian]"sir, I'd like to tell you about our"[gets punched and knocked to the pavement...again]
Note: grousing about rejected Java game clones is Offtopic and usually gets moderated that way. It happens, don't take it personally.
Sehr geehrter Toilettenbenutzer!
Hemos,
its J2ME as in Java 2 Mobile editoin not media..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
The last time I looked at the numbers of Java developers, it was continuousily rising.
m l
But don't take my word for it:
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040629/221/eww5e.ht
> In English there is no such word as "goto."
Correct. He should have used "setjmp".
The Army reading list
Oh dear, you gotta love the irony.
Have they matured to the point where they actually work as advertised now? I have tried both of them, but admittedly not in the last year. I would have trouble chatting via AOL and Yahoo IM clients. I would either not see all of the message coming in, or they wouldn't see my comments. Unreliable = unusable, thus I uninstalled them. Likely it was due to AOl and Yahoo screwing with their clients to prevent the multi-client SW from working. Even so - annoying. I would love to see all of the providers begin using a common client.
java jvms written in language X... so every device running java should say powered by java/ powered by X ?
No wonder the public is no clearer on what Java is than they are about .NET.
A goto tatoo would seem dangerous, because goto is a dangerous command. But you would have to be both super-geeky and middle-aged to understand it.
~==>RocketSHE
Sun have finally woken up to the fact that most consumers are tech-dreads not tech-heads. They fear tech more than they welcome it and as such need to be comforted when faced with unfamiliar grounds. Intel realised this years ago and have made sure that unless there's an 'Intel Inside' ("_DUM_.do de dum DEE!") sticker on the side, people will worry and say, "What's the pentuim? Will it work without an intel inside?" Prepare for the "Is your microwave/fridge/car/computer/watch/relational_dat abase caffinated?" campaign. FUD works.
:E) and big TV ads to promote your technology so people will say, "Hey what about Java? I'd like to have that." Essentially, to really sell a technology, no matter how good or bad it is, you have to play to the Pointy Haired Boss.
.NET get a publicity campaign or will it just be shoved down our throats with pictures of smiling actors staring into PC screens(which we can't see). They may regret not using that cup of tea. Then again Sun may regret all that money wasted on sticker that people thought were promoting a new decaf drink.
Java on mobile has increased the framework's profile a LOT, especially amoung younger phone buyers. Even my kid brother knows about java games, and he can barely use e-mail. Java seems to mean 'fun' in the minds of some. Well maybe not, but it means Something!
It must have finally clicked with Sun that people just won't magically get to know about java through the grapevine. You need stickers, Java Inside, Duke, Gosling's beard, hip coders(very hard to find
Of course Sun would LOVE to to foster the belief out there that unless it's got Java, it's worthless. "Has it got Java? Will it work without that coffe sticker?" It could happen. I wonder will Microsoft realise a similar campaign. One based on a cup of tea perhaps? I wonder will
Disclaimer: Java is Good. Garbage collection is Smart++.
May the Maths Be with you!
Oh.. I thought it meant Java 2 Mono Edition
How the heck did my post get over here? I replied to the post about IM clients, not this one! http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/19/112624 3&tid=172&tid=126&tid=95&tid=1
Either I screwed up or the /. software.
Since taking personal responsibility is anti-american, I blame /. !
J2ME standands for Java 2 Micro Edition, a subset of J2SE, Java 2 Standard Edition. J2ME is meant for devices with limited resources. Wow, how did that get through to the front page...
Heres a link...http://java.sun.com/j2me/index.jsp
Also on eweek.com, Sun's thinking about Java extension, and other new language stuff. This is cool, but get real. I am a Java loyal, but regardless, be objective and here is what I think:
1) Gosling is not good to head the dev department. He's good as a tech guy, but not neccessary on direction and management. Often but not always, a very very nerdy guy can hardly be a good manager. You'll see my point in the next item.
2) Fix bugs, make swing faster, less memory hog, and fix bug. I would like to emphasize fix bug. If you search, there's over 20 thousands bug/rfe. I would use a new release with bug fixes instantly versus the new 5.0.
3) They don't have resource, then how could they create a thing new, usable, releasable? They're so thin on dev resource (from some of their forums, their developers said so), they should concentrate them on fix bug, improve speed, make the IDE, app server betters instead. That's call wise management. It's not going to do some cool stuff.
4) Related, but not directly. To survive, they have to bring out hardware servers out quickly, using standard/generic component instead of years in reasearch. They'll come out with new sparc in 2005. Common, AMD and Intell come out with new CPU almost every month. For servers, why the heck they keep taking so long to come out with something? Just buy a white box, test it, and ship them. (over simplified).
You could mark me troll, but please have mercy tell me why. And also, I am really interested in your wonderful different opinions.
I remember the last time they tried something big in India.They sponsored the launch of Deccan Airways.There was a coffe cup on the tail and Sun logo near the cockpit.Only that the picture of the plane landed up in top news paper headlines when the plane's body was on fire... seriously.. the inaugural flight with several ministers inside,caught fire and it looked as if Sun's new aircraft caught fire !! ;).. so much for publicity..
fifteen jugglers, five believers
But you would have to be both super-geeky and middle-aged to understand it.
Oh yes, ancient as 30 no doubt..
...all our stuff will look like NASCAR. First we have a label for the brand name. Then we had the label for the processor (Motorola, Intel, AMD, TI, etc). Then we had to get a label for the OS (MS Windows). Now we have the platform running on the OS. What's next? Maybe a label for the store that sold it to you. Or they could do a label for each company that preinstalls software on the device. They could even sell advertising space on the device.
I for one would like a plain white microwave instead of the Goldstar/Motorola/Windows CE/Lowe's labelled microwave. If I want to know what my microwave is running, I'll look it up.
Or rather call-with-current-continuation.
Curses! He hath found us out!
Quickly my brothers, let us rise up to these class-brained oo heathens, and mightilly smite them with our spaghetti code and sluggish interpreted code! GOSUB VICTORY
However, at the risk of being modded off topic, this whole thing smacks of "Hey, remember us? We were really big.. uh... well, a while ago. And we have this Java thing, and it's like... cool. Here, stick this on your forehead and you'll be cool, too!"
Please Sun, how about you tidy up that mess of letters and numbers so normal people can work out what in the hell is going on.
RETURN
We're geeks... We're the sorcerers of the modern-day world. --
some devices that are J2ME (Java 2 Media Edition) compatable.
Isn't it Java_2_Micro_Edition. Im sure it is..
And what of it? They are Java powered. They have every right to. Just as long as there isn't a really annoying noise like Intel's everytime a Dell add . etc comes on.
Also, he should have used BRA (branch unconditionally from my Motorola 6811 assembly studies) (JMP uses absolute, but longer addresses; BRA uses shorter, relative addresses).
They would do well to start with developer awareness...I was bemused that while I could find lots of phones touting "support for java games" - I couldn't find satisfactory documentation on what this means. I've no interest in games per-se, however given a blue-tooth phone with support for Java - I am interested in business applications. I want to find out if I can use blue-tooth phones in cryptographic authentication systems; I want to know what APIs are available to allow my phone to run bespoke messaging software. Hell - I'd like to see a sample application which amounts to more than a trivial waste of time. I can't help thinking that this technology holds the key to interesting new systems... but that won't happen if Java is just a buzzword denoting a more expensive toy.
A great example is another Java maker, Starbucks.... Very few people are willing to pay 3 bucks for plain, regular coffee from 7-11 or McDonalds, but may are willing to fork over 3 bucks if the coffee comes in a cup with a big green Starbucks logo.
Secondly, SUN is trying taking steps to improve its strategic position. Put yourself in SUNs position, your strongest product is JAVA. Appliances all over the world use JAVA, JAVA is taught in most colleges and universities, JAVA is widely used on the Internet, and most importantly (from SUNs point of view) JAVA isn't making SUN the money it could be.
If I were on SUN's team, my first step would ensure regular people (moms, dads, and non-slashdotters) realize how widespread JAVA is and how "good" it is for computing. Then I would ensure regular people associate JAVA with SUN. Thirdly, (to the dismay of most slashdot readers) I would use my JAVA = SUN association to make money.
SUN will be criticized for making moves to strengthen its position and SUN will be criticized for NOT making moves to strengthen its position, so ignore the critics, make solid technical and business decisions and do what every business was designed to do, make some money
Thoughts?
* Porter, M. Harvard Business School
ok, I usually stay out of the BS on threads such as this, but you are too much of a moron for me to hold my tongue. I can't really argue too much with your comments about Java client applications - I have seen my share of sluggish java apps. As far as the clunky user interfaces, that would be the result of an interface that is poorly planned and hardly a problem with the language itself.
Now, as far as Java running on an application server: J2EE isn't that complicated, if you had any real experience with it, you would know that. You statement about abominable database access methods is laughable - It doesn't get much simpler than JDBC. If you don't know what you are talking about, I would suggest that you stay out of the discussion.
is how I feel when it's been days since I slept well and stay awake only because of cofee.
If J2ME is Java 2 Mono Edition, what's J2SE?
- Thomas;
___ This sig is in boldface to emphasize its importance!
I remember when J2ME first became popular and I heard 12 and 13 year olds sitting in the street talking about how their phones support "Java" and how that means that they can play games on it.
Similar things happened several times, and most of the time it was clear that none of them really knew what Java was or how it related to games or phones, it's just a name for a thing the phone does like "polyphonic ringtones" or "WAP".
Also, I would have trouble buying "Java Powered" unless the phone's core software was running in a JVM. "Runs trivial little games and applications using Java" isn't the same as "Wouldn't work at all without Java".
If you can't use the word "Java" in the name for something running on Java, then it's a pretty poor show.
JDBC isn't the problem. (Although, it's still a tedious way to write database access procedures.) EJBs, container-managed persistence, and the like are the problem. And, better yet, the Java code to database access is so tedious that I've watched Java developers write code that's O(n!) just to avoid writing code to deal with another query or stored procedure.
Java Powered: Buggy, slow, and late.
Interesting. I just discovered jusched.exe running in my task list which will not stop loading on startup on a Win2k box. Based on several website's information, it's an automatic update utility for Java... Fucking reptiles.
A: One is secure, reliable, mature, scalable, portable and ubiquitous with an installed base in the billions and a developer community in the millions with thousands of open source code programs written in it. The other is called C#.
Stick Men
EJBs are an option that doesn't have to be used and CMPs are often not used even if the app utilizes EJBs. EJB has it's place, but it is not the only option available to the developer. As far as being tedious, there is no way to get around having to write a query to access data. If a developer isn't using a class to generate db connections for them, then it's their own fault if they choose to make things more tedious than they need to be.
I don't know what other people's experiences are with 'java-powered' products, but every complex application I've seen rolled out has problems far bigger than the problems solved. Worse, JAVA has yet to live up to its original claims.
1) Write once run anywhere. I've yet to see this true of any complex app. It's problably been done, though. I just haven't seen it done.
2) Compatibility problems. I install one version of the run-time environment for a must-have client app, and the rest break. It can be fixed, but it should never have happened in the first place.
3) For reasons unclear, large java apps seem to suffer from some kind of fragmented UI design illness. Functions that logically belong together end up in totally different places. Its not true for all, but seems to be more frequent amongst complex java products than similar non-java apps. This, admittedly, is probably due to the fact that I usually am using network analysis and managment tools.
4) Massive speed inconsistencies. Onde PC will run a client just fine, and different PC will barely run it at all. It can be fixed, but I've got better things to do with my time than fix Sun's problems.
All in all, what often happens is that I end up using non-java powered solutions, just because they work. I could spend the extra time to fix all the java issues, but it just never seems worth the time and effort.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Instead of throwing away money on a marketing blitz, why don't they fix Swing bugs/compatibility issues?
TallGreen CMS hosting
Tiny cup logos will now be pasted on everything from cell phones to microwaves.
But not on Space Invaders clones.
...and not on nuclear reactors, either!
7.0 DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY 7.1 Licensee acknowledges that Licensed Software may contain errors and is not designed, licensed, or intended for use in the design, construction, operation or maintenance of any nuclear facility ("High Risk Activities"). Sun disclaims any express or implied warranty of fitness for such uses. Licensee represents and warrants to Sun that it will not use, distribute or license the Licensed Software for High Risk Activities.
I like my Java hot, but not hot-as-in-glowing hot!
"not applicable"? C#?
If you're moving from Java to C# then you've either:
1) Thrown out your Big Iron and spent an equivilent amount on a Windows cluster
2) Hired a bunch of people without checking if they knew the language your system is built on
3) Got paid off by Microsoft (ie: Uni. of Waterloo)
4) Decided you wanted something "easy" instead of something "stable"
C# is not applicable to jack shit compared to Java right now. Most core logic is done using J2EE. If it sucks, then you hired the wrong coders. Don't throw out the baby with the bath water. Java runs on some much bigger iron than C#.
These people must be developing piddly desktop apps that backend to something pseudo-enterprise. Works great in the lab... try scaling it out to 10,000 workers now. A company I worked for tried that. Told the poor bastards they contracted for that they'd have to buy twice the number of servers and upgrade to 2K Datacenter.
C# is the language of people who don't know how to fucking program. They like it because it works like VB for the GUI and alows them to do the stupid OO stuff they learned in intro to data structures. They are the ones who catch exceptions with blank handlers in Java at work. They are the ones who use a 3 meg C# app to do the work of a 30 line perl script.
Not that you can do anything about it, but I would guess that the reason why Java is having problems in your area is because it's becoming more populated with Microsoft nitwit apologists.
(And I would blame the University of Waterloo for selling out and thinking they're smarter than the rest of the world, allowing all the Canadians to think "If it's good enough for our best CS school, it's good enough for us!")
(display "#t\n")
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
"J2ME (Java 2 Media Edition)"
No, Java 2 Micro Edition.
-psy
Nothing more to say!
Ever heard of Torque???
Again, if the developer wants to make things more tedious for themselves, they can.
Good judgment comes from experience and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
Or maybe I should say: What's the purpose of purchasing a 64-bit operating system like Solaris if its flagship interface is 32-bits?
Don't believe me? Try javac-ing the following under Java 1.5.x:
Lotsa luck.Comment removed based on user account deletion
How is this any different than any other tech marketing campaign?
Microsoft bombards us with Windows-everything
Intel bombards us with "Intel-inside", Pentium-whatever
This is no different. These want people to recognize the brand, so they'll think there is "value add" in whatever they're buying.
Whether or not there really IS "value add" remains to be seen.
That stupid sticker just bombed my OS/2 machine. It sucks.
This sig no verb.
This site has decent pictures. Big Java logo near the cockpit, and a big Sun logo on the tail. Before and after. Ouch!
Voting to oust Java is the surest way to become the MCDonalds workers of the IT industry - if you can even find the jobs.
I am a little sad to see great teaching languages like Scheme fall to the wayside though. I think there is great value in teaching people Scheme first instead of Java or C# to start with.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...that IBM must be on crack. After all, they spent all that money advertising a technology that they obviously won't be able to make any money from because it's GPL'd.
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
It's a Java story - check out the mnemonic for bytecode 0xa7.
Something I've never really understood about this: Why do they spend money promoting Java? I mean, they're a business, so presumably they're investing money in hopes of a larger payoff.
But how does that payoff come?
They give away Java for free. It runs on any hardware, not just theirs. Everybody knows that - in fact it's one of Java's main selling points.
It seems like the classic South Park underpants gnomes' reasoning.
That doesn't necessarily mean anything, other than (if accurate) the fact that new people are picking up Java at a greater rate than people who already knew Java are dying. Once a Java developer always a Java developer, no?
I mean, I like Java. I'm certified by Sun as a Java developer. I'm probably counted in any number of Java developers statistic you care to name.
That said, it's been over two years since I've been offered any Java work. I know there are still projects out there being built on Java technology -- friends of mine work on them -- but it seems like the percentage of projects using Java is less than 2-3 years ago.
Obviously, if you're starting up an open source project or working on something on your own, you can use whatever language you want. But if (note, I'm not saying this is a foregone conclusion) project managers and companies stop wanting Java to be used for their projects, the language will become less relevant, number of Java developers or no.
Heheh....look at all the job stats and you'll see Java burying every other language out there in terms of actual demand. I go where the money is, and Java is it - not c-sharp, not php, not whatever.
You guys just keep on burying your head in the sand, since Java right now is probably the most widely deployed language in IT history, what with the new cars (BMWs), smartcards, SIM cards, mobilke cellphones, server apps, desktop apps runniung Java.
I KNOW i'll have a job 5-10 years from now doing Java when you guys are trying to learn the next new language from Microsoft or whomever.
I prefer to call "D flat", myself...
68000? You should be thankful it wasn't x86 assembler. Now THAT's nightmare material.
Maybe so. But the developers I've worked with were MIT comp-sci grads proud of their credentials. Greenspun's comments are dead-on, it would seem. There are too many other languages out there that perform well while making database access straightforward and efficient for both app and database.
I even have it on good authority that the client-server giant of the mid 90s, PowerBuilder, is making a comeback built upon the failure of Java applications to get delivered working and on-time.
do you really have 32GB of RAM in your machine for this task or are you just complaining for the fun of it??
I mean, really - 640K should be all that anyone could ever want, right?
Back to my original question, though: What is the point of a 64-BIT OPERATING SYSTEM if its FLAGSHIP INTERFACE is only 32-BITS? And will remain 32-bits into the foreseeable future?
How can a salesman in the Solaris division try to sell his clients a 64-bit operating system on exhorbitantly expensive 64-bit hardware, when, just last week, a salesman from the Java division dropped by and told the very same client that 32-bits was all they'd ever need?
Seems like the client might as well stick with a 32-bit Win32 platform running on 32-bit hardware.
Or, better yet, upgrade to a 64-bit platform [Win64] running on 64-bit hardware [AMD x86-64] with a true 64-bit interface [C# & the CLI].
All at a tiny fraction of the cost...
Oh No! Not only do I have to worry about the mass exedous of jobs due to .Net, now I have to worry about Powerbuilder too!
Look, your friends may be MIT grads, but apparently either they don't have too much real world experience or they haven't worked with Java too much - likely writing it off without really taking the time to understand it (much like you). Your comments are ridiculous.
Good judgment comes from experience and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
You mean longjmp ;-)
> You mean longjmp
:-)
Heh, very true. Actually, originally I framed my post as "you mean setjmp/longjmp", but it just seemed too wordy
The Army reading list
.. in a gallaxy far away there exited a company called Netscape. In addition to their famous web browser, they made various server products (the web server, application server, directory server, etc) for the enterpise. Eventually, their marketing droids have mis-managed the Netscape brand name (and the company web site) to the point where they had to rename their server division and all their server products into "iPlanet". Then they got transferred to Sun, and Sun decided to use the "Sun ONE" brand name for all of this ex-netscape stuff. Now it looks like they are willing to sacrifice this perfectly fine brand name and to confuse their customers even further by renaming their SunONE product line into SunJAVA product line. At this point this is getting really silly now that you suddenly have products like "SunJAVA Directory server" which have little to do with the Java language other than their terrible admin tools are written in Java (we have decided to dump the SunONE DS in favor of OpenLDAP becaususe of SunONE's terrible Java-based admin interface and the lack of proper documentation for CLI tools even though it comes free with Solaris). In the past they also had to rename their OS (SunOS -> Solaris), to rename their compiler suite MULTIPLE time, and to change the versioning scheme for Solaris and Java. Way to go Sun! I am sure they'll rename this whole SunJAVA product line again in a couple of years. When a company feels so insecure about its brands and renames its products so often, many people including me generally see it as a sign of weakness, and not as an improvement.
The poster of this article may have wanted to do a little more research.
J2ME is the Java 2 Micro Edition, not Media edition. Jeez.
That sticker would sell better in some developer circles...
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
The point is not that the "integers" are a different size on a 64-bit machine.
The point is that the counters that you use to index Java arrays are limited to 32-bits worth of [albeit relative] addresses, rather than the full 64-bit addresses of the underlying hardware and its operating system.
And yes, there are plenty of things that need to cross the 2 ^ 32 = 4 "Giga" barrier. Such as, for instance, high quality MPEGs of Gone With the Wind or Titanic.
So, we will only have 72 stickers on the back of our PDAs. At least they haven't started advertising on it....
This may be good for your average VB-type desktop app, but for a multi threaded backend server this is a disaster. Such things simply should never be allowed to occur.
The special thing about the checked exceptions are that they can be thrown even from perfectly bug-free apps. No amount of coding can protect you from the odd IOException when your TCP connection is broken for example. Java does a tremendous job of helping the developer deal with this. It does this, just like a previous poster said, in a way that is similar to static types.
Static types are good, right? Helps us find bugs at the cost of a bit more code and more redundancy. The similarities to checked exceptions are quite obvious.
The right way to say it according to Sun: TACO INVADERS(tm) for Java(tm) platform
I read his piece. The big eye-opener came in the comments. About 30 comments down is a place where Greenspun, in reply to someone else, states that MIT doesn't actually teach Java to their CS students. They teach Scheme. But by the time that his students are struggling with JSP on a project, they are producing 10,000-line Java programs.
This is so whacked, it's hard to know where to begin. Does MIT assume that learning Scheme automatically teaches you how to use every programming language? Did it ever occur to them that different programming languages might best be used differently?
Do these hot-shot MIT students really know how to use Java? Or do they try to use it as a less-capable Scheme? Do they really know Java at all, or can they just muddle through with it?
You take a bunch of hotshot MIT seniors who have been told that they can program anything in any language, but don't actually know how to use Java, turn them loose on a JSP project, and they make a mess of it. And this is Java's fault how?
The problem here is not Java. The problem is academic arrogance - "our students know everything, even stuff we couldn't bother to teach them!"