James Gosling on Java

prostoalex writes "It's been ten years since the official introduction of Java - a programming language combined with virtual machine and a class library. ZDNet published an interview with James Gosling, the creator of Java, who talks about the project's past, present and future."

Comments

Re:If only

[$RANDOMLUSER]

I think the speed complaint is a red herring.

Yes, Java is slower to run than C++. However Java is faster to write than C++; and I think that's the real issue.

In terms of power of expressivity, I think they're about the same, but I find Java easier to read than C++, and I find that mid-level programmers make far fewer subtle "shoot yourself in the foot" mistakes in Java than they do in C++. The run-time array bounds checking, lack of pointers, checked exceptions, and the lovely NullPointerException serve to keep a lot of people out of trouble. The embarrassing wealth of pre-written, tested, free, source-available modules Java has, over the reinvent-the-wheel approach of C++ goes a long way in improved programmer productivity. Here's a test for you: have one of your middle-skilled programmers do some network communication in Java and C++ and see which program takes less time to write and works better.

It's all about the sandbox

[lonedroid]

Of the thousands of security holes that exists, on every OS, how many are due to buffer overflow (buffer overrun)?

There are other attacks, but most of the "exploits" are due to a buffer overflow (90% of all exploits? 95%?). Heck, if I'm am not mistaken it was a buffer overflow that put an end to the "x years without a hole in the default OpenBSD install" slogan :(

Now how many buffer overflow did happen in the JVM in the last 10 years?

I think the answer is zero. And if it's not zero, it's only some implementation of the JVM that was at fault.

For me it's all about the sandbox. Java, Jython, Groovy, you-name-it... I don't care. As long as it targets the JVM. It's tried, lean, mean, rock solid technology. You just ain't escaping it.

In TFA (yup, I did read it), Gosling says that "The only serious divide is they (C# / .Net) have this unsafe mode which they use a lot. One of the principles I believe in is there shouldn't be an unsafe mode."

That's a good principle to believe in.

Java is practical for some applications

[wheelbarrow]

Everytime java is discussed on slashdot, I'm amazed at how some junior leaguers try to dismiss it because they can point out one application where java is a poor choice.

There are some applications where it does not make sense to implement in java. However, I say that java is a great choice for the top layer of a web application server stack. There are a lot of web apps that take the form of:

1. Gather data from one or more databases.
2. Perform some consolidation and express the output in html.

In this example, java is a consolidator of data from disparate data sources. It needs to hang on to several network connections and do some simple IO but it does not need to burn the CPU at 100% because it spends most of it's time blocked on IO. Java is a great choice for applications like this because there is a very large and active community working to make java dynamic web serving better and better. Every year your organization can, for free, upgrade to a new version of java and simple app server like Tomcat and reap the rewards of the communities improvements. Also, in my experience with server applications, the promise of portability is real. I've ported from windows to solaris and then to linux without changing the java application.

How about

[mcc]

They entirely overhyped it in areas where it's relatively useless (the desktop) and entirely underhyped it in areas where it's extremely useful (backend and embedded areas).

Now ten years later you talk about "java" and all anyone remembers are those horrible, sluggish AWT applets, running on netscape 4.0's broken JVM, which they used during the initial Java hype push. But almost nobody these days knows about the success Java met in unglamorous areas after the hype push had died off.