Simon Phipps on the Process of Opening Java

twofish writes "Simon Phipps, the chief open-source officer at Sun Microsystems, has reaffirmed Sun's commitment to Open Source in an interview with computerworld. The focus of the interview is Simon's efforts to fully open source Java. He points out that many problems need to be resolved before Java can be open sourced — ownership, legal, access, encumbrances and relationships with Java licensees. It took Sun a full five years to solve these issues with Solaris. However Simon predicts that it won't take anything near this amount of time to complete the task with Java. Of course, one of the other concerns for OS Java is the resulting incompatible versions and breaking of the Java WORA model (Gosling himself has always been particularly concerned about incompatible forks resulting in the introduction of an open source version of Java) and this opens up additional problems for the open source Java model."

Comments

Incompatible Java forks

[Anonymous Coward]

Gosling himself has always been particularly concerned about incompatible forks resulting in the introduction of an open source version of Java)

So hold onto the trademark, the same way the Mozilla foundation do, and only let implementations that pass a rigorous testsuite use it.

Re:Incompatible Java forks

[Brandybuck]

To play devil's advocate, I think what they're worried about is another J++, where someone (Microsoft) creates an almost-but-not-quite Java, and then you end up with "write once run nowhere else". I don't necessarily agree with that worry, but I strongly suspect that's what's in Sun's head.

Re:Incompatible Java forks

[drinkypoo]

"write once run nowhere else"

sure, which is only slightly different from the current truth: "write once, debug everywhere"

Re:Incompatible Java forks

[Bogtha]

I think what they're worried about is another J++, where someone (Microsoft) creates an almost-but-not-quite Java

Which of these two scenarios do you think is most likely to cause that situation?

• People who object to Sun's non-open license create a from-scratch implementation of Java, or
• People take Sun's open-source Java and use it directly.

It seems fairly obvious to me that forcing people to create another Java implementation instead of letting them use the "canonical version" as they wish is far more likely to bring about another J++ situation.

Re:Incompatible Java forks

[fm6]

Which is exactly what Sun already does with the Java Compatibility Kit. There are, in fact, a fair number of third-party Java implementations that are released on this basis. And one famous lawsuit was filed agains a certain company that released an incompatible version of Java.

However, there have always been issues with the JCK, with claims that it is too complicated and inconsistent. Also, once everybody has access to the Java Development Kit source, you can expect to see a lot of forks. Enforcing compatibility will be a lot harder than it is now, with only a few Sun licensees doing Java implementations. And it is not easy now!

Re:Incompatible Java forks

[Tim C]

People who object to Sun's non-open license create a from-scratch implementation of Java

But they can't call it Java, as that's a trademark owned by Sun, and so merely have a runtime that's nominally compatible with Java.

In that situation there is a danger that people will start using it in preference to the real Java, as "it's practically the same, only better (in $ways)", but then that's a danger posed by .NET or any other similar technology.

Re:Incompatible Java forks

[IamTheRealMike]

Unfortunately the fact that Mozilla trademarks things up the wazoo did not stop Debian from forking XULRunner to make it more "UNIXy". Ultimately trademarks must be supported with lawsuits if they are to be effective and unsurprisingly there isn't much appetite for suing open source projects that badly fork a codebase.

Re:Incompatible Java forks

[Kunta Kinte]

So hold onto the trademark, the same way the Mozilla foundation do, and only let implementations that pass a rigorous testsuite use it.

Sure, then what you are asking for is a battle of trademarks.

MS forks and names its product 'J++'. They keep it just compatible enough that it segments the Java development community. This isn't far-fetched since that's what they were doing with the original J++.

Now good luck going against Microsoft, who has more money in the bank than many 'developed' nations and has a software distribution channel that pales anything the whole has every seen ( ie. 'Windows' ).

Remember now that Java is now open-source and will have the marketing might of most open source programs, ie. besides word-of-mouth, not much.

Yeah, that fight will be *real* interesting.

Re:Incompatible Java forks

[fmoliveira]

If J++ were created with an GPL-like opensouced java, it would be easy to port J++ to run in linux and firefox, which was the whole point of making J++ incompatible.

It's not Microsoft trying to kill java like with J++. They want their java to continue being theirs. They dont want to give it away.

Re:Incompatible Java forks

[ClosedSource]

"MS forks and names its product 'J++'. They keep it just compatible enough that it segments the Java development community."

J++ didn't segment the Java development community, if it had been allowed to continue it would have brought Windows developers in the Java world. Instead Sun sued MS and doomed Java to the minor leagues of desktop development.

Re:Incompatible Java forks

[Anonymous Coward]

I know people say that a lot, but my experience with java apps is that they really do work well across platforms. Basically, there's UNIX/Linux/BSD, Windows, and Mac OS to test on. That's an order of magnitude better than two or more implementations, one targeting Win32, another for Mac OS, and the others making a good effort against a half dozen UNIX systems.

The developers who complain about java apps requiring *testing* are just lazy developers.

And, really, what is better? Web apps? (IE, Mozilla, etc.) .NET? (one complete platform...and one mimic) Lisp? (all twenty developers out there) C++? (no two compilers alike)

Re:Incompatible Java forks

[Anonymous Coward]

Gosling himself has always been particularly concerned about incompatible forks resulting in the introduction of an open source version of Java)

So hold onto the trademark, the same way the Mozilla foundation do, and only let implementations that pass a rigorous testsuite use it.

Weird, Sun has been doing it for years now. Try running applets written for the JRE 1.3 on 1.5. The bulk of them are broken. Each new version of the JRE is an "incompatible fork".

Java still sucks, opening the source will not help, the whole concept is just flawed.

Re:Incompatible Java forks

[ClosedSource]

"The developers who complain about java apps requiring *testing* are just lazy developers."

One could make the same argument about developers who complain about having to recompile their applications for each platform. WORA is entirely about saving work. True WORA would mean the testing on any platform would be exactly the same as testing on them all. So those "lazy" developers are really complaining about Sun's exaggerated claims about Java.

Re:Incompatible Java forks

[LizardKing]

sure, which is only slightly different from the current truth: "write once, debug everywhere"

It's not that I disbelieve you, but could you give me examples where you've needed to do something platform specific with code written for J2SE or J2EE? I have written several very large Java apps (both standalone and web applications) but never had issues with running the resulting code on different platforms. Heck, the last system I worked on ran out of the box on Solaris, Windows, Linux and NetBSD. The only time I've run into platform specific issues is with handheld devices running a third party JVM. I do keep on seeing these complaints about "write once, debug anywhere", but never had an opportunity to find out why.

Re:Incompatible Java forks

[Bert64]

So how about an os-independant binary interface (native code, but with a portable runtime, like wine, or *bsd's ability to run linux binaries etc)

- www.x86abi.org

Re:Incompatible Java forks

[Rich]

Try working with Java Sound and Java Media Framework and you'll find quite a few platform hacks needed. In addition try doing non trivial stuff with applets that talk to javascript and lots of threads and you'll hit platform specific problems too.

Cheers

Rich.

Re:Incompatible Java forks

[Mr. Shiny And New]

The thing is, Java provides a cross-platform environment for developing. You can write code that works on any system, or code that's system-specific. But the point is that it is easy to write big, complex programs that work on multiple, dissimilar operating systems, without knowing specific details of those operating systems. Also, you don't have to worry about things like the number of bits in an integer, or long integer, or what floating point capabilities are available on the target platform, because Java takes care of all of this. Finally, Java provides a huge library of code that is available on every platform.

All of this means that it's easy to write once for every target platform that has a JVM. Now, you still have to TEST. You always have to test, otherwise you have no assurance that there ISN'T a bug. But most of the time your application will just work, and you can limit the further testing done on multiple platforms once you are reasonably sure that you have covered the cases where platform differences crop up. But by and large, testing is platform agnostic, since features usually work identically on every platform.

Some of your design decisions may not be right for all platforms, i.e. if you use floating point math but are targetting a platform where FP is emulated in the JVM. Your app will work, but performance will be poor. In that case, you may need to reconsider your implementation. But your app will work.

These goals are possible in other languages; many interpreted languages are available on different platforms. Also many compiled lanauges like C or C++ can be used to write portable code. You can even use libraries like QT which are designed to abstract away many details. Java isn't the only game in town for WORA. But to claim that Java isn't WORA is simply wrong.

Let me give you a concrete example: I develop software on Windows XP. I take the software I build and deploy it on a test server which runs Solaris. It gets functional testing on this server. Then I deploy it on a production server which runs Linux. This is the exact same binary object in every case. Try that with C++ or any other language. The simple fact is, Java has WORA, and it works.

Re:Incompatible Java forks

[drinkypoo]

Let me give you a concrete example: I develop software on Windows XP. I take the software I build and deploy it on a test server which runs Solaris. It gets functional testing on this server. Then I deploy it on a production server which runs Linux. This is the exact same binary object in every case. Try that with C++ or any other language. The simple fact is, Java has WORA, and it works.

If it were true WORA, you would only have to test on one platform, because since it's running on a virtual machine, ostensibly the architecture is identical regardless of where it's running (at least, as it presents itself to your program.) The very fact that you need to test on multiple platforms to make sure it works on all of them is proof that WORA is a lie.

Re:Incompatible Java forks

[Mr. Shiny And New]

Just because WORA isn't perfect for every single program doesn't mean that it's a lie. For most programs it works perfectly. For the greater majority it works in almost every case. It's only a few cases that affect a few programs where the abstractions break down. If your criteria for "WORA" is "Java implementations on different platforms never have bugs, and nobody ever uses any unique features of those platforms", then you're right, it's impossible to write any random code and guarantee that the code works on every single Java platform ever. But let's be realistic.

First, barring bugs, which do sometimes appear, or platform-specific problems that can not be overcome (eg Solaris's fork() system call fails if you don't have enough ram to duplicate the entire program, even if your program is just going to exec(), whereas Linux and other OSes don't have this limitation), it's generally only when the developer chooses to use a platform-specific feature that Java doesn't support where the WORA breaks down. If you are using some hardware-specific library (say 3d accel), then you will find that your program may behave differently on different platforms. But how many programs do this, on average, as a percentage of all programs? Shit, even on ONE platform there are still BUGS where the same exact program doesn't even run the same if you have a NVidia card vs an ATI card.

The point is, for almost everyone, all the time, Java is WORA. Want to call a native library? Fine, you forsake your WORA card. Want to use specific hardware? Obviously that won't be WORA either. But to claim that WORA is a "lie" because in 1% or fewer of the cases you'll have platform issues is silly.

Re:Incompatible Java forks

[drinkypoo]

But to claim that WORA is a "lie" because in 1% or fewer of the cases you'll have platform issues is silly.

No, it isn't. It's perfect logic. "Anywhere" means anywhere. It doesn't mean almost anywhere. When we mean that, we say almost anywhere. See how that works

If it's not 100%, then it's a lie. Plain and simple. I don't think anyone really expected it to be true, but that doesn't make it any less of a lie. It only reduces the impact.

capitalist patsy

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

about time you capitalist patsy!

Java already breaks the WORA model

[MarkByers]

I have a Java client on my webserver and half the mails I get are because the Java client doesn't work on people's computer. Usually this is because they have some old version of Microsoft's Java Runtime installed, which only supports Java 1.1 (badly).

What a mess! I can't really see how opening it up will make it any worse than it already is today.

Re:Java already breaks the WORA model

[Spinn12]

Java itself doesn't break the model, it's the choices that the consumer has that break it. Though most of us slashdotters clearly understand how to install and update a Java runtime, etc, we're still the minority.

The problems with Java (and other like platforms) lie in the implementation OF these platforms. While Microsoft, Sun and all other concerned parties have their proverbial pissing contests, the end user in a lot of cases still continues to take the fall.

But of course, fixing the platform will fix the problem, right? Of course not...and it's foolish to think so.

Re:Java already breaks the WORA model

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Usually this is because they have some old version of Microsoft's Java Runtime installed, which only supports Java 1.1 (badly). What a mess! I can't really see how opening it up will make it any worse than it already is today.

Okay so MS broke the law and released an intentionally broken JVM to try and kill Java as a dev platform. The courts stopped them, but you're still dealing with the mess with a few remaining legacy systems from that time. You don't see how giving MS an opportunity to bundle a new broken version on every computer sold in the world could make things worse?

Re:Java already breaks the WORA model

[IflyRC]

I wonder at times if Sun really messed up by challenging Microsoft. If Sun had allowed J# to continue as it was the java runtime updates would more than likely be included in every windows update package.

Re:Java already breaks the WORA model

[Andy Dodd]

In my experience, the WORA model was broken from the beginning.

The majority of "interesting" Java applications I've seen were restricted to a single platform for various reasons, mostly because they apparently (somehow) were making platform-specific system calls. (I don't know the exact details of this, all I DO know is that there are plenty of Java applications out there that are restricted to a single platform for whatever reason. I may be wrong about the reasons, but the fact is that WORA failed on the desktop)

What about WORA for J2ME (i.e. on mobile devices)? The situation seems even worse. If you go to the download site for nearly any Java game designed for mobile phones, they will list different downloads for every model of phone they support, with varying filesizes. Not a single Java application designed for other phones has worked with the JVM available for PalmOS 5 devices such as my Treo 650.

If WORA had ever actually worked, I'd accept Java's unwillingness to break it. Unfortunately for that excuse, it's hard to break something that is already broken.

Re:Java already breaks the WORA model

[KarmaMB84]

Back then, MS's JVM was one of the best ones available. However, that distinction may not mean much since most JVM's blew the goat...

Re:Java already breaks the WORA model

[Anonymous Coward]

There are times when you'll need to install two different versions of Sun' JRE to be able to run two different applications, because Sun did something to break backwards compatibility. (Something to do with "endorsed libraries" - essentially, Java's version of DLL Hell, where they made incompatible changes with their libraries that broke application's libraries. I'm not going to pretend to be an expert, the bottom line is that fixing it involved running two different JREs for two different applications.)

When you can't get applications to run on the same version of the Sun JRE *on the same computer* it's fairly safe to say that WORA has never been achieved.

Another good hint is when developers have to "port" their application from their own desktop to work properly on the test server. "WORA" was at best a dream of how code should work rather than a reality.

(Although I've never had a problem getting Perl, Python, or PHP scripts working on different OSes. In fact, the only environment I've ever had massive problems getting to run on different systems, even when running the same OS, was Java.)

Re:Java already breaks the WORA model

[Jim_Maryland]

I don't know the exact details of this, all I DO know is that there are plenty of Java applications out there that are restricted to a single platform for whatever reason. I may be wrong about the reasons, but the fact is that WORA failed on the desktop

Are you sure that it's a pure Java application or do these applications make calls to native code of some sort? If they are calling an OS specific resource, the problem is in the development. We could throw in that the developer had some reason that forced them to use an OS specific call but I'd guess those applications have very specific requirements and aren't general use applications.

What about WORA for J2ME (i.e. on mobile devices)?

I'll have to agree with you on that topic for now. I'd figure that this will eventually get better as more resources (memory, processing, graphics, etc...) become available on the portable devices.

Re:Java already breaks the WORA model

[asv108]

I love how the only thing some people tend to associate Java with, are poorly implemented applets.

Re:Java already breaks the WORA model

[kevin_conaway]

I have a Java client on my webserver and half the mails I get are because the Java client doesn't work on people's computer. Usually this is because they have some old version of Microsoft's Java Runtime installed, which only supports Java 1.1 (badly). What a mess! I can't really see how opening it up will make it any worse than it already is today.

Tell me about it!

I have a Windows program on my webserver and half the mails I get are because the program doesn't work on people's computer. Usually this is because they have some old version of DOS installed, which only supports 32MB harddisks.

What a mess! I can't really see how opening it up will make it any worse than it already is today.

Re:Java already breaks the WORA model

[Anonymous Coward]

Well not really.The WORA model works pretty well and has done since about 1996. What your describing is what MS did to undermine Java. It may have cost MS 1.8 billion dollars in legal settlements alone but in terms of damage to Sun and Java it was pretty damn effective.

Re:Java already breaks the WORA model

[jilles]

I don't know about your definition of interesting but most of the java stuff I work with on a daily basis works unmodified on the three big desktop platforms (and probably everything else that runs java 1.5) and does so for the ten or so years I've been developing Java. This stuff combined is probably several million lines of code. Also all of the stuff I write in Java is 100% crossplatform, barring the odd jdk bug that somehow fell through the 60000 or so unit tests they unleash on the jdk nowadays (just a disclaimer, can't recall ever encountering one). In my previous company we developed on windows, had staging servers running linux and deployed more or less blindly to our customer sites running windows 2000, 2003, various flavours of linux and even some sun machines. Worked every time. Portability was never an issue. Not even having to test for portability issues is a huge time and cost saver.

A good example of a portable J2ME app is opera mini which exists in only two variants the both of which work across pretty much all java capable phones except maybe for the really crappy ones, such as your Palm based one (blame Palm, not Sun). J2ME is a modular specification which unfortunately leads to the interesting situation that the more of the modules your app uses the less portable it becomes. Pretty much all of the modules are optional and with MIDP 1.0 many vendors added loads of vendor specific APIs as well. Many applications written for that mixed bag of standard and non standard extensions are not portable.

MIDP 2.0 mostly removes the need for vendor specific APIs (though many vendors still ship them). Upcoming MIDP 3.0 is even better apparently. of course many games need to make assumptions about device specifics (e.g. screen size, number of colours, keyboard layout) which unfortunately leads to many portability issues. These problems are hard to solve and currently J2ME seems the best solution the market has come up with. Most device specific binaries of J2ME apps merely include some minor modifications, optimizations and packaging. I agree that testing for all that is a major PITA for developers. If you have a better solution that works for non trivial applications across the thousands of different brands and types of mobile phones, get some venture capital and get rich!

Re:Java already breaks the WORA model

[Decaff]

I have a Java client on my webserver and half the mails I get are because the Java client doesn't work on people's computer. Usually this is because they have some old version of Microsoft's Java Runtime installed, which only supports Java 1.1 (badly).

What a mess! I can't really see how opening it up will make it any worse than it already is today.

Guess what! I have some Linux software that won't run on the 1.0.x kernel or with really early versions of libc. By the same reasoning this must surely mean that Linux is broken and you can't write the same code for different platforms.

Of course this is nonsense, and isn't what WORA is about, and certainly shouldn't have been rated 'insightful'. WORA does not include some kind of time machine facility to allow software written to current VM and language and library specifications to work on 10-year old VMs and old libraries. The idea is, of course, that if you write for Java 1.4.2, your software will run on any Java 1.4.2 VM (or later) on any platform.

Re:Java already breaks the WORA model

[Tim C]

Another good hint is when developers have to "port" their application from their own desktop to work properly on the test server.

In 6 or so years of doing server-side Java development, I have never needed to do that, nor have I ever heard of anyone needing to do so. I humbly suggest that if someone does find themselves needing to do so, they've done something very wrong.

Re:Java already breaks the WORA model

[IamTheRealMike]

J2ME apps aren't portable because every implementation has its own unique combination of bugs. The many vendor-specific APIs don't help, but the shoddy quality of the phones themselves are the root cause of the fragmentation.

Re:Java already breaks the WORA model

[miro2]

Have you ever written code which uses the java.net.NetworkInterface class? Thats a core part of the language, and its pretty damn easy to get code which runs completely differently on Windows and Linux simply because they are going to provide different NetworkInterface implementations (and frankly, a different number of NetworkInterfaces).

Re:Java already breaks the WORA model

[Anonymous Coward]

of course many games need to make assumptions about device specifics (e.g. screen size, number of colours, keyboard layout) which unfortunately leads to many portability issues. These problems are hard to solve and currently J2ME seems the best solution the market has come up with.

I can't say that I agree with that.

Mobile game studios have their ways of overcoming those problems. The games have to be customized to run on different keyboards, resolutions and whatever. A programming language cannot make this effort magically go away. Your 16x16 sprites won't transform into 128x128 by themselves and the game UI doesn't suddenly realize that the best way to use a pen device isn't to simulate a keypad.

None of these are language problems - they only come after that. And as a BREW/J2ME programmer my experience has been that the relatively straightforward set of C APIs have hell of a lot less issues than the convoluted mess being called J2ME. (ok, it's still far from perfect, just not that far)

Re:Java already breaks the WORA model

[VGPowerlord]

Honestly, I haven't.

Then again, that's why you have the static method getByInetAddress().

If you don't know the IP address you want, you "can use getNetworkInterfaces()+getInetAddresses() to obtain all IP addresses for this node." (Quoted because it's in the Javadoc for getNetworkInterfaces().)

It's a moot point. If you're messing with NetworkInterfaces, the end user should know which one they want, or you should ask them which NetworkInterface you want it to bind to during some sort of first time initialization.

Re:Java already breaks the WORA model

[Anonymous Coward]

Every single application which I have seen "restricted to a single platform" has been broken. So broken that it would not work on a faster computer, or with more memory, or any change for that matter.

Java is the first language which forces programmer to understand threads. Unfortunately not many do.

Re:Java already breaks the WORA model

[MarkByers]

If someone is already willing to break the law to get what they want, making new laws probably won't stop them either.

Re:Java already breaks the WORA model

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

If someone is already willing to break the law to get what they want, making new laws probably won't stop them either.

The law acts, but very slowly especially when big money is involved. In this case MS was stopped after most of the damage was done. Changing the licensing may give them an opportunity to do it again. With the current licensing, the courts have already spoken and doing it would result in immediate punishment for violating the court order.

Re:Java already breaks the WORA model

[Pieroxy]

Back then, MS's JVM was one of the best ones available

No, no. That was the fastest one. That was also the buggiest one.

Re:Java already breaks the WORA model

[MarkByers]

the courts have already spoken and doing it would result in immediate punishment for violating the court order.

Oh, sorry I didn't realise you get an immediate punishment if you violate a court order. You mean like the immediate punishment that Microsoft gets when they break agreements made under the Anti Trust ruling?

If Microsoft wanted to mess up Java again, they are powerful enough to do that whether the courts like it or not. Open Source or not Open Source, it makes no difference (as long as they retain the trademark and control of the standards of course). Personally I think Java is already badly enough messed up that Microsoft no longer need to be afraid of it.

Re:Java already breaks the WORA model

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't see how giving MS an opportunity to bundle a new broken version on every computer sold in the world could make things worse?

They can already do that: .NET supports J# and all thats missing (for your scenario) is the Windows configuration to tie Java app.'s to .NET

Re:Java already breaks the WORA model

[Decaff]

If Microsoft wanted to mess up Java again, they are powerful enough to do that whether the courts like it or not. Open Source or not Open Source, it makes no difference (as long as they retain the trademark and control of the standards of course).

This makes no sense. Sun retains the trademark, and control of the standards, which is precisely why Microsoft can't mess up Java.

Personally I think Java is already badly enough messed up that Microsoft no longer need to be afraid of it.

Microsoft are definitely afraid of Java. It is the dominant server-side development platform (which tends to contradict your statement that Java is in some way 'messed up'), a role which Microsoft has failed to dimish with .NET. Java is also gaining increasing presence client-side (after a very poor start). Even Microsoft now realises that for .NET to be a useful platform, it has to be able to work with Java server-side. .NET is quite successful on Windows desktops, but Java rules the servers.

Quit the talking

[Alphager]

or at least talk about some facts. All we hear from Sun is blabla about how they will open-source parts of Java in one or two years. What i want to know: -Which parts of Java? -WHICH LICENSE ?

As a web app developer...

[Kenja]

I've reaffirmed my commitment to stop using JAVA when ever I can. Its just no longer worth the trouble it causes. Just about anything I want to do can be done via AJAX & DHTML.

Re:As a web app developer...

[cching]

I guess if you're only doing client-side work, that might work, but try using AJAX and DHTML to write the backends which feed that front-end :-P

Re:As a web app developer...

[drinkypoo]

To be fair, 99% of everything that everyone wants to do could be handled with php+mysql backend, and ajax+dhtml on the front end, and in a lot of cases it's a lot simpler than writing something else. A lot of applications work just fine as web apps. In fact, if you had a local LAMP setup, you could just run a bunch of local webapps. Not sure why you'd want to, but it would do most jobs :)

Re:As a web app developer...

[Reverend528]

AJAX and DHTML are terrible for writing web servers. That's why I write all of my web applications in javascript and XUL. It takes only a small amount of rdf to turn firefox into a full-featured web server, and the pages it serves are pretty much guaranteed to look good in any gecko-based browser. Though, every once and a while the server experiences problems when someone ignores the post-it-note on the monitor and starts using the it to read slashdot.

Re:As a web app developer...

[Brandybuck]

Just because all you have is a hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail.

Re:As a web app developer...

[BigCheese]

Hmmm, no +1 Funny mods. You should have wrapped that one with some sort of humor indicator.

If you are serious, seek help.

Re:As a web app developer...

[cching]

While I agree with your php + mysql assertion on a small scale (mom and pop shops, maybe a bit larger), any serious app is going to need a robust language that aids maintainability. I do stuff in php + postgresql for my smaller, less sophisticated projects, but jump to J2EE for anything that is a bit more serious. Yes, I'm being subjective, but I think it's a subjective assertion no matter how you look at it ;-) I think php sucks for robust, maintainable, large apps.

Re:As a web app developer...

[mattkime]

+1 Funny doesn't boost a poster's karma.

Re:As a web app developer...

[Reverend528]

+1 Funny doesn't boost a poster's karma.

I'm in it for the glory.

Re:As a web app developer...

[dexter riley]

That is correct. Sometimes the problem is a skull.

Other Open Source languages don't seem to suffer

[Burdell]

There are many open source programming languages already (perl, python,
etc.), and they don't seem to have a problem with forking or
compatibility.

If Sun fosters a good development community, there shouldn't be a
problem.

Exactly

[sterno]

It is fair to say that down the line even when they do opensource it, Sun's version will be the defacto standard. Figure if they and IBM work together on new versions, there's a pretty good guarantee that there won't be any major forks. Sure, there will be forks, but invariably those forks won't be what the average corporate server is running on, etc. Since it's open source, any of the good changes from those forks can be rolled back into the main Sun standard.

I can understand Sun's fear as Java has been a huge part of their business, but I think as long as they keep pushing the standard forward forks will be irrelevant.

Re:Exactly

[beemishboy]

Not that IBM is waiting to fork it, but one of the primary companies Sun worries about forking is IBM - looking at Eclipse with its SWT instead of Swing for instance.

Re:Exactly

[fm6]

It is fair to say that down the line even when they do opensource it, Sun's version will be the defacto standard.

You're somewhat misinformed. Sun's implementation has never been a basis for determining what's "standard". That's because Sun's implementation, like every other Java implementation (and there are quite a few) is required to adhere to a written specification.

People (including everybody at Sun) often say "Java" when they mean "Sun's Java implementation". That can be misleading. When you talk about "open sourcing Java" you're really talking about open sourcing a particular implementation of Java.

Re:Exactly

[Kunta Kinte]

People (including everybody at Sun) often say "Java" when they mean "Sun's Java implementation". That can be misleading. When you talk about "open sourcing Java" you're really talking about open sourcing a particular implementation of Java.

I agree with that.

And that is my problem with Open-sourcing Java.

There are many Open-Source Java projects out there. GNU and Apache each have their own.

So why is everyone clamouring for Sun's implementation? I believe the problem is that we haven't found a suitable funding source to develop a open source Java, and are hoping that an OS Sun implementation will jumpstart that effort.

I hope I'm wrong, but I suspect that may backfire, and actually simply stagnate the most successful implemenation of Java we have.

Re:Exactly

[fm6]

As with any OS project owner, Sun has the option of not using submitted changes. And I have no doubt they will reject many.

The big danger to this Java implementation is that Sun is losing money hand over fist. If they can't afford to pay people to work on the JDK, that project is dead, whether its OS or not. No doubt Sun is hoping that they'll get some free development effort in exchange for opening up the JDK. But if the JDK dies for lack of work, it will be because Sun doesn't have the money to hire programmers, not because they're under the illusion that they don't need them.

Re:Exactly

[byolinux]

Here's at least part of the reason (I think) everyone wants Sun to make their implementation of Java, free software:-

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/java-trap.html

Re:Exactly

[fm6]

Sure, lots of people have nothing to do but read Stallman's weird ethical ramblings.

Re:Exactly

[andrewman327]

I doubt that it will stagnate the state of the art, and Java is regarded as the highest authority in Java. I am surprised to see how many Java fans there are here on /. considering the flames I have gotten in the past when I write about how cool Java is.

JavaPosse discussion

[tcopeland]

The JavaPosse had some notes on this a while back and they seem to keep an eye on the issue. That podcast definitely worth listening to once or twice a week to keep up with the latest news.

Re:JavaPosse discussion

[Anonymous Coward]

A podcast is not worth listening to, ever. By definition. You can replace podcast with blog and listening to with reading and it's just the same.

Re:JavaPosse discussion

[tcopeland]

> A podcast is not worth listening to, ever. By definition.

Can't argue with that line of reasoning!

Bizarro version

[Jonboy X]

Simon Phipps, the chief open-source officer at Sun Microsystems, has reaffirmed Sun's waning commitment to Open Source in an interview with some dude in bar over the weekend. "Sun tried the free-software thing. The end result was: Dirty hippies can run Solaris on their crappy little x86 boxes for free, and our stock is still circling the drain. Sun learned their lesson, and my job is rapidly being deprecated. I'll be folding sweaters at the Gap before Thanksgiving."

I think they mean the "WODE" model.

[Valdrax]

Write-Once, Debug Everywhere.

Solaris - solved?

[kripkenstein]

It took Sun a full five years to solve these issues with Solaris.

Solved? We should be so lucky. Things are far from solved. If Sun had released Solaris under the GPL, that would be good and done. Instead, it's under their own CDDL, which isn't easily compatible with the far-more-common GPL. This leads to issues for interesting projects like GNU/Solaris (Nexenta), which should have been quickly welcomed by the Open Source community. Instead, Sun's choice of the CDDL makes things complicated where they shouldn't be.

So, in short, I would not say that Sun 'solved' these 'problems' with Solaris, and I sincerely hope they do a better job with Java.

Re:Solaris - solved?

[mindtriggerz]

You're pointing at a problem that to Sun wasn't a problem. They *WEREN'T* aming for GPL compatibility. The CDDL seems to be working just fine for them, but the GPL zealots^Wfanboys want to critisize even a best effort by a traditional software company to make things open.

Re:Solaris - solved?

[nuzak]

> Instead, it's under their own CDDL, which isn't easily compatible with the far-more-common GPL.

Compatible with GPL == Relicensed under GPL.

It's the GPL that is incompatible with any other license.

Re:Solaris - solved?

[JordanL]

The GPL v3 is specifically targetting the power of the corporation to retain its own product. I can respect the ideological war that the FSF seems to want to pick with the rest of the world, and they aren't entirely wrong, but surely you can see why most corporations, especially for a language level product, would want to craft their own open source license instead of using a license which is progressively making more audacious legal claims... ones that will likely not hold up in court.

Re:Solaris - solved?

[Petersko]

"Solved? We should be so lucky. Things are far from solved. If Sun had released Solaris under the GPL, that would be good and done. Instead, it's under their own CDDL, which isn't easily compatible with the far-more-common GPL. This leads to issues for interesting projects like GNU/Solaris (Nexenta), which should have been quickly welcomed by the Open Source community. Instead, Sun's choice of the CDDL makes things complicated where they shouldn't be. "

Sun solved "their" problems. I highly doubt they took all that time to solve "your" problems. Their measure of success is not how they've complied with the open source community, it's how they fared in meeting their own needs.

What exactly did you expect?

Re:Solaris - solved?

[kripkenstein]

You're pointing at a problem that to Sun wasn't a problem. They *WEREN'T* aming for GPL compatibility.

I guess they weren't, since they didn't. And this is certainly a problem for the Open Source community. But this is also a problem for *Sun*, I would argue. What are the chances of OpenSolaris taking off, if the vast majority of the Open Source community can't use its code with the code they are used to? They can't improve OpenSolaris as they would like, and vice versa.

The whole CDDL issue seems to be an attempt to challenge Linux. Perhaps they envision a 'two-power' future for Open Source, where there is the GNU/Linux camp, under the GPL, and the Solaris camp, under the CDDL, and no code shall pass between them. This sounds a bit like the cold war to me (but maybe I'm just too old and/or senile, and mixing my metaphors).

To get back to the point, Sun open-sourced Solaris at a time when there was already a large and fruitful Open Source community. They chose not to play nice with that community, and seem to want to start a new base of power. If this is their 'solution', I'm not sure what the problem was. I find it hard to envision a promising future for OpenSolaris under current conditions.

Solaris example translation

[Anonymous Coward]

It took Sun a full five years to solve these issues with Solaris.

It took Sun 5 years to realize that Linux, esp with IBM support was quickly passing them by; and that even their efforts with Intellectual property partnerships with Microsoft and their backing (again with Microsoft) of SCO's efforts against Linux didn't slow down IBM or Linux.

So to make parallels with Java -- Sun will Open Source Java as soon as they realize C# and Python and Ruby are kicking their ass and Java no longer is relevant.

Re:Solaris example translation

[Anonymous Coward]

So to make parallels with Java -- Sun will Open Source Java as soon as they realize C# and Python and Ruby are kicking their ass and Java no longer is relevant.

So never then?
What about the fact that IBM heavily uses Java? Does that mean that Java is kicking Java's ass?

That's a popular method.

[jd]

• The "red book" that defined the CD standard was the main reason CDs were as interchangable as they were. DVDs, which have no such rigorous standard to meet, tend to be less predictable.
  
• IPv6 hasn't got an "official" centrally-run test suite, but such suites for the purpose of certification do exist.
  
• C follows standards, rather than official regression tests, so you do get a lot more variation in quality and interchangability. In general, though, it demonstrates that simply defining a central standard is adequate for basic stuff.
  
• POSIX used a mix of standards and official testing, and had a big impact on the interoperability of Unix systems - though nowhere near as much as seems to have been hoped.
  
• Standards and tests by committee seem to be a Very Bad Idea. CORBA and SQL followed this road and have resulted in guaranteed inefficiency - apparently for the purpose of promoting the "extended" packages released by the vendors who created the standards in the first place.
  

If the process is followed - hey, that's great, but is needs to be done right if it is to be worth the doing.

Re:That's a popular method.

[Random832]

The "variation in quality and interchangeability" of C has less to do with the fact that it's based on a standard than the fact that the standard in question doesn't fully specify anything worth doing.

open java equals forks for major vendors

[Fedarkyn]

other open languages (like phyton) don't have forks because a fork wouldn't do any good to the forker. major application server suppliers could make a lot of profit with a vendor lock implemented with gradual non conformities with its JVM. and a open source implementation of the JVM wouldn't make any difference for the non religious free/open source zealot.

Re:open java equals forks for major vendors

[bytesex]

You're FUDding. Big vendors (well, IBM) have their own JVM(s) and have had them for years. MS tried to clone the JVM into something it was not and failed. If you can't call it java what you're brewing, then what's the use ? Brand recognition and certification will do the trick well enough.

Re:open java equals forks for major vendors

[mark_lybarger]

they have their own fork of a jvm. the big boys with their own jvm all have licensed sun's jvm and then tweaked it to their platform. bea purchased that blazing fast, jrockit, x86 jvm. what were the origins of that one? http://weblogic.sys-con.com/read/43022.htm that's right, it's ripped from sun's jvm.

lots of folks have considered creating a full fledged java environment. they end up taking sun's and tweaking it. a full blown jvm is just plain hard to do. the gnu folks have been trying it for eons now, and found it was just plain hard to do. all those gui classes really make things challenging.

from what i hear the certification tests are laughable.

Re:Someone has to say it

[Anonymous Coward]

I find that comment totally offensive. Java is far superior language to C. It's losers like you who think that the world revolves around what you do in your mothers basement.

Re:Someone has to say it

[grammar fascist]

Java sucks *and* it's closed source. I'll stick to C, Python and Perl thank you.

Naw. Here's the real deal, from someone who knows quite a few languages:

- Java is adequate for just about every programming task
- Java's generics are mostly adequate
- Java's GUI support is good once you let Swing twist your head into a fleshy knot
- Java's library support is above average
- Java's floating-point performance is quite good, especially with HotSpot
- The HotSpot runtime is freakin' amazing at what it does
- The Java language is wordy, which mostly has to do with strict typing (and lately, from adding generics)
- Server-side Java (JSPs, servlets, etc.) is unnecessarily complicated and probably designed by Satan himself

Hope that helps.

Processes

[mistersooreams]

Simon Phipps the Process of Opening Java

Should be rather a slow one with a lot of hard disk churning, if experience is any guide. (I kid, of course. The modern JVM is more wonderful than Natalie Portman, and requires considerably less grits.)

Chief Open Source Officer?

[CherniyVolk]

Please.... someone, tell me why there needs to be an "officer"--much less a "cheif"--within a corporate environment. Aside from convention, what practical use would such a high paying position render? Management? Bah, the realities of management... is a given with shuttles exploding on international television and multi-billion dollar corporations such as Enron, to the everyday corporate life of meaningless and unproductive meetings setting deadlines, project goals and planning... it's all crap, and never useful.

But, even if it's "management"... it's interesting that a corporation would feel the need for such heirarchy to "manage" any aspect of a system which itself, has no such structure.

Re:Chief Open Source Officer?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Please.... someone, tell me why there needs to be an "officer"--much less a "cheif"--within a corporate environment.

Corporate officers are considered governance, and accountability falls on their shoulders. It's all about technical CYA-ism. Still, it seems like something for the CTO and CIO to handle.

Honestly

[Rorian]

I really like Java the way it is now - One single download of the OFFICIAL JRE and you can run pretty much anything that any website can throw at you, run a multitude of Java-based programs and you never really have to worry about having the right libraries etc. cause it's all _just there_ (with the exception of some applications which do require free java libraries.. most of the good applications manage to bundle everything in one neat package though).

Open Source Java would be nice because you'd never really have to worry about Sun turning around and charging on a subscription or per-seat basis for the JRE or JDK, although I don't think thats ever going to be in their interests anyway.

Having offshoots of Java which are almost JRE compatible but just have a little extra here and a little extra there is probably just going to confuse everything a lot. With any luck OSS developers will realize this and simply contribute to mainstream Java, but I guess time will tell what actually happens.

Re:Honestly

[Anonymous Coward]

One single download of the OFFICIAL JRE and you can run pretty much anything that any website can throw at you, except for ones that were working in OFFICIAL JRE VERSION -1 or before that now don't work.

Re:Other Open Source languages don't seem to suffe

[955301]

ever used perl for win32? There were differences between it and unix' perl versions.

And it's naive to think that python or Perl are good examples. There was such huge energy behind Java in the commercial world that Microsoft made a clone. You better believe J++ would come back again if Sun gave a half a chance for it to sneak back in.

Re:Someone has to say it

[bytesex]

- Java is adequate for just about every programming task

Except for systems programming. And really big GUI project (photoshop) programming. And small handy script programming. Which is a lot of programming altogether.

- Java's generics are mostly adequate

Java's generics have nothing to do with your argument; you just mention them because they're new. If your aim is new, then I know a few others: overloadable operators, literal regexes, a preprocessor language..

- Java's library support is above average

Except perl's, python's and C's are about a thousand times as good. Which says a lot about your understanding of 'above average'.

- The Java language is wordy, which mostly has to do with strict typing (and lately, from adding generics)

'Wordy' is an understanding, my friend. Java is so friggin' wordy that a whole new generation of editors and screens had to be invented in order to support the kind of line-length that java is happy with.

All the rest of your points I agree with, though. Well put.

Re:Sun has already started opening Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Use a native splash screen loader to shield the user from the initial load time. Either that or start a HelloWorld service at boot time and invoke it when you need a greeting. Problem solved!

Re:Other Open Source languages don't seem to suffe

[Anonymous Coward]

Java is a tad bigger in the Enterprise market than perl and python. I'm not saying that perl and python apps don't run on mission critical systems. I'm just saying that multi-million dollar companies (and therefore thousands of employees) have more to lose if Java becomes corrupted vs perl or python. Hence why it is the duty of Sun to make sure they don't make any mistakes.

Re:Other Open Source languages don't seem to suffe

[EsbenMoseHansen]

ever used perl for win32? There were differences between it and unix' perl versions.

I have. The only imcompabilities I encountered were the obvious ones (executables being marked by filename ~= ".*\.exe$" instead of an attribute and very slow fork(), e.g.). Other than that, perl does a far better job at it than Java ever has at being crossplatform.

Of course, Java is a big mess of a language. The only good thing to say about Java is that it is an improvement over Fortran. In some ways, anyway :).

Re:Someone has to say it

[CraigoFL]

> Server-side Java (JSPs, servlets, etc.) is unnecessarily complicated and probably designed by Satan himself

I'm no huge fan of JSPs, and the multitude of Java web frameworks is definitely ugly.

However, I'm curious about your beef with servlets. From my own perspective, they're simple enough to work with easily yet complex/powerful enough to handle a lot of uses. Do you have a specific gripe about them? Or did you just lump them in with the others?

Re:Someone has to say it

[bnenning]

Right. I've described Java as "very exactly ok". It was intended to be more usable than C++, and it has met those low expectations.

Java works. Python is fun.

Re:That _may_ solve the Current Performance Issues

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody please mod this depressing eyesore down so that others do not have to wash their eyes out with soap. And, if you could, kill it and its family before they reproduce again. I can only hope it is some sort of poorly coded spam-bot and not a member of the human race.

Re:Someone has to say it

[rewt66]

- Java's library support is above average

Except perl's, python's and C's are about a thousand times as good. Which says a lot about your understanding of 'above average'.

Look, you can get anything in a C library. What you can't get it in is libc - the standard, comes-with-the-compiler-so-everybody's-got-it library. Compare the standard library of Java to the standard library of C or perl, and I think you'll see his point.

Re:Someone has to say it

[Doches]

As a working language, I'd agree with parent -- Java is adequate. But as a teaching language, it's great. I'm all for keeping Java out of the workplace (Why is it there in the first place?!) but keeping it in colleges, where it can do no harm, and encourage millions of aspiring undergrads to write object-oriented code.

Or, they could just learn in Ruby. Yea. Ignore the above.

WORA

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Sun should really quit beating this dead horse. Java isn't "Write once, run anywhere", now (especially in embedded systems). Releasing an open-source Java implementation isn't going to change that.

There is no WORA

[fm6]

Of course, one of the other concerns for OS Java is the resulting incompatible versions and breaking of the Java WORA model.

Excuse me? Where does the interview mention WORA? It doesn't, because WORA has been dead for years. And it was never more than an advertising slogan.

The word you want is "compatibility", which is an issue with Java, as it is with every other language or platform.

It's too late..

[nicolas.b]

Mono c# is as fast as java and uses less memory btw. Who needs Java ?

Re:It's too late..

[BeerMilkshake]

Anyone who needs a gui ;-) How would you implement a gui under Mono to work across the big three platforms? Assuming you talk about bindings to wxWidgets or something, would it not be easier to write with AWT or Swing or SWT?

Re:Sun has already started opening Java

[wardle]

Improperly moderated!

Who will fund future development?

[Kunta Kinte]

My main concern with Java being Open-Sourced is that Sun may lose its incentive to continue funding Java development.

Java is not Python nor Perl. Even then, how long has Perl6 been in development? "It's ready when it's ready" is not good enough to much of the corporate world.

People asking for Java to be open-sourced believe that this will increase the amount of resources put into Java. I'm not so sure.

Re:Who will fund future development?

[Tweekster]

The coporate world already operates under a "its ready when its ready" system, they just dont realize it.

They either get the first version that is grossly inadequate, or they wait till the real version is finally released (after being delayed 4-5 times)

The time frame is the same, the facts are just spun a bit differently.

Re:Who will fund future development?

[chromatic]

Even then, how long has Perl6 been in development? "It's ready when it's ready" is not good enough to much of the corporate world.

The corporate world can deal with it, or it can fund development. As a multi-year volunteer on Perl 6 design and implementation, I can proudly say that the corporate world's opinion doesn't matter unless it's willing to do something about it.

Re:Someone has to say it

[shashi]

- Server-side Java (JSPs, servlets, etc.) is unnecessarily complicated and probably designed by Satan himself

Moderation needs a +1 QFT option.

I do a lot of web services programming, and after working with the tools that Microsoft's .NET provides, trying to do similar in Java makes me want to cry.

Re:Java is a toy

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Fix the poor non IEEE std floating support

True, it doesn't match the standard. Hardly a major problem though.

2. get some proper documentation. Just showing a class diagram does not help a programmer create code

The Javadocs are far better than the docs that come with most languages. They help most developers write code.

3. work on speed, it should not take 2 mins to load the interpreter

Trade your Commodore64 for something a little meatier, it'll take quite a bit less.

How long has Perl6 been in development?

[Kunta Kinte]

There are many open source programming languages already (perl, python, etc.), and they don't seem to have a problem with forking or compatibility.

And how long has Perl6 been in development?

Sure there hasn't been a fork. That's because there aren't enough resources to development even the main branch!

Perl, Python are large scale under-funded open-source projects and thus highlight what I believe to be one of the main reasons not to open-source Java just now.

We haven't answered the question of who will fund future development...

Re:How long has Perl6 been in development?

[plague3106]

We haven't answered the question of who will fund future development...

I think we have, and the answer, in most cases, is nobody.

Re:Someone has to say it

[bytesex]

The grand parent poster said nothing of standard libraries, and I didn't mean that either, so it's a bit disingenious of you to try and frame it that way. I said what I meant, which was: library support. And java is doing poorly in that department. Every time I had a java project which had to, eh, I don't know; produce a PDF, or an RTF, or an image, or print something using LPP, or extract something from a DBM, dial a number to a faxline, you know - do actual work, java gave up and we had to re-spec the project to include shell-tools, or perl-tools, or C-tools as requirements. True, they (the java folks) are catching up, and java really isn't that old, so there's a lot of forgiving to go around. But it's just a bit of a shame that the gang of four spent so much time making everybody re-invent a web-framework, while there could be people actually working on usefull APIs.

MS broke the WORA model

[bharlan]

You must be thinking of J++, since J# appeared much later with .NET, long after the contract lawsuit.

J++ wasn't java. Byte code from J++ included new non-optional instructions, violated the specification, and thus could not run on any VM but Microsoft's. Microsoft's VM did not support 1.1 features for handling native code. How would Sun have benefited from a non-java VM pretending to be java?

Misleading

[mritunjai]

I have been tracking the "opensource Java" for quite sometime. One thing I could not understand is why all the hype behind SUN's implementation of Java ??

Java is an open standard, anyone can go and implement his own pet implementation of Java, except that but for few major sharks (SUN, IBM, BEA...) no ne has quite been able to get a production quality implementation out of the door!

So why is everyone after SUN's goat ? SUN's JDK/JRE are just damn ONE of the many implementations of Java that exist. Where is Open source's sugar daddy IBM (which makes quite a ton of money from its Java application servers etc) ? Why doesn't IBM jump into the fray and opensource its implementation to poke a finger at SUN etc ? Why not BEA ? Why only SUN ?

Repeat after me- The JDK/JRE from SUN is only ONE of the MANY implementations of Java available... others ARE infact available from IBM, BEA, GNU, Kaffe et al.

Re:Misleading

[aurelianito]

As far as I know, both Bea's and IBM's implementation of the SDK are based on the Sun one. I really don't think that they can open source it without Sun approval.

Re:Misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not really fair to include the GNU or Kaffe Java implementations in that list. They may do a good job for those that can't install the Sun or other versions, but they do not pass the test suite, and thus get certification (or whatever they call it these days).

In fact, the open source implementations that don't pass the test suite are partially responsible for the slashdot crowd's arguments that you can't WORA. There are only two parts to Java that aren't WORA, J2EE (and that's an issue with the webserver side, not part of the JVM) and badly written IO code (mainly people using / or \ in paths rather than using the built in system independant functions).

Re:Someone has to say it

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time I had a java project which had to, eh, I don't know; produce a PDF, or an RTF, or an image, or print something using LPP, or extract something from a DBM, dial a number to a faxline, you know - do actual work, java gave up and we had to re-spec the project to include shell-tools, or perl-tools, or C-tools as requirements.

There are 3 of 6 things you mentioned that I did before:

PDF: see iText

image: well, ever got a look at the standard libraries?

DBM: I guess you mean database (DB), hmm, too many possibilities. How many webserver stuff written in Java that is doing DB access are out there? What freaky stuff do you do?

But it's just a bit of a shame that the gang of four spent so much time making everybody re-invent a web-framework, while there could be people actually working on usefull APIs.

I have no clue what you are talking about. To me, the gang of four is known for their design patterns book.

Re:Java is a toy

[Anonymous Coward]

Until then, it's a good language to teach to begining comp.sci students, and those too timid to program to the bare metal.

No, it's not. It's a horrible language to teach to beginning students, and there are plenty of scripting languages to use for people who can't use low-level languages.

The problem with Java is that there's too much crap you have to teach people before they can learn to use it. A good beginning language allows people to learn simple logical structures before moving on to data types and structures. When it comes to learning a language, the number of lines Hello World takes is a good metric to how much "glue code" you have to teach before a new learner can start to learn even the very basics.

Java's Hello World:

public class HelloWorld {
        public static void main(String[] args) {
                System.out.println("Hello World.");
        }
}

Five lines, only one of which has to do with the task at hand (displaying the text "Hello world."). You have to show access modifiers, explain classes, potentially explain packages, and explain methods, all to get to Hello World.

Python, on the other hand, takes just one:

print "Hello World."

Python allows you to slowly introduce concepts and build up to an understanding of data structures and other more complicated things. Python is a good language to start learning. (Some people disagree due to the indentation requirements for Python, but my feeling is forcing people to use proper indentation while learning probably helps in the long run and makes the code easier to read and understand.)

Anyway, Java's a horrible language to teach new CS students, although unfortunately most colleges do anyway. But they shouldn't. Start with a scripting language to teach fundamentals, then move to C to teach more complicated tasks. Move to Java only when getting ready to prepare students for common "real world" tasks.

Re:Someone has to say it

[grammar fascist]

However, I'm curious about your beef with servlets. From my own perspective, they're simple enough to work with easily yet complex/powerful enough to handle a lot of uses. Do you have a specific gripe about them? Or did you just lump them in with the others?

I like servlets themselves just fine. They're a great idea. It's the servlet containers I think are designed by Satan.

Re:Someone has to say it

[grammar fascist]

Java works. Python is fun.

I'd love to have a language that's as easy and fun as Python and not much slower than Java. I'd be in heaven.

Re:Other Open Source languages don't seem to suffe

[Decaff]

There are many open source programming languages already (perl, python,
etc.), and they don't seem to have a problem with forking or
compatibility.

They certainly do. Perl 6 will have incompatibilities with Perl 5. Future versions of Python and Ruby are certainly likely to not be backward compatible in many ways. There may be good reasons - not guaranteeing compatibility can allow a language to evolve faster, but to claim that there are no problems with compatibility is simply wrong.

Understand the abuses

[Futurepower(R)]

The first step to stopping Microsoft's abuses is to understand the abuses. Microsoft has, for example, slowed the acceptance of Java.

Slowing the acceptance of Java has, in my opinion, slowed the development of Java. Together those effects have caused a lot more than $1.8 billion of harm.

Microsoft should not be able to make a profit on the harm it does. The company should be made to pay $1 for every $1 of harm.

The world needs Java, and a more completely developed Java, in my opinion. Anything that slows that hurts even people who have never used a computer, because anything that slows the development of our infrastructure hurts everyone.

Re:Someone has to say it

[Anonymous Coward]

Java is great as a teaching language in colleges--if you want to teach a classroom of students how to program in a language that, as you say, should not be used in the working world. So, what's the point, then? They'll just have to learn the language that is acutally used in the real world later.

Re:Someone has to say it

[cortana]

Jython?

(Disclaimer: I only know what it is, not whether it's any good)

Re:Someone has to say it

[Doctor Faustus]

I did a PDF library in Java for my senior project, and I hadn't quite decided whether to try to open source it, try to commercialize it, or look through other libraries to see if any of what I did could improve them.

If you have any feedback on what you'd want a PDF library to do, and how you'd want it to behave, I'd be interested to hear it.

Re:Sun has already started opening Java

[Reverend528]

troll, funny, or offtopic?

Re:Java is a toy

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, point taken. It's a good language to teach Object-Oriented princeiples, ideally AFTER a structured programming language has been introduced, Python, standard C, etc.

Mind you, I think my other points still hold.

No IEEE Compliance == Crap language, external libraries aside. Even GCC comes with IEEE floating point libraries by DEFAULT. Standards exist for a reason. Want to do anything serious, use a STANDARD.

Speed, Java has tons of BLOAT. Sure it adds a virtual machine, which prevents the student from seriously screwing anything up, but it also teaches sloppy programming. Let the VM handle your exceptions. But what if the VM crashes, no language is perfect, but for C/C++ I can always debug the machine code, without looking at VM failures.

What language is any serious commercial product written in, C. 9 Times out of 10. I'm tired of fighting with stupid crapplets, and having damn CLASSPATH errors.

Not always

[lokedhs]

There is a game I bought and installed on every single phone I've owned, and the same jar file has worked flawlessly: Gravity Defied.

So, it's possible. You just have to work at it.

(not representing the company, just a happy customer)

Java isn't WORA

[Anonymous Coward]

It's really more like WOR[W|L|SU] ... or write once run on Windows, Linux and some Unix. Now if you emulate Linux or Windows on other OS's you can get it to work but do you really want to run a virtual machine on a virtual os on your os?

Re: Someone has to say it

[Dolda2000]

I agree with the OP in sticking to C, Python and Perl, and it is for exactly some of the reasons that you listed. Java is, indeed, adequate for just about every programming task. For almost any programming task, however, there will be a language which is a perfect fit, which makes Java, in its adequateness, inferior for that particular task. I am lazy (as programmers should be), so I really dislike the wordieness of which you speak. I do work as a Java developer, and I have felt very hindered by the language in almost anything I do. Quite often I encounter subproblems that take 10+ lines in Java, which could be solved in a single, small and elegant s-expr in Scheme, or a single line of Perl. It is also quite cumbersome to do serious data structure mangling in Java, considering that you either have to define an entire class just to do simple things, or do so much type casting with the java.util structures that half of the code will just be type casts (and it isn't made any better by the facts that type names in Java tend to be very long and that the java.util collections can't store primitive data types).

I do find Java a good fit for a certain class of programming tasks -- namely those which require the software to run on a diversity of platforms. In that regard, I don't think anything can beat Java. If only Windows shipped with a good JRE...

However, I do disagree with some of your points. For example, no matter how good Swing is for programming, it will always suck since it renders widgets itself. Even though it has pluggable look-and-feel, it isn't possible to always make it look like a native application (try to write a look-and-feel for "the currently selected GTK2 theme", for example...). Also, even though Java's library support may be good, it quite much sucks that it is impossible to do OS-specific calls. I realize that that is because of the WORA principle, but it quite much sucks that it is impossible to, for instance, write Unix programs that use setuid in Java. I cannot imagine that it would hurt to add OS-specific calls for programs that just don't care about being OS-independent (especially not if they were added in seperate packages, like os.posix or os.win32, so that they won't be confused with OS-independent classes), right? By the way -- yes, I know about JNI and, no, I don't think it counts.

Basically, I think that the JVM and the class library are pretty nice (not perfect by a long shot, however), but the Java language itself just sucks. I have often considered making an alternative language that compiles to Java class files.

Re: Someone has to say it

[espressojim]

I haven't had to cast an object since I started using java 1.5 18 months ago. Generics, look into them. Also, you can put primitives into collections (via autoboxing).

Java 1.5 made the language a LOT nicer and more expressive.

Re:Someone has to say it

[Anonymous Coward]

- Server-side Java (JSPs, servlets, etc.) is unnecessarily complicated and probably designed by Satan himself

Ah, you've become so ingenious these days.
Don't you think you're going way above the top?

Satan

Re:How long has Perl 6 been in development?

[chromatic]

And how long has Perl6 been in development?

Perl 6 has had five or six funded man-years of development. By my estimation, Microsoft developers spend as much time on-clock reading e-mail in a week.

I've already opened Java

[jamesjw]

I've already opened Java
And I can tell you the lid reads "WARNING: HOT CONTENTS"

wrong

[m874t232]

That's because Sun's implementation, like every other Java implementation (and there are quite a few) is required to adhere to a written specification.

What you're pointing at as a "written specification" of "Java" is a book on the Java language. Standardizing the Java language isn't the problem, standardizing the libraries is. There are specifications for the Java libraries. Conformance of new implementations is checked via a test suite. As far as I know, no implementation besides Sun's and its licensed derivatives passes that test suite.

So, therefore, in reality, there is only one implementation of Java, plus a bunch of ports. The notion that Java is an "open" "standard" with multiple implementations is a myth created by Sun to make the platform more appealing to ABM people.

Re:wrong

[fm6]

Let's say you're right. (I'm not absolutely sure you are, but I'm too lazy to argue the point, which isn't really important.) The fact remains that Sun's implementation is still not a "de facto standard". The standard is the written specification, which includes not just a language specification, but also a VM spec (included in the document I pointed to — the title is misleading) and also the API Specification. When any Java provider violates these specs, they get in trouble. Not just from Sun's lawyers, but from their customers.

Actually, even Sun has been known to get in trouble that way. No, they don't sue themselves, but when their developers fail to follow the spec (as they have been known to do), their customer make a lot of noise.

The software is not the spec. The spec is the spec.

Re:Someone has to say it

[bytesex]

Thanks. These days, however, because we're talking about a two or three years ago here (an eternity in java's terms), we have FOP. Which is hell on earth to work with because it assumes that one can somehow like XML.

What I'd really want out of a PDF generating java API, would be something along the lines of what PDF::API2 does for perl. Simple, adequate and easy to be made complete, however, only focussed on PDF, say:

PDF pdf = new PDF();
PDFPage page = pdf.createPage("A4");
page.line(10,10,200,200);
page.stroke();

etc..

Re: Someone has to say it

[Hugo Graffiti]

I haven't had to cast an object since I started using java 1.5 18 months ago. Generics, look into them.

Generics has made Java ugly. Here's an example.

Re:Someone has to say it

[CraigoFL]

Yeah, I was guessing you'd say that. BTW have you tried Jetty? It's a heck of a lot less complicated than any of the others.

Re:Someone has to say it

[bytesex]

]] PDF: see iText

Thank you. Couldn't find that two years ago, or must have rejected it for some reason.

]] image: well, ever got a look at the standard libraries?

Do they contain methods like 'saveAsPNG' ? Oh. I didn't think so either.

]] DBM: I guess you mean database (DB),

No. I don't. This is not freaky stuff. Look it up. And if you don't understand what a DBM is after reading that, then hand in your geek card at the door.

]] I have no clue what you are talking about. To me, the gang of four is known for their design patterns book.

Exactly. What happened when that came out ? A lot of major APIs (java.nio, the saxparser, for example) were redesigned to fit the fashion (and become completely inaccessible as a result). About the same time that Sun sort-of completed their instrospection API. So that everybody and their dog started to write their own sub-language-inside-a-webserver instead of focussing on usefull stuff. The GOF is, in my eyes, responsible for this whole quagmire; when are people going to learn that we don't want infinetely extensible API-APIs; we want easy to use APIs ! Go on Sun, be sensible ! Stop rewriting your own APIs according to the latest hype every release, set up some sort of CPAN for java, and free its source code. Well, in my dreams, I guess.

Re: Someone has to say it

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, yes, generics. They turned

HashMap m = new HashMap();

Into

HashMap<String, String> m = new HashMap<String, String>();

More expressive, yes. However generics just about tripled Java's wordiness.

I'm still waiting for a language smart enough to allow you to do something like:

var m = new HashMap();

And infer m's type just might be the type it's being initialized to.

Plus, generics and autoboxing make it far less clear just how inefficient Java is. Class-casts and boxing are slow. Doing something like:

List<int> list = getList();
int i = list.get(0);

Turns out to involve the following code:

List list = getList();
Object o = list.get(0);
if (!(o instanceof Integer)) {
throw new ClassCastException();
}
Integer oI = Integer.class.cast(o);
int i = oI.intValue();

Much of that code gets hidden in Java's syntactic sugar, but it's still all there, and it's still slowing down something that looks like receiving a simple integer. (Type casts in Java really do have a fairly signifigant amount of code running on them. Avoiding type casts is always a good idea.)

And none of that is thread-safe.

Re:Someone has to say it

[dr_d_19]

Server-side Java (JSPs, servlets, etc.) is unnecessarily complicated and probably designed by Satan himself

Or herself!!

Gosh... sexist pig! Typical slashdotter :)

Project DOPE and CORBARF

[SimHacker]

Sun has a long track record of making promises they couldn't keep.

That's why Sun had to rename Project DOE (Distributed Objects Everywhere) to Project DOPE (Distributed Objects Practically Everywhere)!

...And then they added a Remote Forwarder to CORBA, to get CORBARF (Common Object Request Broker Architecture Remote Forwarder).

-Don

Re:Other Open Source languages don't seem to suffe

[Anonymous Coward]

Try using pipes on WIN32. They don't work very well (either natively, or through perl).

One of the major uses of perl (as a pipeline wrapper to other code) is broken on Win32...

It's not real life in CS courses...

[kuitang]

It's not that; the focus of most CS courses are ultimately data structures, which, even though highly wordy, do fit much more elegantly in the object-oriented model. While scripting is probably infinitely more useful for day-to-day tasks, I don't think many people write their own binary trees and linked lists in pure Perl/Python/Ruby/Bash -- wait, Bash doesn't have pointers, so you can't even do that at all! And for the others, the only way to get pointers is to write your own object wrappers! Oh, and C++ is a even more horribly language to teach students. C is nice--if you can get people to understand pointers and have them magically remember to free everything they malloc.