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2007 Java Predictions
jg21 writes "Java Developer's Journal has published the results of its end-of-year poll of various Internet technology players, from its own internal editors to industry high-ups like the founder of Apress, Gary Cornell, and including too the thoughts of professor Tony Wasserman of Carnegie Mellon West. Participants were asked to foretell what they saw happening in 2007. Among the predictions — Cornell: 'The open-sourcing of Java will have no effect whatsoever on Java's slow decline in favor of dynamic languages (Ruby, Python) and C#'; Wasserman: 'The use of the GPL 2 for open-sourcing Java will inhibit the completion and acceptance of the GPL 3 proposal'; and Rails creator David Heinemeier Hansson: 'The stigma of being a Web programmer still using Windows will increase.'"
I predict Java will still require 2 gigs of RAM and a Quad-Core CPU just to reach parity with the simplest command line program.
I doubt it. There's an awful lot of Kool-Aid you have to drink to become a Java programmer. Java isn't a language, it's a family of platforms. For a Unix person like myself, something like Python will always win over Java, precisely because it doesn't attempt to be a platform. In fact, Python tries to provide the Unix APIs in a convenient and straightforward way. The same goes for all relevant task-specific libraries. (And if you don't like Python, there are a handful of other popular, free languages at an abstraction level higher than Java, which share the same platform-agnostic approach.)
And meanwhile, Java is stuck on its own little island, and the beaches and the surfing aren't better there than anywhere else.
It's never a good sign when a program advertises the language it's written in by adopting the language's initial letter for its own name ...
I'm so glad Java's dying! Never liked it, C# all the way.
Is monies compensation enough for your small penis and the fac that you're a pussy programmer (in the big picture, compared to a real language like C/C++)?
No one uses Java anymore, it's all flash these days.
For individual web sites and popular software, maybe. However, there are plenty of specialized applications that have taken many years to develop that are written in Java.
I've never been a fan of the language. Performance is terrible, and moving an app from one VM to another often causes serious problems. The cross platform claims have consistently been exaggerated.
There is too much invested already in it just to disappear, and I certainly can't see everything just going to Flash, though that definitely has many applications. Predictions of a long slow decline are spot on.
A decline and death are not the same thing. I keep hearing C is dead. Losing popularity, sure, but it will be around for a very long time.
It's ironic, though: the Java Trap is now reversed. Previously you would find your open source code being trapped by a closed license. Now you can find your open source code trapped by an open source license.
You mention Apache, so just remember this: The Apache license (all versions) are incompatible with the GPL 2. So if you decide to use the GPL 2 version of Java (which includes the class libraries) you can't legally use the various Apache Java projects.
There's also the fun and unanswered question of whether or not using the GPL 2 javac will taint your binaries with GPL 2 code, and if using JAR will taint your JARs with GPL 2 licensed data. Using the GPL 2 tools very well might taint your redistributables, forcing you to use the GPL 2.