Java's Backup Plan If Oracle Fumbles

GMGruman writes "In an InfoWorld blog, Paul Krill suggests that those concerned that Java might get lost in Oracle's tangle of acquired technologies should relax a little: Java's future isn't wholly in Oracle's hands, so if Oracle screws up or lets Java languish, the popular language has other forces to move it forward nonetheless."

Comments

The next Cobol?

[richman555]

Java, while widely used is on the down slide. There really hasn't been any new revolutionary additions to the language in about 7 years. In another 10 years, it will become like COBOL is to IBM.

Re:What could possibly go wrong ...

[EsbenMoseHansen]

Python, yes. C, no. Not unless you include the source code, and recompile for the new platform.

You are confusing the language with the runtime environment. Nothing prevents a C program to be translated to Java bytecode (or python ditto), which can then be run in a JVM. Likewise, there is no rule that a Java program has to be translated into intermediate bytecode, to be interpreted or compiled at invocation.

Sun's claim was that Java class files wouldn't need to be recompiled to run. I found that reasonably true. (Of course, you had to be running on a compatible JVM which had been compiled for the appropriate local platform.)

Note, by the way, that Python achieves cross-platform capability by an exactly comparable means. Ruby and ECMAscript basically don't HAVE a compiled form, but if they did it would be the same argument. (Don't know about the others.)

My point exactly. It's hardly unique, even at the time.