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Java's Backup Plan If Oracle Fumbles

Posted by timothy on from the enough-java-should-keep-you-awake dept.

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."

4 of 276 comments (clear)

  1. Re:What could possibly go wrong ... by Big+Jojo · · Score: 5, Informative
    Go away troll....

    Microsoft was entirely within its rights to extend Java to provide native support for Windows O/S. The lawsuit was ridiculous and wrongly decided.

    The issue was violating the the compatibility constraints, so that code would no longer be portable to non-Windows O/S. This was precluded by the license which MSFT signed, so the lawsuit was reasonably decided.

  2. Re:Doing all my programming in C# by drewhk · · Score: 3, Informative

    "Java checked exceptions do absolutely nothing to help when you're working with dynamically-loaded code, for instance."

    The same is true for invoking methods through reflection. Or transforming bytecode through custom classloaders, etc.

    But these are low-level techniques that should be used with care -- exactly because they can break things in unexpected ways. But this is not an argument against checked exceptions.

  3. Java cross-platform DOES work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    We have java swing code that runs on window, linux, and os-x. We use a custom look-and-feel so things are consistent. Ok, the one-button mouse is a pain.

    We java backend code that runs on intel (windows/linux), powerpc, and arm. I routinely deploy and test on linux-x86 and deploy to powerpc and arm targets with zero problems.

  4. Re:What could possibly go wrong ... by KermitTheFragger · · Score: 5, Informative

    But Java's cross-platform compatibility has always been a myth. AWT apps were least-common-denominator pieces of shit most of the time. Swing apps weren't as bad, but never fit in with any desktop environment,

    Besides Apple no one cares about consistency on the Desktop anymore. Have you looked at Microsoft apps lately ? Visual Studio looks different then the rest, Office looks different from the rest, Outlook looks different from the rest of Office, Media player looks different from the rest, Home Server UI looks different from the rest and I could go on and on.

    and this only got worse as Sun kept cranking out a shitty new theme with each release of Java.

    In the like 14 years of Swing existence there have only been 3 themes in the JRE: Metal, Ocean and Nimbus. And metal is selected by default. Java never sets one of the newer themes by itself. So basically the default theme hasn't changed.

    Many Java apps made assumptions about file names and directory locations, and this prevented them from running on other OSes.

    So there are people who make crappy programs in Java. How exactly is that different from other languages ?

    early on we had to use JDBC drivers that depended on native code (it was a few years before pure Java JDBC drivers were available for some database systems).

    A few years before pure JDBC drivers were available ? That was when, 2000 or something ? Since that problem is long solved I don't really see how thats relevant today.

    Java has never really been a viable option on Mac OS X, and Mac OS before that.

    Apple does the Java implementation by their selves, not Sun / Oracle and yes, it shows. If Sun had done the Mac OS X implementation for Java it would probably be better.