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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."
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.
Many Java apps made assumptions about file names and directory locations, and this prevented them from running on other OSes.
That's the fault of the programmer(s), not Java.
Besides, while you have valid points, they are irrelevant to the topic at hand; MS signed a licence saying that they could not introduce Windows-specific classes into the java.* package hierarchy, and yet they did so. No one would have cared if they'd put them in com.microsoft.*, but they chose not to do so.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
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.
Generics seem pretty straightforward to me, even the "? extends Whatever" syntax. Maybe you could give some concrete examples as to the problems with generics. The only problem right now is that type erasure makes arrays of generics impossible. Hopefully they'll fix that with the next revision.
But Java's cross-platform compatibility has always been a myth.
Bollocks.
I've been a Java developer and manager of Java developers for about 10 years now. Before that, 20+ years as C/C++/asm guy across a wide variety of platforms ranging from embedded system to Honeywell/Bull and IBM mainframe and just about every mainstream business platform in between (AS400, VAX/VMS, various Unix flavors, Linux, Windows, Mac, etc.). So application portability is a subject I have a bit of experience with. While in the earliest days of Java portability was more wishful thinking, I can unequivocally say that since, oh, Java 1.4 if not earlier, cross platform portability has been spot on. It just works. I can't even remember the last time I took a Java application I've written to a platform that it didn't work on. Even today I am always mildly surprised to take a fairly complex GUI application I've developed on, say Windows, and drop it on another platform, like Linux or OSX, and watch it run flawlessly. I recently wrote a manufacturing line simulator to use as a test backend for a Java-based shop floor system. This is a multi-threaded GUI app simulating and displaying in real-time movement of product through the line, while interfacing with OPC servers and host applications via message queues and databases. When it was done, I dropped it on an Ubuntu desktop box and aside from the slight differences in the Linux GUI appearance, you wouldn't know which one you were looking at.
The only portability problems I've seen are either from dependency on native JNI code (which is rarely but occasionally necessary) -- and almost all databases these days support pure-Java Type4 drivers without dependency on native clients -- or due to lousy programmers who hardcode platform specific constructs. I have *never* had an issue with filesystem path portability over the hundreds of Java applications I've written or managed in the last decade, because I never assume/hardcode anything specific to the platform I'm developing on. This is a common failure of your typical VB developer that is new to Java -- all they think about is Windows, many have had zero exposure to other environments, so that's all they know. Which is fine I guess if you're a 100% Windows shop or targeting a Windows base, but then I'd certainly question the transition to Java in that case. Regardless, don't blame the language for its misuse by developers -- if so then we could condemn every programming language ever made.
I like Java well enough and am proficient enough with it that even if I were stranded in Windows purgatory forever, I'd still consider using it over .NET even without the portability benefits. I've had the occasion to have to write some C# due to some OPC/DCOM integration code that required it. While there are some things about the .NET platform and languages that I find appealing, there's not enough there to win me over from Java.