Oracle's Latest Java Moves Draw Industry Ire

snydeq writes "Two years later, Oracle's stewardship of Java continues to raise user and vendor ire, this time due to modularization, licensing, and security concerns. 'Plans for version 8 of Java Platform Standard Edition, which is due next year, call for inclusion of Project Jigsaw to add modular capabilities to Java. But some organizations are concerned with how Oracle's plans might conflict with the OSGi module system already geared to Java. In the licensing arena, Canonical, the maker of Ubuntu Linux, says Oracle is no longer letting Linux distributors redistribute Oracle's own commercial Java, causing difficulties for the company. Meanwhile, security vendor F-Secure views Java as security hindrance.'"

Comments

fp

[Anonymous Coward]

FIRST POST

Re:fp

[jd2112]

FIRST POST

Obviously you aren't running Java, otherwise you wouldn't have been able to post so fast.

Re:fp

[gutoandreollo]

This is one of the times I wish I could mod and post, so I could comment on your signature AND still mod you up!

Re:fp

[SplashMyBandit]

Great joke from the 90's.

In case some of the Slashdot readers take the joke (and what used to be true) as the current state of affairs I thought it worth correcting them (otherwise they will have a mistaken view of the *current* performace of the JVM). It turns out today that Java on the Oracle JVM is faster than pretty much every other general-purpose language except for FORTRAN (which is fast 'cause it so simple - which is why FORTRAN programs still dominate much of supercomputing). Don't take my word for it. Take that of James Gosling (a biased source):
http://blogs.oracle.com/jag/entry/current_state_of_java_for
and the French supercomputing facilties of INRIA (an unbiased source):
http://hal.inria.fr/inria-00312039/en

Re:fp

[Bucky24]

You could always mod then post as AC...

Re:fp

[jd2112]

Great joke from the 90's.

In case some of the Slashdot readers take the joke (and what used to be true) as the current state of affairs I thought it worth correcting them (otherwise they will have a mistaken view of the *current* performace of the JVM). It turns out today that Java on the Oracle JVM is faster than pretty much every other general-purpose language except for FORTRAN (which is fast 'cause it so simple - which is why FORTRAN programs still dominate much of supercomputing). Don't take my word for it. Take that of James Gosling (a biased source): http://blogs.oracle.com/jag/entry/current_state_of_java_for and the French supercomputing facilties of INRIA (an unbiased source): http://hal.inria.fr/inria-00312039/en

That may be so, but the GUI handling in Java royally sucks. I very rarely see a graphical Java app that can't bring the fastest of PCs crawling painfully slow.

Re:fp

[Anonymous Coward]

Again, a common misconception of morons. Crawling painfully slow? Now, that just makes you look ignorant. SWT is actually quite good. You should also check out JGoodies http://www.jgoodies.com

See? You don't need to live in ignorance.

Re:fp

[ultraata]

I've been working with cisco devices java GUI for years - and it still sucks in terms of speed and reliability.

Re:fp

[dkf]

Again, a common misconception of morons. Crawling painfully slow? Now, that just makes you look ignorant. SWT is actually quite good.

I've seen slow SWT apps too, but then the problem isn't really the GUI but rather the habit of the Java runtime to use lots of memory. Any machine is slow when forced to page (and when using Java on something with plenty of RAM, it flies). The other issue is that the boot time of the JVM is quite long, but that's actually quite dependent on what you're doing with it.

Neither of these issues is at all special to Java of course and things are not as bad as they used to be, but it is afflicted with them for sure.

Re:fp

[hlavac]

Have you seen a .NET app lately?

Re:fp

[xelah]

Again, a common misconception of morons. Crawling painfully slow? Now, that just makes you look ignorant. SWT is actually quite good.

I've seen slow SWT apps too, but then the problem isn't really the GUI but rather the habit of the Java runtime to use lots of memory. Any machine is slow when forced to page (and when using Java on something with plenty of RAM, it flies).

A lot of C or C++ applications also use a lot of memory (maybe less, I'm not sure, but still a lot) - but there's a better chance that a lot of it can be paged out and left there because they don't have a garbage collector regularly scanning it.

Re:fp

[Anonymous Coward]

It turns out today that Java on the Oracle JVM is faster than pretty much every other general-purpose language

So, you're saying that the JVM would be faster if it was written in Java, and thus running on top of another JVM. And the other JVM would also be faster if it was written in Java, and thus running on top of a third JVM.

(Continue until you have an infinitely fast program running on top of an infinite number of JVMs).

Re:fp

[plover]

You're not catching me on this one. It's JVMs all the way down!

Re:fp

[SplashMyBandit]

Well, GUIs in Java can actually be excellent, and with themes like Nimbus can look superb. There are several factors here:

* if the programmer doesn't know what they are doing with Swing they will block what is known as the Event Dispatch Thread (EDT). Do that and you may get performance issues. On the other hand, if the developer does know what you they are doing with regard to the EDT (or have one of the tools to check this for you) then you can create a multi-threaded GUI that is *very* responsive even for very large tasks.

* Ever since Java 1.6.0u10 all of Java2D (and therefore Swing) has been completely hardware (that is, GPU shader) accelerated. On Windows DirectX shaders are used and everywhere else OpenGL shaders are used. Nicely 'stroked' and anti-aliased text rendering can be a little slow, but that is not noticeable compared to dump programmers blocking the EDT.

Third, in the particular case of Swing it is far more extensible than either WinForms or SWT. I know, I have had to write custom controls for all three and Swing was the easiest by far to extend (again, if you know what you are doing - as in everything in development).

So, perhaps Java GUIs require a bit more skill for new programmers to master, and unfortunately users seeing the interfaces produced by these less experienced developers blame the technology rather than the level of development experience. However, once you get past the n00b stage I reckon Swing is much much better for advanced UI projects than many other toolkits (which are easy for very simple stuff, but are a curse when you actually want to build a serious custom-tailored GUI).

Re:fp

[bfandreas]

If I had a dollar for whenever I saw some novice doing IO or expensive computation in the Swing event thread I'd be...well...not rich but it would be sufficient for a night-out for me and my friends. It's amazing how many "experts" don't know how to do threads in any way, shape or form. They are quite trivial to implement in Java but being threds they need some kind of planning.

But you are wrong about the Swing API. Now I have to say I haven't done real(as in paid for and a couple of hundreds of thousands of tedious UI code) any Swing work in the last 10 years since we all jumped on the web application bandwagon. But I can compare things like WPF(which was a bit crap at the beginning) to Swing back then. WPF is better. I wouldn't do pure Swing today. The API was great at the turn of the century when compared to other GUI APIs back then. I always felt like it had been neglected after that. It got a lot of improvements like hardware accelleration and optimizations but real changes and improvements in the API are far and in between.

But one thing has been a fundamental truth whenever somebody cracks a joke about Java speed: that person doesn't have the slightest clue and propably is a bad programmer. I've seen my fair share of use of JNI calls to C code because the perceived advantage of native code. In one case the C code were just a series of trivial integer operations that didn't take any measurable time to compute. The "optimization" was percieved as "necessary" because this used quite often. The JNI call was called thousands to millions of times within a series of loops. It didn't perform as expected because Java was slow. I did away with it and got a huge speed increase. What a surprise. The other time I saw something insane was when somebody used JNI to call a C function that sent XML over vanilla sockets because "Java doesn't do TCP, only RMI".

Could we just get the morons out of the way, please?

Re:fp

[bfandreas]

Nope. It does mean that most inefficiencies are introduced by bad programming. Write inefficient C code and it will be slow. Write inefficient Java code and it will be slow.

If you are paid for the results(ie an application) and have to compete over price then you will not write code that is optimal(as in: the fastest way to run things) but rather whatever you can do with your budget. And writing optimal code has a very low priority when compared to writing maintainable code. Testable code. If you write a cutsom application for Enterprises(aka Big Corps, has been around for 100 years will be around for another 100) then you will have to plan ahead for the guys who have to extend your code 5 years down the line. Or port it. Also those applications tend to be broing as shit. All UI, data gets dumped into the database and somebody compiles a report. Job done. Well payd drudgery. You could write something like that in TCL/TK and it would be fast enough.

Speed only matters when you have a lot of computation.
Speed also matters when doing data analysis. But that is what databases are for nowadays. No need to reinvent the wheel.Simply drink the Oracle BI cool aid and weep into your drink after hours. It's hard to be challenged anymore.

Re:fp

[SplashMyBandit]

Lol. Great stories!
Don't forget to check out Google Web Toolkit (GWT) for the web if you haven't already. It has its limitations but it is pretty damn good (and portable, since it uses Java -> Javascript compilation for AJAX without the hassle).

Re:fp

[bfandreas]

Yeah, I'm planning on checking it out. I just managed to train my people in JSF 2.0 but we will be needing GWT sooner or later.

Right tool for the job. When I see the job.
We mostly do web applications with about 140 forms and just as clever as the customer wants to pay..
Turns out simple is simple enough.

Re:fp

[_0xd0ad]

But one thing has been a fundamental truth whenever somebody cracks a joke about Java speed: that person doesn't have the slightest clue and propably is a bad programmer.

Most users are like that, yeah. And the Java apps I've used? Haven't impressed me with their speed.

Even if I was an expert Java programmer, I wouldn't have much control over Java apps written by others, now would I? When you're using a Java app and it's painfully slow, do you open up the .jar and start optimizing things? I doubt it.

Re:fp

[bfandreas]

Heh, once I figured out that IL-2 Sturmovik had quite a bit of Java in it I immediately wanted to know how much. Encrypted JARs, propably custom class loader, oh I really wanted to know how they did it.

Then there was that old Oracle Java database lib that slowed the system down whenever we wanted to use a connection pool. A quick profiler run unearthed that it spent 98% of its time in Thread.yield(). Called from within the Oracle drivers. If I hadn't had some McKinzey dude breathing down my eck at that moment I would have set the guns to very disassemble.If you see that kind of train wreck then you really want to witness the extent of the carnage.

Oracle and Java

[ravenswood1000]

With Oracle responsible for Java, is it even worth it to learn the language any more? I mean they will be killing it off soon.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Foxhoundz]

Not a chance. Java has changed the face of mobile computing within the past decade. Why would oracle shoot themselves in the foot?

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Or at least incorporate it into their products, like Objective-C and Apple, or C# and Microsoft. They aren't going to get any benefit from having a multiplatform product like the current Java.

Re:Oracle and Java

[sehlat]

With Oracle responsible for Java, is it even worth it to learn the language any more? I mean they will be killing it off soon.

Actually, I have to ask if it ever was worth learning? The original promise of "write once, run anywhere" long ago dissolved into "Write once, curse (and debug) everywhere." Add on to that an eternally-growing library that can take years just to learn the categories, never mind the content, and you end up with the current bloated nightmare that even intimidates experienced developers.

In addition, Oracle has the typical mainstream vendor's approach of "we don't have to own your code if we own YOU," and Java would appear to have become something to run from instead of to.

Re:Oracle and Java

[silanea]

Is Oracle a mobile computing company? I don't think so. By killing Java they would shoot a whole industry in the foot - or the head, more likely. But Oracle itself? No. They could still develop the Java platform in-house for their own products - at least that is my understanding of what they bought in the Sun acquisition - and leave everyone else out in the rain.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

And if oracle keeps up, Android 5 or 6 will ship with a shiny python-esque runtime when google gets tired of paying for java lawsuits, leaving java on "feature" phones nobody writes apps for.

Re:Oracle and Java

[rk]

I have felt for years that Java is our generation's COBOL, and with Oracle in control I feel that only makes that comparison stronger.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

I write Java every day and I don't feel intimidated.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, sure. They will be also killing Weblogic, Aqualogic, OESB, JRockit, Java in their RDBMS and many others according to your 'predictions'.
Ellison is evil but he's definitely not stupid.

Re:Oracle and Java

[binarylarry]

Actually WORA works pretty damn well with Java.

Re:Oracle and Java

[characterZer0]

"Write once, curse (and debug) everywhere."

That is still better than write everywhere, curse (and debug) everywhere.

Re:Oracle and Java

[evafan76]

Makes my Uni's CS department look stupid for moving all their high level language classes into Java

Re:Oracle and Java

[El_Muerte_TDS]

Sure it is. Oracle will make itself irrelevant in the Java world if they keep this up. The Java world will simply fork from Oracle's Java. The only thing Oracle can do it sue the Java world into oblivion.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Zomg]

Yes. With 5 years of java experience I make 100k and see nothing but growth. It is comments like this and this thread as a whole that really drill home how ignorant some people are about java.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, Open Java breaks Powerschool, so the Cannonical update forced me to remove it and manually install Java 6. The other option was to switch to Windows.

Re:Oracle and Java

[medv4380]

Depends. Oracle has Java so it won't lose it as a language as an interface tool for its database system. If you intend on eventually doing work using an oracle database it might be good to know, but I'm sure it's not required. Outside of Oracles little world might be what's at risk. If Apache and IBM finally finds something else that they are willing to work with more then Java is dead.

Honestly, Programming in general needs a game changer anyways. Multicore chips have been around for a while now, and I have yet to see any single application reasonably use more then 2 cores and most still only use 1. I've looked into this a bit, and most of the API's out there that work to use all available cores only work when you have massive datasets. Even attempting to use more then 1 core results in the application slowing down to less than 1 core to keep up with synchronization costs.

When someone finally comes up with an API, or a Language that works well with multicore chips then learn that. Until then we are all in limbo with what we already have so what Oracle does won't matter much.

Re:Oracle and Java

[lavaforge]

As long as you don't touch the filesystem or try to do anything with graphics I've found this to be true as well.

Re:Oracle and Java

[pwizard2]

I've used Java when I need to write a quick-and-dirty program on short notice, but for serious projects I've never considered using Java because

1. It depends on the interpreter/runtime.
2. No native code (unless you count GCJ, but I've never been able to make that compile anything written in the last few years)
3. Java doesn't give you access to much system-level stuff
4. Terrible OS X support
5. Java is still slower than native code for CPU-intensive functions


If you want WORA, Qt with C++ is a better way to go. I've been able to compile Qt projects on any OS without changing a thing and I'm in the process of porting my old Java stuff to Qt.

Re:Oracle and Java

[gweihir]

The language itself is definitely not worth the effort, better learn C (and maybe C++) and some decent scripting like Python or Ruby. Java is a collection of not really working compromises. With Oracle messing things up, the only real argument for Java, namely wide adoption is beginning to fade as well.

So, no, don't waste your time.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. With 5 years of java experience I make 100k and see nothing but growth. It is comments like this and this thread as a whole that really drill home how ignorant some people are about java.

I work almost exclusively in .NET and make 100k myself and at 26 years old (3 years after graduation) I also see nothing but growth... if you think Java had anything to do with how much money you currently make you're as ignorant as those you deride!

Re:Oracle and Java

[Xtifr]

Why do companies shoot themselves in their feet? I don't know, but companies do it all the time. Oracle has always been remarkably short-sighted and unable to see the bigger picture.

On the other hand, the fact that there is a an officially GPL'd version of official Java out there may well mean that in the long term, Java will be fine. Oracle can kill off their own branch, but Java in some form is probably going to continue, because it's too entrenched. There are some big players on the sidelines (e.g. IBM) with a lot invested in Java who aren't going to sit idly by and let Oracle destroy it when Sun made it easy to go another route. OpenJDK may have a few shortcomings at the moment, but that could easily change if some bigger players got more serious about it.

It's still too early to tell how this is all going to play out, but the death of Java seems like one of the least likely outcomes.

Re:Oracle and Java

[binarylarry]

As long as you properly access resources (i.e. classloaders and not doing stupid shit), it's fine.

Graphics is a huge topic but the built in graphics apis work everywhere (even if they suck like java2d and swing do).

Re:Oracle and Java

[MartinG]

Because they don't know how to handly the firearm they are holding.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Ossifer]

1. Most applications have base requirements for runtime (C libs, etc., for example)
2. HotSpot yields native code
3. Sure it does--better than any other generic language in its core, but it also provides JNI for anything else you feel you need outside of its core.
4. OSX WFM.
5. Red herring. See #2, also for truly intensive functions, use assembler.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Richard_at_work]

The GPLed branch will only act as a safety net if it's kept up to date with features introduced in the dominant branch (Oracles), or if it becomes the dominant branch in the very near future and removes Oracles ownership over the future.

If neither of those happens, the GPLed branch will be the one to fade into the past. I'm not a Java user, so can someone who is possibly chip in and give us an indication of how it's looking?

With regard to the story, it does reek of the OSGi throwing their toys out of the pram because their pet wasn't chosen.

Re:Oracle and Java

[DamonHD]

My main Java app is right now running distributed across at least 3 major *nix variants (and Windows should I want to again) and indeed CPU families (x86/x64, ARM and SPARC) with no extra dev or debugging pain, and contains components dating back to about Netscape 2.0 time running without problem. Say what you like but WORA works very well indeed for me with Java.

A .Net app that I have been working on in a team for well over a year runs very well across exactly one release of Windows and .Net and Direct X, just about. And debugging pain: don't get me started.

Rgds

Damon

Re:Oracle and Java

[gweihir]

I don't think it was. And it is certainly unsuitable as a first programming language. It is not close enough to the machine for many tasks, yet not abstracted enough for many others. It also does not teach concept cleanly enough that there would be a large benefit for learning other languages later.

Sadly, academia does not seem to realize that and it is taught as first (and sometimes only) language in many places. Just had to tech C to a bunch of college students last semester because you cannot teach an OS course with Java.

Re:Oracle and Java

[PickyH3D]

First of all, I really do not like Oracle as a company. However, as a company that believes that they are owed money by Google for using a mostly-Java system in Android, how are they at all benefited by not "keeping it up," while Google continues to use the system license free?

There are two sides to it, and I am honestly not entirely sure which side is right:

1. Google thinks that Java is open, and therefore fair game.
2. Oracle thinks that Java is not open, and they also have damning email correspondence showing that Google did not actually believe Java could be used without a license.

As a Java developer that is not paying Oracle a dime, I can sort of see where Google is coming from. However, I am not putting my own twist on Java and putting that on a new--and wildly popular--platform either. I really see both sides of the coin here, but I think Oracle has Google just with that email; Google felt like it needed a license, but decided to go without one in hopes that then-Sun would not sue them. They probably decided that their war chest was big enough in case they were wrong to avoid sending millions of dollars to a company every year.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

I work almost exclusively in COBOL and make 160k a year 28 years old (switched to COBOL 3 years ago). I see nothing but old people retiring or dieing and demand increasing.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice try, troll. Keep working at it, though. Maybe you'll get a clue one day.

Re:Oracle and Java

[lavaforge]

90% of the time you're right, but there are a few bugs in the JVM with regard to Windows vs Linux filesystems that will bite you the first time you see them.

I've also run into issues with Windows-only memory leaks in the JAI libraries when using JPEG-compressed TIFFs.

You're right that it's generally fine.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

With Oracle responsible for Java, is it even worth it to learn the language any more? I mean they will be killing it off soon.

They can kill off Oracle Java. They can't kill off OpenJDK so easily.

Actually, I have to ask if it ever was worth learning?

It's a pretty decent medium-level general purpose language. If you want to write efficient* programs that run on any PC, want some basic facilities like garbage collection built-in, and don't want to fight with compilers for each different platform, then Java's a good choice.

The original promise of "write once, run anywhere" long ago dissolved into "Write once, curse (and debug) everywhere."

I see this parroted around all the time, but have never experienced it (unless you count the time I tried writing a program in Microsoft J++). If your application is so complex or badly written that bugs crop up when you switch platforms, that's not Java's fault. There may have been a lot of platform specific bugs in the JVM years ago (I didn't use it much then, so I wouldn't know) but if so they've been pretty well ironed out by now, as far as I can tell.

Add on to that an eternally-growing library that can take years just to learn the categories, never mind the content, and you end up with the current bloated nightmare that even intimidates experienced developers.

Then don't use the bloated libraries.

*taking JVM resource requirements into account, which are non-zero but acceptable for most of my uses. I've found that once things are loaded, a java program can be just as efficient as one written in C++ so long as you stay away from expensive operations like allocating new objects and dynamic dispatch, and even those won't have a noticeable performance impact unless you're doing them in tight loops. Very smart people have worked many hours to make the JVM fast.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Medievalist]

Sadly, academia does not seem to realize that and it is taught as first (and sometimes only) language in many places.

That's both a blessing and a curse. Anywhere I go, I always have awesome job security!

Re:Oracle and Java

[MichaelSmith]

I remember when oracle bought RDB from DEC. They jacked the support fees up by a factor of ten, took a short term profit, and killed it off.

Re:Oracle and Java

[iggymanz]

the industry is not seeing that, J2EE/Java is in decline, server share being eaten by .NET and scripting languages. good riddance, it's so 1990s and at the core just warmed over 1980s concepts.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Everybody is essentially droipping support for the comercial version as a result of Oracles bad/forced decisions. It is only a matter of time before companices with Java applications are forced to ensure they work with the free version.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

I know C programmers who work at Google and Microsoft that make more then 300k each. The language doesn't determine your salary; skill and demand are far more important.

Re:Oracle and Java

[timothyb89]

I'm not really sure what's wrong with the filesystem APIs, at least for simple (and even a lot of advanced) IO. Off the top of my head the only exception I can think of is that filesystem attributes and the like were a load of garbage in Java 6, but supposedly the situation is much better in 7.

As for graphics, I did (and still do) work a lot with Java2D, and for the most part it's worked flawlessly on both Windows and Linux. I've run into a couple of platform specific bugs in the past but they would generally be fixed within a couple of patches, and even then were easy to work around. I can't vouch for 3D stuff as I haven't written too much myself, but there's a large number of libraries that have seen some serious cross-platform success.

I'll admit, it isn't "write once, run anywhere", but if you're on any of the major platforms (Windows, Linux, OSX, BSD to some degree) the number of real issues is pretty minimal, and even OpenJDK works pretty damn well. I'll hate on Oracle as much as the next guy, but the influence I see from them on day-to-day independent coding is next to nothing. Apart from the uglier Oracle-themed icons and doc pages, at any rate.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, JRockit * is * being killed off.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that collection of "not really working compromises" powers a damn lot of businesses around the world (and demand for new Java applications is still there).

Re:Oracle and Java

[gweihir]

That is about the most stupid thing they could have done. Eiffel, Python, Ruby all modern alternatives well suited for teaching and learning concepts. Java is not.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Cro Magnon]

If Oracle had been in charge of COBOL, businesses would have used RPG.

Re:Oracle and Java

[VGPowerlord]

The GPLed branch will only act as a safety net if it's kept up to date with features introduced in the dominant branch (Oracles), or if it becomes the dominant branch in the very near future and removes Oracles ownership over the future.

Oracle's version is just a repackaged version of OpenJDK, so that shouldn't be a problem.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Dog-Cow]

Java did not, last time I checked, abstract away the inability to delete a file that is open on Windows. Thus, file-handling is definitely different. There are other differences in buffering, but those can be accommodated with common code.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a good thing you actually post references to your claims, otherwise people would know you're FOS.
http://duartes.org/gustavo/blog/post/programming-language-jobs-and-trends

Re:Oracle and Java

[jgrahn]

Java has changed the face of mobile computing within the past decade.

Java didn't change it; cell phone vendors just implemented support for Java and nothing else, for reasons which are still unclear to me.

Re:Oracle and Java

[VGPowerlord]

Actually, JRockit * is * being killed off.

Nonsense, Oracle still distributes it as part of Oracle Fusion.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Gr8Apes]

90% of the time you're right, but there are a few bugs in the JVM with regard to Windows vs Linux filesystems that will bite you the first time you see them.

I've also run into issues with Windows-only memory leaks in the JAI libraries when using JPEG-compressed TIFFs.

You're right that it's generally fine.

Other than windows issues, which very well might be windows bugs, it really is WORA.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Miamicanes]

99 times out of 100, when a user has problems running a Java app, it's because somebody specified an inappropriate version of Java in the manifest. There's an entire subtle range of possible values that have meanings like "The newest installed VM that's Java $N or newer", "The newest installed VM that's Java $N", "The newest installed VM that's at least Java $N.$V", and so on. The problems come about when some idiot doesn't know what he's doing, has an application that only NEEDS Java 4, then turns around and specifies in the manifest that it MUST run under Java 4, instead of "Java 4 or newer", so somebody who has Java 6, release 28 installed has to try and literally install a Java 4 VM to run it. It gets even worse with applets, because Sun's official docs totally borked the explanation of how CLSID values worked, and caused ENDLESS grief when some corporate apps decided to dictate specific releases of Java for no good reason.

The fact is, if you write a Java application and Jar it up in a way that says only that it must have a VM that's at least as old as some minimum version, the likelihood of users having real-world problems with it are pretty low. I have stuff I wrote 10+ years ago and compiled with a pre-alpha 1.4 JDK that still works today (which is a good thing, because the source code was lost when my old laptop died). I've seen corporate apps that anal-retentively specify that they must not be used with any JDK besides 2.6.0_19, then go a step beyond and die if you have a newer JDK even installed at all, because they're launched by webapps that use the CLSID that means "ignore the settings in the JPI control panel, always use the newest version installed", then turn around and use Javascript to test for JPI version & commit suicide if it's older than 2.6.0_19 (even if you have 2.6.0_19 installed, and bent over backwards to specify that precise JDK in the control panel). I've actually had to use Greasemonkey in some cases to dynamically fix the stupid CLSID embedded in the Object definition on the fly so it wouldn't ignore my JPI control panel settings. But don't get me started on that... grrrrrrr...

Of course, we've all had our "ohcrap" moments. I remember spending a week working on what was supposed to be a cross-platform videochat application written in Java (so it could run under Windows, Mac, and Linux) using JMF. It worked nicely under Windows. Then I went to test it under Linux, and discovered that JMF was basically broken to the point of uselessness under everything besides Windows due to codec licensing & implementation issues. That was when I learned the hard way that anytime you're explicitly writing something that HAS to work on a platform besides Windows, make sure it doesn't have "issues" with other platforms before investing lots of time in it... especially if it depends upon any extension or framework that's not a native part of bog-standard Java that gets installed by default. Especially anything based upon a JSR. I've lost count of the number of JSR-related extensions that were nothing but stubs & almost inevitably had Macintosh problems.

IMHO, Sun fucked up, and fucked up badly, when they handed over control of Macintosh Java to Apple. Jonathan Schwarz basically handed Steve Jobs the rope, and was too oblivious to notice Steve busily tying it into a noose. Java's main reason for existing as a platform for desktop applications is WORA, and allowing Apple to screw up Macintosh Java as badly as they did hurt that main purpose really badly.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

2. Oracle thinks that Java is not open, and they also have damning email correspondence showing that Google did not actually believe Java could be used without a license.

You mean the damning email that came out in August 2010 saying from engineer Tim Lindholm to Andy Rubin that said we need to license java?
(http://newsandinsight.thomsonreuters.com/Legal/News/2011/11_-_November/Oracle_v__Google_and_the_most_relentlessly_litigated_email_ever/)
Remember that Oracle purchased Sun in 2009 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Microsystems) where Android was first released in 2008 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system))

Putting together a timeline:
1) Android released in 2008
2) Oracle purchased Sun in 2009
3) "Damning" email in 2010

So after Android is released, Oracle purchases Sun hoping to sue Google for $$$, then an engineer says yeah we better license java. That isn't damning, that's an opinion of one engineer (or more likely a team). Now if that timeline had #3 coming first, it would be damning, but to come last in the chain is hardly even worth mentioning. Oracle's case resting on that one email is laughable at best

Re:Oracle and Java

[gweihir]

That is because a lot of businesses are fundamentally stupid when it comes to technology. The only reason so many businesses jumped on this is because Java programmers appear to be cheap (they are incredibly expensive when you had to scrap a few projects because of the average Java programmers incompetence). Lets face it, you could run most businesses on BASIC, but would that be a good choice? Definitely not. And so is Java.

Re:Oracle and Java

[thetoadwarrior]

And I'm sure businesses had some influence in that area demanding more Java developers because Java is a nice safe language that can practically write itself. Hell starting certain things in a IDE yields most of your app written for you. Skynet is probably Java. That is why the original judgement day didn't happen. No one factored in the start-up time.

Re:Oracle and Java

[mvar]

Why do companies shoot themselves in their feet? I don't know, but companies do it all the time.

We should probably just ask HP

Re:Oracle and Java

[thetoadwarrior]

.Net is just Java if MS created it. Sure it's more modern but it's Windows-centric and aimed at the same exact market as Java. I'll be surprised if it lives as long as Java.

Re:Oracle and Java

[ColdWetDog]

Hell, I can't program past visual basic and I make more than either of you!

So there.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

There's lots to criticise Oracle for... but Canonical's complaints are laughable (as is much of their work TBH... not to mention their moronic loud-mouthed userbase).

OpenJDK is now the *official* version of Java. It's now a legitimate part of stuff like Fedora - a full, open, legal distribution of Java. Oracle's move in this case was entirely right and constructive for all involved.

This has been discussed over and over again by various people involved - and yet we still here this bullshit.

Re:Oracle and Java

[PCM2]

IMHO, Sun fucked up, and fucked up badly, when they handed over control of Macintosh Java to Apple. Jonathan Schwarz basically handed Steve Jobs the rope, and was too oblivious to notice Steve busily tying it into a noose. Java's main reason for existing as a platform for desktop applications is WORA, and allowing Apple to screw up Macintosh Java as badly as they did hurt that main purpose really badly.

To be fair, at the time Apple execs were crowing that Mac OS was going to be the premier platform for Java development in the world. They were hinting pretty strongly that they were going to tie Java into every possible aspect of the OS to wring every possible ounce of performance and system integration out of it, so it only made sense that Apple engineers, who had insider knowledge of the Mac OS platform, should be in charge. I suppose we have nobody to blame but Sun, but nobody could have known Apple would drop the ball so badly. (And BTW, it was Scott McNealy who let Apple be responsible for Mac Java, not Schwartz.)

Re:Oracle and Java

[postbigbang]

There is the reality of how Sun licensed Java, and how Oracle interprets it. Oracle is not about making friends, they're about making revenue, and piles of it.

Their battle with Google is just one front, and just the first wave of litigation if they're successful. There's a big piece of pie out there, and Oracle want's their slice.

Re:Oracle and Java

[viperidaenz]

You do realise java runs on just about every smart card around today don't you? I've got two java interpreters in my wallet. Its not just phones, desktops and servers that java runs on. Java has also been in Oracles database since not long after it was invented. If one of their database competitors - IBM and Microsoft - bought Sun they could have be in trouble.

Re:Oracle and Java

[dgatwood]

Have you looked into GCD?

Re:Oracle and Java

[FunkyELF]

we can only hope this happens

Re:Oracle and Java

[Warren416]

I don't like Java or C++ and Qt, but I recognize that me not liking them doesn't make either one less important or relevant in the software industry. I don't like .Net either. Heck, I don't like anything. In fact, nothing's perfect. How about that. There are things that Java is wonderful for, things that .Net is ideal for, things that Delphi (yes Delphi) is great for. There are things that C++ is great for. There are things that Python is great for. No one language rules all. I love Python, except that its GUI frameworks universally suck. Even PyQt. Java is pretty impressive, and after 15 years of ignoring it, I might actually find a project where I need it. netbeans is pretty nice too, by the way. Certainly nicer than Eclipse, which I really really hate. Warren

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but who has the bigger penis?

Re:Oracle and Java

[jd]

No, it's got some speed improvements from JRockit and other tweaks that don't exist in the open source code and are unlikely to ever be published. They may well port over other bits from JRockit and other JVMs they've bought or have heavy control over, with the intent of vendor lock-in. You can't move to the free version because Oracle won't let the free version support the enhancements (such as real-time support, better debugging and profiling, etc) that projects actually use.

Re:Oracle and Java

[viperidaenz]

Oracle has java incorporated in many of its products. Notes runs java from at least version 7, Oracle 8i had a JVM since 1999. WebLogic is a java application server. Infact most of its software products are built on java.

Re:Oracle and Java

[antdude]

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/service-oriented/java-tops-list-of-software-skills-in-demand-
employer-survey/8326 says Java tops list of software skills. Maybe not for long?

Re:Oracle and Java

[jd]

The problem with HP is that they use high-power automatic weapons to shoot themselves in the foot that also take out everyone else's feet, the floor, part of the walls, some of the landscape and a perfectly innocent asteroid.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Which are not the least bit comparable. Java has those same dependencies. Duh. Adding a second layer on top of the first is not the same as only having the one layer. The fact you offered this seriously questions your intgrity, intelligence, and credibility.
2. Yields SOME native code. Period. And typically does so at the cost of massive memory bloat.
3. You've obviously never had to use JNI. People living inside of a fat man's colon think JNI sucks.
5. Not red herring - a well substantiated fact. The chronic lies about Java's imaginary performance has long been one of the reasons why so many have been reluctant to use it. The fact is, when CPU intensive processing is required, Java should not and is not seriously considered by compentent engineers unless they know they can always throw money at larger boxes.

And as someone who has spent far, far too much time coding in Java, I can assure you, given a choice, I would always pick Python and/or C++ over it any day of the week. Java has some seriously ugly issues which C++ simply does not. C++ has all the performance of Java and TONS more for most applications; albeit sometimes with slightly more work. Java is surprisingly low level, usually on par with C++. When C++ is used with modern libraries, its almost always on par, or BETTER than java, from a terseness perspective.

When performance doesn't matter - use Python. When performance does matter, use C++. And if you can combine the two, you'll never, ever, never, ever, never want to look at the crap fest which is Java.

Re:Oracle and Java

[viperidaenz]

Thats a limitation of the platform. Tell me how you would delete a file that is open. Don't forget that the process that has the file open may still have it open after the JVM process terminates. It may also change the privileges on the file so when it does close it, you nolonger have access to it.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

They can kill off Oracle Java. They can't kill off OpenJDK so easily.

Unfortunately, there are many companies that won't accept Open-anything. They want a big company supporting whatever they use.

I worked for a company that sent out a edict prohibiting the use of any open-source software in any of their products. It was only when the development team pointed out that they would have to stop distributing their primary system that they temporarily backed off.

But they still insisted on porting everything to Microsoft-based systems to have a "big" company supporting them, and to eliminate any "evil" open-source software.

Re:Oracle and Java

[meloneg]

I may be a simpleton, but your data seems to corroborate the GP's claim that Java demand is declining. It shows that GP is overstating the decline, but supports the base contention.

Disclaimer: I've been primarily a "Java Guy" for over a decade. Interestingly, the first place I used/learned Java was on a cross-platform project that ran on several UNIX variants, Linux, and Windows. The only cross-platform pain we had was a poorly thought-out installation process that needed to do *way* too much work during installation.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

JAVA is NOT that hard. If a first year student cannot get at least most of the basic concepts of programming while using it and, subsequently, pick up some C and C++ conventions that the instructor demonstrates are similar, then they do NOT need to be in programming.

Re:Oracle and Java

[viperidaenz]

The software I'm currently developing is built and debugged on an Oracle JVM on Windows XP. It runs in production on a Sun JVM on Red Hat running on a VM on an IBM mainframe. No problems with the "run everywhere" bit.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would oracle shoot themselves in the foot?

Because they're a big company. Although usually the shots end up about 3 feet higher.

Some genius bean-counter figures out a way to monetize it without regard to long-term or intangible consequences.

Some genius leader-type comes out with a Great New Vision that has nothing to do with what people actually need.

Some efficiency expert figures they have a way to radically cut expenses, resulting in a management/customer relations process that's so efficient that the first feather that drops onto it causes a train wreck of epic proportions. And slowly erodes everyone's opinion of the product first, since there's never quite enough critical resources devoted to it.

The thing about big companies is that there are so many more people who can take a successful product line and ruin it. And they have more staff and budget so that they can ruin it in ways that smaller organizations can't.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Ossifer]

What a bunch of whiny crap.

Re:Oracle and Java

[jd]

Java's API is more stable than Tcl/Tk, the mobile version of it is less of a memory hog than C++, it's easier to learn than Erlang, and easier to port across OS' than Visual Basic. Java applets will also run on web browsers for your PC, whereas there aren't applet containers for any of the other languages I've listed other than Tcl/Tk (and that is not only unmaintained, it wasn't very good when it was maintained).

With the exception of Visual Basic, the other languages are superior to Java in absolutely every respect other than the couple of things Java does better, but the point of marketing is not to present reality for a fair and honest debate of merits but to promote one option over others.

Java is actually a really bad language in many respects, but it IS runnable in any web browser and it DOES have a good marketing team. Other languages which are actually superior overall are unmarketed and often not runnable in environments you need them in to make them useful in this kind of hybrid market.

I'll also point out that when Java was released, the only serious rival as a ubiquitous platform-independent language at the time (Python) was maintained by one person and that scared a lot of people. Python also had a lot of limitations back then, long-since overcome. Unfortunately, Python 3's lack of serious traction (Python 2 is still the interpreter of choice for most new Python apps) and design quirks resulted in a lot of people moving to Ruby. I say "unfortunately" because although Python and Ruby are great languages, there's a lot of insularism. Communities don't fragment through the presence of choice, they fragment when those choosing do so with an exclusive and elitist air.

Re:Oracle and Java

[uncle brad]

If Oracle had been in charge of COBOL, businesses would have used RPG.

Businesses *did* use RPG.

Re:Oracle and Java

[viperidaenz]

There is a crap load more demand for Java than C/C++ in the contracting space in my city. If I were a c++ developer I'd probably be unemployed right now. .net demand is similar to java but usually pays a bit less

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't they pass it on to Apache, too?

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

"Write once, curse (and debug) everywhere."

That is still better than write everywhere, curse (and debug) everywhere.

What is more is that the "curse and debug everwhere" part largely comes from poor developers that don't understand the API. Yes, these are the people who would screw up your C++ app just as badly, or probably worse even. Even the file handling stuff people have mentioned in this thread isn't that hard to deal with, simply know about it and properly catch and handle exceptions, that's what they're there for, after all, they're not just something for you to log and terminate whatever you were doing (at least if you can recover from it).

I write server side stuff so the Java part is generally not bad. Even so, getting all the memory leaks out of existing apps (because libraries have coded them in by accident) is sometimes a pain.

Re:Oracle and Java

[deoxyribonucleose]

Businesses *did* use RPG.

Past tense? Wake up and smell the mainframe...

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose we have nobody to blame but Sun, but nobody could have known Apple would drop the ball so badly. (And BTW, it was Scott McNealy who let Apple be responsible for Mac Java, not Schwartz.)

Yeah, that wasn't a "drop the ball". Its cause they actually got someone in charge to knock some sense into them.

Re:Oracle and Java

[viperidaenz]

"Don't waste your time" Java is the most demanded language in terms of getting a job that pays money. Its also still increasing (although not as much as C#, but its still well ahead). C/C++ however, is coming 3rd and currently on a downward trend. Who's wasting their time?

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Of those, only Eiffel is arguably a better pick than Java, the other two are actually worse. Computer Science departments used to teach mostly in C++ and before that C. Java is an obvious choice. In more advanced classes you start to use other languages, for some various good reasons, at times.

Now, if you're talking about vocational training instead of CS then... oh yeah, Java is a better pick than your other two choices as well (but CS shouldn't be vocational training, sadly it is becoming so at many places).

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

The problems come about when some idiot doesn't know what he's doing ....

I have stuff I wrote 10+ years ago and compiled with a pre-alpha 1.4 JDK that still works today (which is a good thing, because the source code was lost when my old laptop died)..

Wow, just wow. You know what you're doing because you can 'specify-a-version-in-the-manifest'... but you see no problem with not doing *backups* ??

Re:Oracle and Java

[webnut77]

Yeah, but who has the bigger penis?

Ok, someone give this a +1 Funny.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Ew. That reminds me, take COBOL off of my resume.

Friend took one too many COBOL classes and did a smattering of debugging already written code for an internship. Her last job interview a few years ago was a phone interview and they offered her 200,000/year before they hung up. She took the job and promptly fell off the face of the earth. They basically said, "Here's the mainframe, here's your phone, here's your computer, and here's the cot you'll sleep on."

I finally saw her a few weeks ago. Apparently, she ended up having to quit just to take her time off because she was the only COBOL programmer they could find and after a month was the only COBOL programmer employed. She barely had a handle on CICS before then.

Scary stuff dude/dudette. Good luck in that field.

Re:Oracle and Java

[PReDiToR]

not to mention their moronic loud-mouthed userbase

Don't be too hard on them, they are using Starter Linux because they haven't learned enough to stop dual booting yet, and if they have they haven't got the confidence needed to try their second distro.

These are all potential geeks who aren't necessarily moronic; they may be uneducated. The fact that they are loud-mouthed means they are enthusiastic and willing.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Nethemas the Great]

Next stop, their old rival Big Blue...

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anne Thwacks]

Oracle want's everyone's slice.

There, that's fixed it for you!

Re:Oracle and Java

[VGPowerlord]

Even then, you can download JRockIt 28.2 separately. As far as I can tell, this is synced with Java 6 r29. Since Java6 r30 is the latest Java6, it's not that far out of date.

Now, whether it will be compatible with Java7 is a whole different ballgame.

Side note: java.com does not yet offer Java7 for download, so 6r30 is the latest version in its eyes, despite 7u2 being out.

Re:Oracle and Java

[datavirtue]

Java's mark has been left on the industry for all posterity. There will always be Java run-times and a Java "language." There is so much going on in the Java community that Oracle has no control over. It solves too many problems and has an enormous installed base. The reason it hasn't completely taken over is because so many people want to see it killed--starting with Microsoft many years ago. The flexibility of the applications to move from one platform to another rubs against many companies' desire for control and vendor lock-in practices.

Re:Oracle and Java

[datavirtue]

So, instead of getting dragged in to a negotiation match with Oracle over licensing they meander through the courts where a negotiation is forced. This will probably help Google save some money and gain more freedom with the platform. Or it could blow up in their face, but they probably know what they are doing in this regard.

Re:Oracle and Java

[datavirtue]

I've run my application on OpenJDK without any issues. It makes use of a lot of core Java SE functionality; not to mention all the third party libraries. Anyone met any deficiencies in OpenJDK lately?

Re:Oracle and Java

[JonySuede]

Write once, curse (and debug) everywhere

Here, we have written a shit ton of java applications running on windows and mac os X. We always have coded to the spec, we had about 2 portability problems in about 10 years and they were both solved by raising a PMR with IBM who told SUN to fix it's jre as it does not behaved to the spec. The java platform is one platform with one of the most detailed set of specifications, but those spec are almost always unread by developers...

Re:Oracle and Java

[X0563511]

How is JRockIt supposed to make the VM faster? It's just a monitoring system with a focus on finding memory leaks.

Re:Oracle and Java

[X0563511]

Oh right... found it.

"The JRockit JVM is a high-performance JVM developed to ensure reliability, scalability, manageability, and flexibility for Java applications. The JRockit JVM provides improved performance for Java applications deployed on Intel 32-bit (Xeon) and 64-bit (Xeon and SPARC) architectures"

Wait, Xeon and SPARC only? Really?

Re:Oracle and Java

[JonySuede]

Here, they are looking to move away from java

Re:Oracle and Java

[medv4380]

They still have "issues".

GCD is just a glorified Thread Pool. The time it takes to bundle and then hand off the work always exceeds most real world applications. It's nice for things like Chrome where each web page can run in it's own thread. It saves a little time for some things when the thread is starting up. But that's actually not the real problem with Concurrent and Parallel Programming. The problem is actually memory and communication, and basic things like Sorts expose the problem pretty quickly. Merge Sort is easy to explain in Parallel, and pretty easy to write too. A simple test of a Single Threaded Merge Sort vs Merge Sort in lets say a Parallel Array will result in the Single Threaded algorithm beating the pants off the Parallel one for most cases when testing with arrays of Random Integers. On my home system it's not until I hit over 100,000 integers does the Parallel version start to show any promise. Even if the Parallel version has a check built in to see if the Array is large enough it usually gets it wrong because every system has a different threshold based on system specs for where it will and wont work. Some people point to Erlang, but that still doesn't appear to give good results for real world uses. If I'm using massive datasets I'm sure they all work, but most of my uses are small datasets with far less then 100,000 items.

Re:Oracle and Java

[shutdown -p now]

There may be more demand for Java, but the relatively fewer jobs there are for C++ tend to pay more, if you can handle them.

Then there are some jobs where you're required to know both (think JNI etc).

Re:Oracle and Java

[shutdown -p now]

For what it's worth, something quite like GCD has also been available on .NET for a while, and has recently been added to Java and C++11.

The trick is getting people to use all these things now...

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Java Card =/= Java

Re:Oracle and Java

[Toonol]

Visual Basic seemed everywhere for a decade, and a couple of decisions on MS's part pretty much killed it off in a span of a year or two. It's still around, but mostly irrelevant. Don't think Java is guaranteed prominence forever.

Re:Oracle and Java

[harperska]

The flexibility of the applications to move from one platform to another ...

This is actually the case, and not just marketing. 'Write once, run everywhere' truly can work. Where I work, our business applications are all written in Java, running in Tomcat. Our server infrastructure is a mix of Linux and Windows servers, depending on which suits a particular task better. We recently had to move an app from a Linux app server to a Windows app server due to compatibility issues in integration with a 3rd party application, and the app was able to be moved without modifying it at all.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle want's everyone's slice.

There, that's fixed it for you!

Oracle wants everyone's slice.

There, fixed that for you!

See also: apostrophes are for possession and contractions, NOT pluralization.

Re:Oracle and Java

[PCM2]

Yeah, that wasn't a "drop the ball". Its cause they actually got someone in charge to knock some sense into them.

So who was that, then? Apple was consistently months, if not years behind the latest Java releases -- and that wasn't just major releases, but point releases and bugfixes, too. I distinctly remember attending MacWorld sessions, the gist of which was, "We know we made promises, and we know there have been some problems, but no, really, this is going to be the year of Java on Mac OS X, and look at all the cool stuff we have in store!" And then... same old thing. You seem to be hinting that it was Steve Jobs's good sense that put the kibosh on Mac Java, but honestly, after Apple's track record spanning years of bumbling, any competent manager would have done the same thing. If anything, Steve didn't kill it soon enough.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

FUD much?

Re:Oracle and Java

[m50d]

On the other hand, the fact that there is a an officially GPL'd version of official Java out there may well mean that in the long term, Java will be fine.

Only if you mean the long term after their patents have expired. They've refused to grant a license for apache's Java implementation, and one can only assume they must have some level of control over "Open" JDK (otherwise I take openjdk, modify it by removing all of the code and replacing it with apache harmony, and done).

Re:Oracle and Java

[The End Of Days]

Oracle has always been remarkably short-sighted and unable to see the bigger picture.

And yet they have been wildly successful for decades.

Allow me to translate the pull-quote from nerd to normal

"Oracle doesn't do things the way I want, which is obviously the one true way, because I'm so smart."

Feel free to mod me down for speaking the truth. I know how this community gets angry that reality won't conform to ideals.

Re:Oracle and Java

[bertok]

Maybe, but that is a massively unfair comparison.

There is no way in hell that your Java app uses anything even as remotely complex as DirectX, because a) Java is "lowest common denominator" and hardware acceleration is very new and platform-specific, and b) then it would certainly no longer work across all of those platforms. You'd have had difficulty even using multi-threading across all of those platforms back in the Netscape 2.0 days, because the threading and memory models weren't all that consistent. I've spent a lot of time debugging supposedly WORA multi-threaded Java apps back around 2003 that behaved hugely differently across Windows, Linux, and Solaris.

Comparing a Windows app (game?) that uses hardware acceleration (!) to a business app that's basically just a bunch of "if-else" code and string processing is not exactly fair. Try writing the SAME app on both platforms and see how your portability compares.

In my experience, Microsoft has some of the best backwards compatibility of any vendor out there. Well written C++ and .NET apps on Windows will probably keep working until the heat death of the universe. Meanwhile, Java took a long time to catch on to the fact that the runtime and standard libraries aren't 100% backwards compatible, and that people may actually want to run multiple versions side-by-side. For comparison, every .NET app uses the appropriate runtime automatically.

Back in 2006 I wrote a fairly complex NET app with several interacting components starting with .NET version 2.0 that ran on 32-bit Windows XP/2003. The exact same app works on two processors platforms (x86 and x64), on at least five major editions of Windows, three editions of IIS, and has been upgraded trivially through .NET 3.0, 3.5, and now 4.0. On top of that, the back-end database started on SQL Server 2005 RTM, and went through every major service pack release all the way up to 2012 RC0 without a hitch, despite using .NET stored procedures in the database.

Mind you, Microsoft's .NET isn't perfect either. Their insistence on using external unmanaged code for everything they can does sometimes bite them in the ass. For example, running a business app developed originally on a x86 computer on an x64 machine will sometimes cause it to run as 64-bit, which normally would be fine, except that Windows has a different set of ODBC drivers for x64. The app will run, but it might not be able to connect to its data sources. Oops.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Raenex]

On the backend Java is really good for portability. Really good. It kinda sucks for the GUI though.

Re:Oracle and Java

[The End Of Days]

Yeah marketing, that's it. And a solid platform and a vibrant community. And a ton of languages that target the JVM, actually (including Ruby). In fact Java the language is probably the second least interesting facet of Java the platform. The least interesting is running Java in a web browser, which you seem to think is a major point(?).

Your entire post could have been elided in favor of "I don't know anything about Java."

Re:Oracle and Java

[lucidlyTwisted]

Recent OpenJDKs; as in, withing the last year? No, not one hiccup (loads of third party; Apache Commons, Faces etc in use). My employer doesn't even support OpenJDK or the OS I'm using for dev, I just treat it as an extra layer of testing (and I can swap JDKs/OSs easily enough). Curiously enough, my "illicit" system seems to run much better than a lot of the others - not sure if that is a function of OpenJDK or the OS. Hmm...time for some metrics methinks.

I have seen comments of some issues with some of the Collections (usually disparity between hashCode and equals) and am pretty sure that bit us, but as I say; nothing of late.

JRockit however? Thar be dragons! Just glad it's no me who has to deal with it.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you going to (predictably) recommend: Scala, OCaml, Python, etc.?

Re:Oracle and Java

[dna_(c)(tm)(r)]

The problem with HP is that they use high-power automatic weapons to shoot themselves in the foot that also take out everyone else's feet, the floor, part of the walls, some of the landscape and a perfectly innocent asteroid.

They are very good weapons, but semi-automatic. Mind your feet.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Grishnakh]

Why would oracle shoot themselves in the foot?

Because they're incompetent morons? Look what they did with OpenOffice after all. It's not like they wanted to kill that project, but they mismanaged it so badly that they ended up throwing in the towel and gifting it to the Apache Foundation after all the volunteer developers quit and moved to LibreOffice.

It looks like they're doing the exact same thing with Java: mismanaging it so badly that it's going to be defunct pretty soon. The Linux distros are already switching over to OpenJDK.

Re:Oracle and Java

[errandum]

Oracle only did one thing really well:

Their database solutions. All the rest has always failed or had mediocre success. Furthermore, most of the projects they acquired from someone else failed.

Java is doomed unless someone else picks up the slack.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Grishnakh]

Why do companies shoot themselves in their feet? I don't know, but companies do it all the time.

Well, I do know, and I'll tell you the secret. It's the exact same reason individuals do things like take up smoking, go flying by themselves with very little experience as a pilot and wreck, drive recklessly, have sex without protection when they're in no position to take care of kids, etc. It's because people are stupid, and also because they're too self-confident and think they know what they're doing, when they don't. The people running big companies are no different, and in some ways worse; they think they're brilliant people because they're at the top of a big organization, so they go make "bold" decisions that turn out to be utterly stupid and ill-considered, but by the time they realize this it's too late and the damage is done.

Corporations don't do everything because it makes perfect rational sense in a sociopathic way. Many times they make stupid decisions because the people running them are human like the rest of us (but minus a conscience), and do stupid, reckless things.

As for Oracle as a company, what the heck have they ever done that was of any worth, except database software? Everything else they've tried to get into in the last 10 years has pretty much been a disaster as far as I can tell. They have a RedHat-derived Linux distro that no one uses, then they bought out Sun and drove OpenOffice into the ground, now they're driving Java into the ground, I'd be surprised if they're still making any enterprise computing hardware with the Sun part after 2 years. They're like the opposite of King Midas: everything they touch turns to shit.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Grishnakh]

the mobile version of it is less of a memory hog than C++

Ok, how can Java be less of a memory hog than C++? C++ is a superset of C; it's actually pretty easy to write lean programs in it, though it largely depends on what libraries you use, and of course how exactly you write them.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Grishnakh]

Since you no longer work there, would you mind naming this company so we can avoid it?

Did they also prohibit open-source software used by proprietary vendors? Because that would mean Windows is off-limits, since it has some BSD-licensed code in it.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Google has almost completely moved away from Python internally. Android will never be programmed in Python to any relevant degree.

Re:Oracle and Java

[rsilvergun]

Also, Java7 is quite possibly the biggest cluster f* since the MS-DOS / Compression fiasco. Seriously, I've yet to have a single piece of software not choke on it. To be fair I write pretty simple stuff, so I'm not gonna spend a lot of time making them work with v7, but I'm not the only one complaining...

Re:Oracle and Java

[Martin Blank]

I run into some of these problems all the time where I work. We still have Java 1.3 installed in some cases because the applets will not work with newer versions, but this creates a security nightmare as more malicious Java applets are being written that look specifically for vulnerable versions. I'd love to know if there's a way to repackage the older applets so we can at least test them on newer versions.

Re:Oracle and Java

[SlashV]

The only misplaced apostrophe I can see in the GP's post is on "want's" and that IS NOT a pluralization. If you're going to be a http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4vf8N6GpdM, at least do it proper SS style and not like some stupid foot soldier.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

His point was that Apple basically dropped support for it and now OS X users aren't saddled with shitty Java applications. There are ZERO good desktop Java applications.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realise java runs on just about every smart card around today don't you? I've got two java interpreters in my wallet. Its not just phones, desktops and servers that java runs on.

[citation needed]

Re:Oracle and Java

[jd]

* I've used Java since the alpha release. I've used it in more environments than you could possibly comprehend. I regard it with contempt, it's a C knock-off without any of the redeeming features of C and should have remained the province of toasters and vaccuum cleaners (the original purpose of the language for those who ACTUALLY bother with things like, oh, history).

* Tcl/Tk is actually a damn sight more solid as a platform - if only the API would settle down. The community for Tcl/Tk is considerably larger, which is no surprise as the language is considerably older.

* Perl is an amazingly stable platform and has a community beyond the comprehension of most mortals. It has plenty of GUIs (including Perl/Tk).

* Languages "that target the JVM" don't make any difference. Java Native Invocation makes it so any language can be accessed by the JVM, so it's a senseless concept in the first place. Secondly, having out-of-JVM code defeats the sandbox AND the run-anywhere concepts at the same time. Thirdly, there is no "Java Platform", there is only Java the language. Take away the language and all you have is a virtual machine -- and those are two-a-penny.

* Java's ability to run in a browser is perhaps the only facet of Java-the-language which distinguishes it from any other language. It's the only reason it gained popularity (it existed as Oak for years and only came to the public's attention when it entered the browser under the name of Java), it's the only reason phones use it (if you've already included a Java-enabled web browser on the phone, you already have Java so why have any other interpreter in there?) and the list of defects within the design is staggering, making mistakes most scripted, bytecode-compiled or native-compiled languages had resolved years earlier.

* Do you know, really know, just how many programming languages there are? And why none of them gained any kind of traction over the Internet? Look at the servlets - they're JVM-based, despite the fact that Java has the worst threading model of any language and the least ability to process text. Do you know why servlets exist at all? It's because fat clients became unpopular. So why was Java chosen? Because it was the "language of the web". Why was it the language of the web? Because Java applets existed and anyone with a web page could add one. This meant Java was used by a lot of people and THAT is why there was a community there to begin with. No applets, no community. Java is the single-worst language for what it is used for today, it is used because of that one historical facet and nothing else.

Re:Oracle and Java

[jd]

C++ is a fully-featured language, whereas mobile Java is not. That makes a big difference. (Mobile Java and Pico Java were designed for tiny handheld devices long before memory became small OR cheap, and could even be crammed into a smallish FPGA. Back when Java was still called Oak, "smallish" meant 1980s era chip sizes, not 2011 era chip sizes.)

C++ also has full support for dynamic memory allocation (Java lacks pointers), true multi-threading (Java's threading model is very new and not very good), multiple templating models, a whole bunch of C functions in addition to their C++ counterparts, etc. In short, it's just not something you're going to be able to run on a 1980s intelligent toaster, which is precisely the kind of environment mobile Java can fit on and indeed was designed for.

This isn't a bad thing. Java was designed to run *everywhere*, even when there were no serious resources and the CPU was next to useless. C++ is designed to run real programs on real machines. The extra resources that it hogs isn't bloat - an aircraft carrier hogs more space than a dinghy but that space is actually needed and useful. Some things you just can't do without the extra tonnage, but it's only honest to admit the tonnage is there. Being justified and rational doesn't make it vanish.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

You picked a poor example. According to Wikipedia Oracle bought RDB in 1994 and only announced end of development in 2011 as part of its end of support for HP's Itanium, the last VMS platform.

17 years hardly sounds like "took a short term profit and killed it off". Oracle continued active development after the purchase.

Re:Oracle and Java

[colinrichardday]

Shouldn't that be: who is the bigger penis?

Re:Oracle and Java

[Billly Gates]

I hear you and it is so frustrating. Java was so cool a decade ago.

I really wish MS did not own .NET and C#. It would be an excellent replacement for Java and if Gnome were rewritten in mono.net we could use all the different languages and a common language runtime etc. Of course politically and liability wise it would be a cold day in hell.

Java is stagnating anyway back when Sun owned it. I use Java on my desktop for Eclipse and the ANdriod SDK. I make sure Java is disabled in my browsers. I highly recommend anyone who supports PCs to always do this as it is a big security risk. Other than that it is dead. Php is just too simple or there is .NET for real internet development ... only on Windows.

RIP Java. Sigh

Java jobs are still in high demand but it feels more like a 21st cobol that is unpleasant to program in compared to C#.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Billly Gates]

IBM has a contract with Oracle from the days of Sun.

However, IBM no longer makes their JDK or JRE free anymore on non IBM hardware. I wonder if that was intentional because of Oracle's agreement with them? If you are a java shop, IBM is a way to go if you want to leave Oracle. They make nice servers, databases, and I heard websphere is pretty cool.

I do not know if they are cheaper though. IBM is certainly like the rolls royce of servers.

Re:Oracle and Java

[SplashMyBandit]

Huh?

Whenever you hear the word "Android" and it's explosive growth of adoption you should be saying to yourself that this actually means "Java on Linux". Android is a slightly modified version of Java on a customized Linux.

Java is everywhere and runs on just about everything (by design, with exceptions only where it has been kept out for stupid selfish corporate reasons - thank you Mr Jobs [iOS] and Gates [XBox360]). If you are only going to learn one general-purpose programming language then Java is *the* language to learn, even though it doesn't get much press these days (since it is ubiquitous, successful and dependable it doesn't make for good 'scare' or 'ooh, shiny!' stories anymore). Java has a very large market share of modern development (that is, in the enterprise and running the Web, even if people as consumers don't know they are using it behind the scenes).

Re:Oracle and Java

[Billly Gates]

No it is not.

I had trouble running Java software with it and netbeans was ugly and buggy with it under Ubuntu. Basically the gui libraries are owned by Adobe and there are a few other pieces of code scattered that are copyrighted by other companies.

Much of the OpenJDK had to use source compatible replacements to refill it and they were not all compatible. I would not trust it to run a mission critical system and I use Oracle's JDK on my win7 desktop as it just works and do not want any surprises running Andriod apps.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Billly Gates]

Java got a really bad rap due to swing which was very slow and VMs that were not very good for the first 5 to 6 years. I remember counting a full minute a decade ago to launch netbeans (swing based). Once opened I was surprised at the gui's and how quick the applets I wrote were. By then if you mentioned Java on slashdot you would get 12 replies saying it was SOOO SLLLOOOWW and flamewars starting. People never thought about the Java APIs and obsessed about swing applet load times instead to make a value judgement on the language.

The Fud worked, and new FUD about C# and Mono being just as cross platform compatible and 10x faster could run on Linux and this would be the wave of the future by 2012 etc. Mono failed to delievery but it is too late.

Only legacy code is written in Java for some overly engineered app on the server. Java is perceived too slow to run desktop software so no programmer will touch it on the desktop and most geeks disable java in their browsers anyway due to security risks.

The truth is Java had the most advanced API around and you could do anything with it. It was amazing. Only .NET comes close and it took MS almost a decade to catch up.

Today it does not make sense to start a new project in Java. It is like saying a new project in COBOL. It is legacy

Re:Oracle and Java

[SplashMyBandit]

LOL! Your statements are almost all verifiably false. I can see you read articles saying "C++ is better than Java cause it is more obscure and l33t" rather than having to use both on a daily basis.

For example, Java has direct language and library support for concurrency and threading which is vastly better than C++'s non-existing language support and non-standard library support for threading (you need different libraries depending on the platform you are on). Java also most certainly has pointer-like constructs, they just happen to be called 'references' instead of pointers.

The dynamic memory support in Java is vastly better (although non-deterministic in the OpenJDK) than C++, with C++ it is a nightmare to use resources in a multi-threaded application whereas in Java the garbage collector will sort it all out for you (and the new G1 collector is very very efficient). In short, your statements are not true about Java and were not even true of the early (slow) versions of Java, let alone the current versions that leave C++ for dead on current hardware. Next time I would suggest doing some actual reading from both Java proponents (as well as C++ proponents, of course) before posting - especially if you are not a developer or a developer with little experience in *both* languages. As someone who has used C++ for over a decade and Java since it was first released I would say both have their place but in general Java is vastly superior to C++ for many, many reasons (which I won't go into here) and anyone contemplating writing a new project in C++ (or even C#, given the increasingly multi-platform nature of the world) rather than Java really better either have a fantastic reason or is a nutter.

Re:Oracle and Java

[SplashMyBandit]

Actually it is write once and run unit tests and integration tests everywhere. If the tests don't pass then it means you coded some platform or JVM dependency in somewhere and it can be removed. Usually verification on Java on other platforms (the analogue of 'porting' in C/C++) is very quick and painless if you have decent coverage of unit and integration tests. Java rocks when you do it right.

Anyone using the "Write once, debug everywhere" mantra should be a Big Red Flag to you that they don't follow modern software development practices (test driven development being especially valuable for *any* system - if someone isn't doing it, or worse, doesn't even know how necessary it is, then you know they have a lot to learn from a professional software *engineering* perspective).

Re:Oracle and Java

[Billly Gates]

True but Java has been kind of abandonded for awhile. Hibernate and other projects are outside of Oracle/Sun while .NET is steaming forward. Yes, it is a Windows only thing but most corporations prefer to have only one ecosystem by only a single company and that is Microsoft. It sounds very 1990s, but these companies still use IE 6 and are a decade behind everyone else and even convinced slashdotters that XP is somehow still good in 2012! .NET supports more than one language, has generics (I think Java 6 has them now so correct me if I am wrong as I learned Java 5 while in school), and is now getting things like NHIbernate from Java, and LinQ is awesome too.

With C# you can simply compile and distribute your program. No need to use a third party java compiler to get it into a .exe so other people can run it via point and click. The Winforms libraries are not bloated and slow like Swing was and have a native feel in Windows.

If the DOJ had some balls and split MS into 3 different companies .NET would be all over Linux and MacOSX as it is an excellent platform. I give MS credit they make great products and also very shitty ones. .NET is a great product as well as powerpoint and excel. Windows and IE ... well that is another story :-)

Re:Oracle and Java

[Billly Gates]

And how much do senior level .NET developers with SQL Server experience bring in?

I did a comparison when I had to take a course in C# or Java in 2006. Java won by a large margin. Today it is narrow and all the JR level positions are for C# developers. This shows me it is a growth market and it will overtake Java soon if not already. Sure Java is a better bet than Cobol for mainframe shops if you want to write a new server app from scratch but it seems very cobolish in that is Java projects are just maintaince or upgrades from older code bases. Not new apps being made.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Visual BASIC (at least the old incarnation of it) is mostly irrelevant because it has been replaced by Visual BASIC .NET (or at least .NET in general), which is basically just Microsoft's re-engineering of Java.

Re:Oracle and Java

[PCM2]

His point was that Apple basically dropped support for it and now OS X users aren't saddled with shitty Java applications. There are ZERO good desktop Java applications.

Maybe, but nobody twisted Apple's arm to support Java to begin with. Apple was all over it. They wanted Mac OS X to be the "premier platform for Java development." When I say they "dropped the ball," I mean it literally -- wayyyyyy before Apple dropped support for Java, it totally failed to live up to its promises to develop Java for the Mac OS X platform. Far from being the premier Java platform, it couldn't keep up with the status quo of Java on Linux, let alone on Windows or Solaris. Apple bungled the entire project, and that's why it eventually dropped support for Java -- not because it somehow "knew better" than anyone else. Rather the opposite, in fact.

As for Java desktop applications, I know for a fact there are (or at least were) a lot of Java desktop applications in use in large businesses. Whether or not they're "good" is kinda beside the point; not being able to run them was yet another factor that blocked Apple from the enterprise market for many years.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Raenex]

Java has better tools than C++. It doesn't have the crazy error messages of C++, doesn't have the hair-pulling memory errors of C++, or a bunch of other undefined, crappy behavior that is common in C++.

C++ has crappy module support, with its awful header files and inefficient compiling.

Sure, if you put the effort into it, your C++ code will perform faster and use less memory than Java. On the other hand, Java is quite often "good enough" without all the hassles.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Then why does it scale so much easier than any language when using the async, threading, and I/O? Sure you can do it in C++ but it is so easy to do threading in Java. It scales quite well too compared to C# and the whole .NET and IIS stuff

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

My bank uses java-based authentication/security extension which doesn't work with OpenJDK.
So not having access to my money would probably count as major deficiency.

Re:Oracle and Java

[MichaelSmith]

Support fees did go sky high. Our site stopped paying. Other sites would have migrated away from it quickly. I doubt RDB had many users in 2011.

Re:Oracle and Java

[gweihir]

I agree. Trouble is while a language can seem to "write itself", until true AI becomes available (not anytime soon), this is just an impression. The human being that knows what he/she is doing and understands the language, the problem and has a grasps of things like algorithms, data structures, interface design, software architecture, OS characteristics and sometimes even computer networking is very much non-optional. At the same time, Java tends to stay in the way of people that do know what they are doing.

Since I pulled out a n^2 sorting algorithm of an at that time already very expensive enterprise Java app, I am more convinced than ever that hiring Java programmers is a grave mistake. Better hire people that know what they are doing and give them a few weeks to learn Java. Tell them in advance though, or they may leave upon being told.

Re:Oracle and Java

[syousef]

Hell, I can't program past visual basic and I make more than either of you!

So there.

Paris Hilton probably can't tie her own shoelaces and probably has enough money to hire everyone on slashdot as a personal butler for 1000 years.

Money isn't everything.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Could it be that you very familiar with the .NET tool chain?

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

God, they destroyed fucking Compaq(the good part) AND the remains of DEC. Sigh.

Re:Oracle and Java

[gweihir]

The problem with Java is not it being hard to learn. The problem is that it has far, far too much details, exceptions, unclean concepts, syntactic clutter and so on to allow a beginner to distinguish between language and algorithms/data-structures/interfaces. Teaching programming is different from teaching a language. With Java, teaching programming is basically impossible. I know, I have done it myself (and failed) and I have seen quite a few others fail and nobody succeeding. The problem was that instead of identifying fundamental approaches and concepts, students started to read through all the libraries. And were unable to read code because of the massive syntactic clutter. And were unable to develop an understanding of what memory complexity is. And so on. That is _not_ a language beginners can learn anything worthwhile from except the language itself. They certainly cannot learn how to program with it.

The result is an abundance of incompetent Java programmers that can often not even do things like removing duplicates from a list adequately.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

and Kodak

Re:Oracle and Java

[kaffiene]

Oracle are heavily invested in Java's success. It's still the number one language on the TIOBE index, it's still the language of a tonne of server software. It will be with us for ages to come (much like C)

Re:Oracle and Java

[gweihir]

Java is an epic fail, nothing less. The only thing is that the industry wants cheap Java programmers, but Java is messed up badly enough that nobody except advanced programmers have any business using it.

Re:Oracle and Java

[kaffiene]

FUD

Re:Oracle and Java

[kaffiene]

What a moronic load of crap. Java has not succeeded for this long because of marketing. At some point, a language needs to be able to just get stuff done - and it has. People like the Apache foundation haven't produced a metric shit-load of projects in Java because they liked Sun's marketing, they did it because Java was good at getting work done.

I'm a C hacker from way back. I used C++ from when it was a C preprocessor. C is one of my favourite programming languages, but so is Java. They are both excellent at Getting Shit Done (tm). Ignoring all that's good about Java because it had a marketing drive decades ago is pathetic. Ruby has been hyped recently. Microsoft's Visual C++ has had a tonne of marketing from MS - ditto C#. Should we dump all those languages or claim that their successes are all marketing? Give me a break. Grow the fuck up.

Re:Oracle and Java

[kaffiene]

Then obviously you don't know how to do those things properly in Java, because I've written hundreds of Java programs that use the filesystem and graphics that work perfectly well cross-platform.

Re:Oracle and Java

[kaffiene]

It's not reasonable to expect your programming language to change the behaviour of your Operating System. If you think that that's what WORA means, then WORA is impossible in principle. That's like saying "I have this 3D app running on my Windows machine but it doesn't display 3D graphics on my Linux terminal so WORA doesn't work".

That's not what WORA means, however. Obviously.

Re:Oracle and Java

[kaffiene]

Agreed. I wrote a Java 3D app that used serial port data for input. It ran on a Mac, I wrote it on a PC. Ran perfectly the first time, no platform issues at all. I find these FUD posts about WORA really fucking annoying.

Java has its faults, but let's discuss the real ones rather than making shit up because we prefer some other language?

Re:Oracle and Java

[kaffiene]

"There is no way in hell that your Java app uses anything even as remotely complex as DirectX"

I've got Java OpenGL code with 3D sound and raw input access that works fine across Windows, Linux and Mac.

I chose to roll my own (JOGL, OpenAL, JInput) but LWJGL (http://lwjgl.org/) provides all of those features I mentioned as well.

"Comparing a Windows app (game?) that uses hardware acceleration (!) to a business app that's basically just a bunch of "if-else" code and string processing is not exactly fair. Try writing the SAME app on both platforms and see how your portability compares."

I have. It works perfectly.

Any more FUD you wanted to sling?

Re:Oracle and Java

[kaffiene]

That's just a matter of using the right tool for the job. You don't (usually) write OS's in Java just like you don't (usually) write Web Frameworks in C.

Re:Oracle and Java

[kaffiene]

yup

Re:Oracle and Java

[kaffiene]

Explain to me why Ruby is well suited for teaching and learning concepts and Java isn't.

Re:Oracle and Java

[kaffiene]

Utter and complete FUD. You are a pathetic troll.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh please, not the 'java' that my co-worker had to wrestle with on smart cards that didn't have: inheritance, introspection, or dynamic memory? In other words, an assembler dressed up to use C/Java-like syntax? What crap. Smartcards use a tiny MCU small enough to be embedded in a card, with no more memory or power than is required to do the crypto handshake required for the job.

Granted this was years ago, but it -is- for banking, and we all know how leading-edge banks are with tech, right?

Re:Oracle and Java

[MacOSXHead]

You have a potty mouth. Using the f-word is crude and only lessens your arguments. Some people have children that actually read these forums.

Oh, and you facts are wrong; your history is wrong.

Try to do better next time you open your virtual mouth.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Java in some form is probably going to continue, because it's too entrenched. There are some big players on the sidelines (e.g. IBM) with a lot invested in Java who aren't going to sit idly by and let Oracle destroy it

Those big players are going to sit on the sidelines and wait it out. Java is truly capable of destroying itself, or at least I'm still hopeful.

OpenJDK may have a few shortcomings at the moment, but that could easily change if some bigger players got more serious about it.

Sun, Microsoft, Oracle, Apple, IBM .. who do you want to look at, the WTC?

It's still too early to tell how this is all going to play out, but the death of Java seems like one of the least likely outcomes.

With Java, it's always going to be still too early.

Please Oracle, please .. kill it.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Yuioup]

I'm waiting for Google to port Go to Android.

Re:Oracle and Java

[rastos1]

Money isn't everything.

Yeah. There is also gold and stock.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no way in hell that your Java app uses anything even as remotely complex as DirectX, because a) Java is "lowest common denominator" and hardware acceleration is very new and platform-specific

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_GL#OpenGL_1.1

A feature introduced fourteen years ago being touted as "new"? I suppose that Microsoft invented preemptive multi-tasking as well?

Re:Oracle and Java

[voidphoenix]

Xeons are x86 (IA-32) x86-64 (AMD64). Basically, server branding for plain old x86 chips. I'm guessing JRockit is intended for server deployments?

Re:Oracle and Java

[DamonHD]

With respect you don't know the details of either app (both lovingly crafted by me, and both with a heavy visual/multimedia component) and indeed one small part of the Java app is indeed using Java3D.

The point is that the Netscape 2.0 era code runs happily alongside that stuff in the same VM/app. And there is a *lot* of threading going on handled with rather finer control than .Net currently seems capable of out of the box, and the ARM box is a single thread/CPU, the SPARC 24 thread, and the x86/x64 boxes 1, 2 or 4. Didn't need changing the oldest code though one very small part of it didn't enjoy non-green threads.

Rgds

Damon

Re:Oracle and Java

[roman_mir]

When I was contracting between 2001 and 2009, I made more than BOTH of them, it was mostly Java.

When running my own company, the income is non-existent until there are real revenues, and then whatever is left over after all of the expenses and re-investments, that's what I can pay myself.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Hognoxious]

Windows thinks files are open when they aren't. It seems to do this particularly with avi files, for some unknown reason.

Re:Oracle and Java

[RubberMallet]

Yes Oracle is wildly successful, but they are also VERY shortsighted.

I worked (note past tense) for Oracle... I saw it first hand. I saw the decision process.. I was involved in it. I fought against it too... I tried hard to point out the short term thinking... and was shot down. Oracle is all about this quarter, not next.. just this quarter... and making as much profit in any way possible this quarter. If that means destroying a product-line that is lined up to be very successful and profitable next quarter, then so be it as long as there is profit this quarter. If that means laying off thousands so that the numbers crunch out, then so be it. Layoffs are expensive and unnecessary? Well defer that expense to the next quarter and plan re-hiring next quarter, because Oracle must be ridiculously profitable this quarter.... and so on.

Sure there is an element of "Oracle isn't doing things the way I want", but there is a mountain of truth (it's so far beyond a kernel of truth, it has become a mountain) to the shortsighted comment.

Re:Oracle and Java

[evilviper]

Oracle can't kill off java. What they can do is stop improving it, as competitors eventually fly past it.

What will replace it? The one in the strongest position seems to by Python. It suffers from not having some default UI toolkit built-in as Java does, and no built-in browser support (though most browsers supporting arbitrary add-ons could change this dynamic significantly), but it has gotten impressive support in the industry.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Hognoxious]

Oracle is all about this quarter, not next

And yet they've survived and even thrived for n quarters, where n is somewhat larger than 1.

Re:Oracle and Java

[RubberMallet]

Sure... by riding on the success of the database. As many others here have pointed out, the database is fine, but everything else they touch turns to shit - Need an example? Well, have you ever tried Oracle Unbreakable Linux? One example of many many many in the Oracle pile of rotting product lines... some have already fallen out, and many more are due to follow.

Being "successful" doesn't make it right. Look at the success of certain world rulers. They are "successful" for decades by basically destroying everything in sight. Random despot has survived and thrived for n years where n is somewhat larger than 1.

The point being, yes Oracle is successful, but not through careful management and intelligent decisions.... more through blind luck, sheer bloody mindedness, and the ability to not care who gets crushed in the process... The core of this discussion links back to Oracle's stewardship of Java (and several other projects/products). Oracle has no real interest in Java as a product beyond "this quarter". If profits now mean trashing and destroying Java, you can count on it that Oracle WILL trash Java. Why do you think the remaining debris of what was once Sun is looking nervously over its collective shoulder? VirtualBox, Solaris, MySQL... all at major risk from Oracle's money money money money money money money focus (not that profit is wrong... but profit at the expense of everything else... that's not healthy for anyone).

Re:Oracle and Java

[BeforeCoffee]

Oh, you're one of THOSE guys. You complain too much. Java isn't as bad as you say even if there's a whiff of truthiness in most of your criticisms.

I argue, Mr. Grouch, that the crown jewels of Java are not to be found in the language. They're found in the JVM. Plain and simple: the JVM is the most banged on, battle hardened, security-first computer programs ever written. There is no more trustworthy binary in the world more than java.exe. You want an unrockable web server? Run Tomcat with the NIO thingy enabled on the latest Java 6 atop Linux with the firewall all ratcheted up. And don't proxy through Apache HTTPD if you don't have to - that's just one more security-as-afterthought, million moving parts binary with perennial remote exploits to worry about.

Why do languages "that target the JVM" actually make a difference? Because you get all that bitchin runtime robustness without the Java language baggage you just love love love to complain about. And while we're at it: Java Native Invocation (JNI) is considered harmful. Native code tainting the JVM? You better have a darned important exotic business requirement to bring new native code into the equation. As far as I'm concerned, you're crazy as a loon to write native code these days unless you're doing embedded systems or device driver development. I'm wondering why you would suggest something so reckless! Care to elaborate?

I know the JVM's design makes life a real drag sometimes. It feels like a trusty slingshot that's been upgraded into a WMD. But, I could care less about aesthetics or the angst about Java that computer language and open source purists express. I care about stability. I care about uptime. I care about speed. But most of all, I care about security. I care about the total cost of the systems I run.

Ok, ok, I'm leaving, I'm getting off your lawn.

Re:Oracle and Java

[viperidaenz]

Offtopic but that is usually the Explorer shell reading the file to generate a thumbnail or determine meta data. It gets worse when the metadata isnt in the file or is corrupt because it has to decode the entire file to figure out how long it is. There are registry settings to turn it off but I don't recall.

Re:Oracle and Java

[cheekyboy]

Version 7 is on the same page as the 6 download

Url is http://www.java.com/en/download/faq/java7.xml

Re:Oracle and Java

[Truedat]

You failed to mention the initial email http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/07/judge-orders-overhaul-of-oracles.html#sovietstyle sent by Rubin in 2005 that said:

"If Sun doesn't want to work with us, we have two options: 1) Abandon our work and adopt MSFT CLR VM and C# language - or - 2) Do Java anyway and defend our decision, perhaps making enemies along the way"

Not saying this is a smoking gun but your timeline deserves a correction:

Putting together a timeline:
1) First "damning" email in 2005
2) Android released in 2008
3) Oracle purchased Sun in 2009
4) "Damning" email in 2010

Re:Oracle and Java

[McLoud]

In my experience, Microsoft has some of the best backwards compatibility of any vendor out there. Well written C++ and .NET apps on Windows will probably keep working until the heat death of the universe. Meanwhile, Java took a long time to catch on to the fact that the runtime and standard libraries aren't 100% backwards compatible, and that people may actually want to run multiple versions side-by-side. For comparison, every .NET app uses the appropriate runtime automatically.

Java Runtimes are installed side-by-side, even minor versions. And even if you have a grip with a particular installer feature, you can very well get your own folder bundled with the app and it will not touch anything else. Try that with a .NET runtime. I've seen 1.1 .NET apps fail to work properly after a 2.0 .NET runtime got installed in the system, no way to do otherwise that I know, the only solution was remove everything and stall from scratch and stop the damn f* windows update from messing with the SO.

Re:Oracle and Java

[ByteSlicer]

which is a good thing, because the source code was lost when my old laptop died

Try http://java.decompiler.free.fr/ .
It usually produces compilable source code from class files. For non-obfuscated code the sources often look exactly like the originals (minus the comments). Also, it can convert a whole jar to a source zip at once.

Re:Oracle and Java

[bungo]

In general I agree with you. Oracle doesn't need to be a corporation to be a sociopath, after all, they have Larry.

They have a RedHat-derived Linux distro that no one uses...

That bit isn't correct. A lot of people use it, but when they do, it's solely used with an Oracle database, or an application server for Oracle's products. I've personally set up many machines to run Larry's Linux with his software.

People who are not running Oracle software don't have any reason to run Oracle's Linux, but Oracle don't care, since they made it for their customers (so Oracle can exert more control).

Re:Oracle and Java

[gweihir]

And you are clearly and instance of this problem, namely people that do not understand languages are critical for implementation quality ans success. Industry adoption is no useful measure for that.

I do suspect most people being defensive about Java are one-trick-ponies, i.e. people that do not know more than Java and have never learned to program. Sorry, but knowing Java and knowing how to program are two very much different things.

Re:Oracle and Java

[gweihir]

I am not talking about OS design. I am talking about using and understanding the OS API. Java makes that very difficult and obscure.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Your arguments died so badly that all the sock puppet agreement in the world won't resurrect them. Why did you bother?

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Two angry 20-something kids arguing about their middle-class salaries on slashdot. Oh let the good times roll.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

> but those spec are almost always unread by developers...

Including the JVM developers. Since they don't actually implemented the memory model they specified at all.

Re:Oracle and Java

[characterZer0]

90%+ of cross-platform issues I have seen with Java involve people hard-coding "C:\".

Re:Oracle and Java

[X0563511]

Aah. Another case of technical documentation being written by sales I suppose?

Re:Oracle and Java

[Ossifer]

Let's review. You post some tired old anti-Java list. I refute them point by point. You respond with a textbook ad hominem attack. I called you out on it, and wasn't the only one to do so. Now you're trying to save face, despite being an anonymous coward... If this is losing an argument, I'd love to see what winning one is like...

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

That is because a lot of businesses are fundamentally stupid when it comes to technology.

This is rich coming from someone that suggests Python and Ruby. Let me know when you get an implementation that isn't complete and utter trash. There's a reason that even Google is abandoning Python and Ruby isn't permitted.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

The GPL license has a patent grant in it. Does not help Apache one bit, but patents will not be a problem for projects derived from OpenJDK.

Re:Oracle and Java

[m50d]

Surely it can't be that simple, or I could make a copy of Apache Harmony, randomly include one bit of OpenJDK, declare it a derived work and thus covered by the OpenJDK patent license? Have I missed something?

Re:Oracle and Java

[TemporalBeing]

With Oracle responsible for Java, is it even worth it to learn the language any more? I mean they will be killing it off soon.

Only if you deal with Oracle databases as they use it extensively for server-side stuff.

Re:Oracle and Java

[jd]

It actually doesn't scale at all well, which is why Java has had massive rewrites of both the threading and garbage collection in the 1.6.x cycle. It was a complete mess.

Re:Oracle and Java

[jd]

Apache used Java because Java servlets were de rigour and virtually everything else had to tie into Java servlets. Java doesn't "get things done", it "makes things portable" but that's about it.

I use Java, but I don't like it. You're a C hacker and a C++ hacker. Oh good, same here. I also hack Eiffel, Pascal, Prolog, Lisp, Occam, Tcl/Tk, Perl, Python, Ruby, Fortran, Cobol, Ada, Forth, .... I don't pick a language that "gets shit done", I pick the BEST language for what I want done right now. I don't give a damn about whether language X -can- do the job, I want a language that will do the BEST job, produce the cleanest code with the ideal running profile. I don't pick second-best and treat one-size-fits-all coders with the derision they frankly deserve. The right tool for the job, each time, every time, or it's not worth my time.

Re:Oracle and Java

[jd]

Then use Occam, the only language where the virtual machine has been formally proven to be correct and secure, and where the language is designed to be absolutely watertight, robust and certified for everything from flight dynamics to high-performance computing to embedded computing.

I've used JNI only when required to make a Java application directly access Fortran 77 codes that were closed. (It's not easy, either, as the F77 blobs were compiled using archaic compilers that didn't give a damn about portable ABIs.) However, that's the only method for reaching out of the sandbox to talk directly to other languages and since that was the requirement given then that's the method to use. If talking to something was what was important, straight sockets, SOAP or REST are better. I prefer straight sockets as I rarely trust other coders to do a decent job of anything.

Re:Oracle and Java

[_xeno_]

Plain and simple: the JVM is the most banged on, battle hardened, security-first computer programs ever written.

Really? So you're running the latest version of Java (update 30, I think?) to close that remotely exploitable "arbitrary code execution" bug, right?

And that would explain the over 700 CVE Java entries, right? Including two already this year! Already going straight into the remote vulnerabilities again, Java!

I've always wondered how Java manages to have arbitrary code execution bugs on a routine basis, being a virtual machine that supposedly does bytecode verification, not to mention the built-in array boundary checking, yet it does. Consistently and frequently. It's kind of impressive, really.

Re:Oracle and Java

[_xeno_]

There is no way in hell that your Java app uses anything even as remotely complex as DirectX

Sure you can! The Java AWT uses DirectDraw for hardware acceleration under Windows.

No, really, it does. They apparently couldn't get their UI library (Swing) to run fast enough without using hardware graphics acceleration. So they did.

Under Windows, you can get the FRAPS framerate counter to appear on Java GUI applications. I don't think I've gotten the Steam overlay to work on top of a Java app yet, but it might be possible.

Re:Oracle and Java

[jd]

Mobile Java is NOT the same thing as full-blown Java. And, no, it doesn't have "vastly better" threading and concurrency support - which is why it has been completely revamped in 1.6. Everybody, apart from you apparently, loathed and despised Java's threading model. I have never needed to change libraries for threading in C++, whether using DEC OSF/1, HP/UX, Linux, Solaris, OpenBSD, Irix or even something as retarded as Windows. Can you tell me what platform you're using that magically DOES need a new library? No? Thought not. You're merely making bad choices, rather than necessary ones.

What dynamic memory support? Java doesn't use classical dynamic memory (malloc/free and pointers), it uses objects and a garbage collector (pick one of many, and even the garbage collectors keep getting replaced cos they're all naff). Object instantiation is NOT the same thing as dynamic memory. G1 is buggy as hell.

I've used Java for 16 years and C++ for 23. I've master certifications in both. What's your experience - a weekend looking at other people's stuff?

Re:Oracle and Java

[thetoadwarrior]

I agree if we could get .Net on other platforms and it were more compatible and free from fear of disappearing from some or all platforms then yeah it wouldn't be too bad. I'd definitely give it some time.

Re:Oracle and Java

[thetoadwarrior]

I think I would have to agree completely. I can't say I've seen much from java developers around here that impress me.

Re:Oracle and Java

[kaffiene]

You seriously teach an OS course by simply using the OS API rather than comparing and implementing different mechanisms?

Re:Oracle and Java

[kaffiene]

Oooh a dick measuring competition! Wow!

Look, I know and use a large number of other languages as well - I've been coding for thirty years. I only state the C/C++ understanding so that people don't assume that because I like Java that that's all I know - which with Java haters seems to be the natural assumption: everyone who likes Java is automatically a moron that's never used another language and doesn't know any better. I notice your sentence about treating "one-size-fits-all coders with the derision they frankly deserve" that suggests that you have made a similarly arrogant (and wrong) assumption about me.

When I talk about "Getting Shit Done" I mean that it's a productive tool for getting actual work done in some actual real-world context. Nowhere at all did I suggest that it's the right tool for all jobs.

You made a lot of incorrect and offensive assumptions about my attitude towards software engineering purely because I said that Java wasn't all hype. That's pretty shitty, really.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Delicious FUD! Java Web Start and Applets are client-side technologies that SUCK. Yes, omg, Java on the client sucks, should be avoided, and has clearly poisoned the waters for you - huge revelation.

So, just for you, and to be more specific: on the server, the only place it matters, Java is the most banged on, battle hardened, security-first computer program EVER written.

Try again, hater!

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, you're one of **THOSE** guys...

I'm sorry, yes, occam clearly rulez beyond measure, changed the world. What were we talking about again?

Re:Oracle and Java

[_xeno_]

So, just for you, and to be more specific: on the server, the only place it matters, Java is the most banged on, battle hardened, security-first computer program EVER written.

Ah, so that would explain why the two CVE entries for Java this year are exploits in HTTP server components?

Re:Oracle and Java

[jd]

I didn't say it changed the world, I said that if that was the standard you actually cared about then that would be what you would use. Since you aren't using Occam (and very few people do), it's extremely obvious that this can NOT be the standard you are working by. Duh.

Re:Oracle and Java

[David Gerard]

This is precisely what any sensible company is doing. We have Sun Java 6 on Linux (and I've even rolled a deb for internal use), but we'll be starting testing on OpenJDK 7 as soon as we've finished the migration we're in the middle of.

Re:Oracle and Java

[David Gerard]

Yuh. There will be work maintaining Java code approximately forever, like Win32 and COBOL.

Re:Oracle and Java

[David Gerard]

Same here. Our stuff runs the same on Windows, Linux, Solaris x86, Solaris SPARC.

The last incompatiblity we had was the sort of bug where you go "how did that ever work?" - it turned out it only worked at all because of an implementation-defined quirk found in the Solaris versions of 6u26 but not in the Linux version.

Sadly, it's little heisenbugs like these that are why you test the shit out of your code on a new JVM before moving. We'll be doing that for OpenJDK 7 in a few months, to move off Sun Java 6.

Re:Oracle and Java

[SplashMyBandit]

Oh cool, you were one of the Sun team that developed Java then? Otherwise you're like me and used it for 15 years so far. But that is nit picking so let's not go there. Ok, so please tell me how Java's new is not 'dynamic memory', I'm curious how you see them as being different? how does that differ from new or new[] in any way that really matters? Please tell me how Java's int[] foo = new int[1]; differs in any meaningful way from the C++ equivalent (that is, how it is any less dynamic than the C++ equivalent, ignoring the bounds-checking which can be optimized away etc)?

No, I'm no weekend warrior with regard to Java - so trying to pre-empt the argument by claiming longer dev time rather than debating based on the merit of your argument points is not going to work this time. I use it Java daily as a professional consultant, and have used it from embedded systems in scientific devices and radars to Internet-scale applications (thousands of transactions a second), and applications that were required to be *very* reliable and have (soft) real-time constraints. So, while I hear what you are saying, you should listen up too since I'm no n00b either.

I've used C++ on pretty much the same systems you have, and pretty much for as long as you have. On all of these it was *always* a pain to port any C++ program from one system to another and even between different releases of the same compiler, let alone different C++ compilers - and I know and watched what I was doing with regard to portable code and library selection. These days I avoid C++ unless I really have to - the productivity is just so low and I don't need an ego boost to make be feel 'l33t' for using it - since I've done pretty much done everything there is to do with it. So, these days I reach for Java as a first choice since I value language and library simplicity over nearly everything else - my problem domains are complicated enough as it is and project scale so big that complicating it with old-style languages is unnecessary. I also realize that a lot of the code that veterans like you and I produce has to be maintained by teams of lesser minds - and this is an important business consideration for me. In short, I have, as have most other ex-C++ folks, evolved past the point where we see C++ as useful.

Now, you have a point that Java ME is not the greatest, but I confess I'm not an expert in JME. The "Java" these days that people actually use for mobile goes by the marketing name of "Android", and perhaps you could consider that for future "Java vs C++" comparisons. With this one's "productivity" and "features delivered" are much greater than with shitty old C++, which translates to better quality (more time for the testers to do their thing) and lower cost (and surely a 'master' has learned that technical considerations never beat business considerations in this non-deal world?).

> Everybody, apart from you apparently, loathed and despised Java's threading model.
Everybody? I don't think so. The C++ dinosaurs perhaps. Perhaps "Who moved by cheese" should be on the reading list these days. Plus, is there something comparable (and portable!) in C++ to Doug Lea's excellent concurrency library (a standard part of Java these days). Oh that's right, C++ users are still struggling with getting STL to work nicely when they use different compilers (now which pre-processor macros do I have to muddy the code with again?)

Look, C++ is not without some merit, but it turns out that the majority of developers and businesses see Java (or Android) as a better solution than C++. You can call us all fools if you like, but basically even very developers with a similar degree of experience to yourself have made the switch from C++ to Java and got on with producing useful modern applications and embedded systems. Sure, you have decided that Java doesn't work for you personally, cool, but claiming C++ is better is a bit of a stretch - everyone has already decided this is not true for them (even on mobile phones).

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

You have a potty mouth.

Oh fuck off, you censorious prude. The rest of us don't want to live in your Victorian Disneyland.

Some people have children that actually read these forums.

OMFG, who will think of teh children??!?!!?!111!!!

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

And how many years old is Java 1.6, five? Hasn't that been enough time to erase past sins and call the threading and GC architecture good?

And how would you have Java scale differently/better? If pure performance is your goal, write non-portable C++, Java ain't for you. Otherwise, what's the problem?

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, now you gotta be very specific. FUD is so non-specific after all; just gotta roll one bomb in there and it's mission accomplished, right? Not this time!! :P

Post the links to the two damning CVE reports you're referring to. All the reports I saw that might be what you refer to as "HTTP server components" are not server components at all, but are related to java.net.HttpURLConnection.

Indeed, that API has had design flaws leading to exploits over the years. The HttpURLConnection exploits only seem to affect client-side API's - allowing an attacker to escalate his network or file privileges and get out of the sandbox in an applet or Java Web Start. Server-side code doesn't typically use HttpURLConnection for anything - so it appears you've come up short again, bomb defused, sadness. (I was really rooting for you too!)

If you can show us a modern remote exploit that allows the attacker to gain control of my tomcat server due to a flaw in Java, then you'll really have something great! Only THEN will you be a true FUD master. Right now you are a mere freshman at FUD Academy. And ... you need to try again hater! :D

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Years and years ago when occam was pitched on Slashdot, I took a look. I wanted it to work, because I wanted the same thing I want today - a platform I could trust. Problem was, I couldn't make myself productive with it. The language design concepts weren't mind blowing as I recall, it was just the language or environment made it too tough to write code with that did anything meaningful. I suspect others had my experience too. Maybe it has gotten better over time.

Real artists ship. If a tool or process gets in the way of shipping, it needs to be culled to make way for another, better tool or process. Shipping trumps purity. Shipping trumps what we think should be or not be in the world.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Thiez]

> Using the f-word is crude
And using the term "f-word" just makes you look like a prude.

> and only lessens your arguments.
It most certainly does not.

> Some people have children that actually read these forums.
And this is relevant how? This site is not aimed at children (although some of the comments might make one suspect otherwise). Are you suggesting on the internet we should at all times behave as if observed by a bunch of 5-year olds? I refuse. If you think reading the word "fuck" is unacceptable for children, don't let them use the internet.

Interesting fact: searching for "fuck site:slashdot.org" on google reveals about 75k results. You've lost the battle against profanity years ago.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Paul Fernhout]

"I'll also point out that when Java was released, the only serious rival as a ubiquitous platform-independent language at the time (Python) was maintained by one person and that scared a lot of people."

Look up cross-platform VisualWorks Smalltalk. Sun tried to license it instead of making Java, but ParcPlace wanted too much in run-time fees per copy for set-top boxes. So Sun's Green/Oak progressed to Java, IBM got behind it instead of their own Smalltalk, and the rest is history.

Re:Oracle and Java

[kaffiene]

And you are clearly and instance of this problem, namely people that do not understand languages are critical for implementation quality ans success. Industry adoption is no useful measure for that.

I do suspect most people being defensive about Java are one-trick-ponies, i.e. people that do not know more than Java and have never learned to program. Sorry, but knowing Java and knowing how to program are two very much different things.

I see. You confirmed what I asserted elsewhere - you are the kind of arrogant fuck that assumes that people who like Java must be morons who know nothing else.

I've been programming for 30 fucking years you supercilious know-it-all cunt.

I've used C, C++, Java, Assembler (68k & 8088), Lisp, Erlang, Pascal, Python, Ruby, Perl, Haskell, C#, Delphi, BASIC, Javascript, VBScript (yuk) and countless other languages, technologies and systems besides.

I am no one-trick-pony. I don't know everything about coding - even now, I find out something new from one of our grads or a workmate, but I don't EVER assume that because someone likes something that I don't that they therefore know nothing at all.

You are an arrogant fuck, a troll and a perfect illustration of the kind of programming language bigot that slashdot is infected with. Your assumptions about me are offensive, wrong and a million miles off base.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Hognoxious]

Sure... by riding on the success of the database.

Which says nothing about long terms vs short term, which was the original premise.

As many others here have pointed out, the database is fine

The licensing terms aren't (speaking as someone who had to account for the bastard things).

Has the DB changed over time? if so that implies that there's ongoing development. Another nail in the coffin of your short termism claim.

Well, have you ever tried Oracle Unbreakable Linux? One example of many many many in the Oracle pile of rotting product lines... some have already fallen out, and many more are due to follow.

I haven't, but I believe you. But that's orthogonal to long vs short term thinking.

Being "successful" doesn't make it right. Look at the success of certain world rulers.

I don't recall saying that it did, so please take your dumb despot strawman elsewhere. For the record, I think Larry Ellison is a weasel.

Oracle has no real interest in Java as a product beyond "this quarter". If profits now mean trashing and destroying Java, you can count on it that Oracle WILL trash Java.

So you say. I don't think they ever had any realistic hope of making money from it. After all, Sun didn't. And how are Oracle trying? Lawsuits. Which cost money up front and which will (possibly) provide a payoff some time down the road. That sounds more like long term thinking to me.

I thought at the time that bought Sun to stop anyone else (i.e. IBM) getting it, perhaps fuelled a little by testosterone. They didn't have any plans really with what they wanted to do with it.

In any case, it's clearly rubbish to suggest that a company that's been around so long only thinks short term. If that were true, they'd have gone tits-up when the dotcom bubble popped, if not before. Unless they were very lucky ... and luck doesn't usually last that long. Not even when the CEO has a pact with the devil.

Re:Oracle and Java

[gweihir]

You may have looked at a lot, but you clearly failed to see anything. This is really sad. From your emotional response, I deduce you actually do understand your failure pretty clearly, but are suppressing that understanding.

Re:Oracle and Java

[gweihir]

It is an introductory overview course for first and second year students, not an OS design course. There is not enough time or background to implement the mechanisms. Comparison is done, of course, but on the UNIX (and where significantly different, Windows) API level. But giving a good and critical tour of the OS API is already more than what many introductory OS courses do today, which is really, really pathetic.

I have had students ask me why they did learn Java in the preparation course and now need something fundamentally different. The only good answer I found was that the industry wants cheap Java programmers. From the insights the students have doing things in C, I deduce that the Java course was pretty much a waste of time and should only have been offered after they learned programming and have some experience, i.e. not before 3rd year.

Re:Oracle and Java

[kaffiene]

My emotional response is purely due to the fact that I find arrogant fuck-wits like you detestable. Your attitude revolts me. Your small minded world view represents all that is worst in humanity.

This is the last post I will waste on you.

Re:Oracle and Java

[marnues]

I'd say the problem is that you taught an OS course to students enrolled in a Software Engineering program. If low-level courses are taught in Java, the students are not learning the fundamentals of Computer Science. Java explicitly hides all the gritty details that CS students need to know, but Software Engineers shouldn't ever need to handle (given the CS students can right them competent OSs, Compilers, and VMs).

This was a massive problem at my school and now in my life. I wanted CS, but was surrounded by programmers, software engineers, and future MBAs. Thankfully I was taught CS (and Computer Engineering, yay EE!), but the school moved towards a Software Engineering focus (I was 1 of 2 students fighting against it). Then I moved home to a blue collar town without much of any tech work and promptly began my career in Systems Administration and Software Engineering. O cruel irony. At least I've finally learned to love coding rather than just computing.

Re:Oracle and Java

[gweihir]

Conceptually somewhat true, but this is just "Informatik", the distinction between CS, Computer Engineering and Software Engineering is rarely used here. CS is definitely a part of Informatik. The problem is that those deciding on Java did not understand the consequences, just that Java is popular in the industry. Sadly, this happens and has happened all over the German speaking countries with predictable results, namely even more Informatik graduates that cannot program, design or architect software and do not understand algorithms and OSes either. Java brought a massive dumbing down with it.

I don't think is is a good idea to teach Software Engineering without CS at this time, things are still too much in flux and the CS background is really, really needed in a lot of situations. Java definitely isolates you too much for the current state of affairs. At the same time it doe snot isolate you enough, look for example at what Python or Ruby achieve here. Those languages would be far better for a Software Engineering course than Java, as you can ignore the underlying machine (almost) completely with them.

Re:Oracle and Java

[marnues]

gweihir is a hardened troll. Don't worry about it too much.

Re:Oracle and Java

[jd]

Scalable Java is easy and I've already shown elsewhere how to do it. It's far more resource-intensive, because Java isn't a sound platform, but you simply use the same methodology as you do for explicit parallel programming. Communication between objects is just message passing, nothing more, and we know plenty about message passing between independent logical processes and even independent physical machines in explicit parallel programming.

If you write non-portable C++, you're writing it wrong. The =only= language that has any business being non-portable is the native assembly language for the processor. (There are "pseudo assembly languages" that are essentially at the same level as native assembly but which ARE portable across CPU architectures, so it is necessary to say that it has to be a native assembly language.)

GC is still being worked on and time is unimportant. Should we all be using BCPL? It is still being updated, isn't 30 years time enough to erase past sins? No. It is not. BCPL is not a suitable language for most purposes because of the architecture. The same is true with Java. C is tolerable only because of the performance, but has all kinds of architectural defects. You remember the saying "if builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programmers the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization"? If so, then you know that rebuilding civilization after every woodpecker is simply not an acceptable solution. If you designed things right to start off with, you would never have to rebuild at all.

Re:Oracle and Java

[kaffiene]

heh :o)

Yeah, I've come to that conclusion. I usually assume that I'm talking to someone rational until they prove otherwise as gweihir has done. I'm done responding to him.

Java as a security hindrance

[Anonymous Coward]

This is news?! I thought everyone knew that by installing Java you were bending over, lowering your drawers and facing away from the Internet with a big sign pointed at you that reads "Take me!"

C++ is cross-platform

[Anonymous Coward]

Just use a decent framework like Qt and spend a few minutes extra compiling on multiple systems.

C++ doesn't have Oracle shitting on it, either.

Re:C++ is cross-platform

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha - you've obviously never tried to distribute anything already compiled across multiple Linux distros... it's impossible to do reliably.

Re:C++ is cross-platform

[stanlyb]

but the idea is actually to distribute the source code, not the binary!

Re:C++ is cross-platform

[Anonymous Coward]

There a many good reasons why that's not always desirable or possible. Linux shouldn't make so difficult - it just pushes people to the smoother experiences of other OSes.

Re:C++ is cross-platform

[Ynot_82]

I agree.
supporting all those different CPU architectures, allowing a single OS to run on devices from routers, phones and TVs up through laptops and desktops all the way to multi-node clusters and mainframes is stupid. It stops some silly developer from shipping a single closed-source binary

Madness

Re:C++ is cross-platform

[Anonymous Coward]

There a many good reasons why shipping source is not always desirable or possible.

If only your mind could be as open as your OS.

Re:C++ is cross-platform

[Osgeld]

*ix user since Solaris 2.6 Intel desktop edition, and to this day if someone hands me source, and I don't absolutely don't need to have that software, I walk away. I honestly have better things to do than guess at your dev enviroment, scurry up bullshit and do your job.
 

Re:C++ is cross-platform

[Anonymous Coward]

Just use a decent framework like Qt and spend a few minutes extra compiling on multiple systems.

C++ doesn't have Oracle shitting on it, either.

Spoken like a true idiot that doesn't understand multiplatform development.

Re:C++ is cross-platform

[colinrichardday]

There a many good reasons why shipping source is not always desirable or possible.

Granted, one possibility is that the source is either physically or legally unavailable. But what are the other good reasons?

Re:C++ is cross-platform

[gmueckl]

Maybe because the software takes a rocket scientist to build in the first place? Maybe because you target users who should not have a need to learn about using a compiler and fixing fuckups in the system libs created by wild patching from distribution creators? Maybe because handing out the sources to your game would open the doors even wider for cheaters (server-side input testing is generally not enough)?

Re:C++ is cross-platform

[colinrichardday]

Maybe because the software takes a rocket scientist to build in the first place?

configure; make; make install. Yeah, that's brutal.

Re:C++ is cross-platform

[gmueckl]

Try that with OO.o or Firefox. Good luck!

Re:C++ is cross-platform

[colinrichardday]

I said it was easy to type in configure; make; make install, I didn't say it would always work :-). If you release the source, it's easy enough for distributors package them in rpms and debs.

I remembering manually compiling the Linux kernel back in 1998 (not always successfully). Nevertheless, releasing source code can be helpful. According to Eric S. Raymond, one of the reasons DARPA chose BSD for TCP/IP was that BSD offered source code.

F-Secure

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, a language is a security hindrance. Isn't that like saying executable files themselves are security hindrances?

Re:F-Secure

[Ossifer]

I think the basis is that with Java the code is technically in the executable's data memory and thus lacks certain OS/CPU-level protections...

Re:F-Secure

[gorzek]

In a perfect world, users wouldn't be able to do anything, because everything would be 100% secure!

Don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

I really don't understand what they get out of preventing Linux distributions from including their version of Java, given that the JDK binaries are available to download free from their website; do they just want to make life a little bit more inconvenient for Java developers? Am I missing something?

Top tip: lots of potential Java programmers use Linux. Surely it's better for them if they allow the "official" Java to be packaged with the likes of Ubuntu?

Re:Don't understand

[gral]

OpenJDK has been the default in Ubuntu for a little while now. I don't think most distributions used the main Oracle Java in their distro by default either. OpenJDK is still available, and included, it is just the oracle version that has been removed. OpenJDK is backed by other companies than just Oracle, and is licensed for distros. At least, this is my understanding of the landscape.

Re:Don't understand

[Tanktalus]

I'm just guessing here, but I suspect they want to have control over the JVMs out in the field in such a way that doesn't necessarily screw up your vendor's package management system. Upgrades in-place, for example, won't work when the initial install was via rpm/deb/whatever and the upgrades are via Java's updater. Or, rather, the vendor tool will think that Java is messed up - sizes and checksums won't match; timestamps will be off. I bet they're thinking this is for the distro's benefit.

Also, by forcing everyone to go to the Oracle site, they can force you to accept their license before downloading, as well as generate some reasonable pseudo-accurate numbers on how many copies are in use and where (IP address based geo-lookups).

My gut says there's a monetisation strategy in there somewhere. I just can't quite see it yet.

Re:Don't understand

[daihuws]

Oh yeah, I know that OpenJDK is included. I was dabbling with Java for the first time a couple of months ago, and I installed the Oracle JDK because I wasn't sure whether I might run into discrepancies between OpenJDK and Oracle JDK. You normally run into enough gotchas when taking your first steps with a new language without having to worry about things like that... (BTW, that was me above; forgot to sign in!)

Re:Don't understand

[Miamicanes]

It's because Oracle (formerly Sun) makes huge amounts of money licensing the rights to distribute installable copies of Java. Java is only free (as in beer) if you, the end user, personally download it from Oracle's official web site and install it yourself as a separate process distinct from installing any app that requires Java.

Officially, you (as a developer) aren't even allowed to try and automate the process. If you want to automate the process in any way, and/or bundle a Java installer with your app, you have to pay HUGE amounts of money for the rights to do it.

Java's licensing is brilliantly viral, because it imposes restrictions that developers never even *notice* until somebody points out their implications to naive end users. MySQL's licensing works more or less the same way -- free for end users to download & install themselves, but the moment an automated installer enters the picture (or a consultant is involved), the mandatory licensing fees kick in... and the fees are high enough that if you're running Windows servers anyway, you'll probably end up kicking yourself for having not just used SQL Server to begin with. I'm not talking about web serves you configure yourself... I'm talking about commercial apps that depend upon a database for their persistent backing store, and would normally be installed like a normal application.

Re:Don't understand

[Anne Thwacks]

If you used MySQL or MSSQL instead of PostgreSQL, you should get someone else to kick you, because you are probably too stupid to kick yourself well enough.

Re:Don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

That you think it's not only acceptable, but desirable to use a database that comes with a VACUUM command, makes you possibly one of the most stupid people in this thread.

The fact that the PostgreSQL developers decided that the best solution to people having to run VACUUM occasionally was to implement auto-vacuum just shows how stupid the PostgreSQL developers are.

Re:Don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

Is true that Oracle is doing its own law for its business-related interests and to torture ethically and morally to the people instead of to accomplish the current practical laws that should respect the human rights of the peoples?.

It maybe its 1st failure, and the 2nd failure is that Oracle doesn't need the handwritten signs of the customers when in the market almost does. Oracle is against itselft.

It's Time We Talked

[Anonymous Coward]

Truth is, this has been a long time coming. It's time for Java to go.

More seriously, there are alternatives to Java. There are open source Java implementations and, God forbid, .NET. But, I think we've pretty much proven that the write once run everywhere idea just isn't feasible and perhaps it's time we went back to native code, read efficient and faster. But, Java needs to go.

Re:It's Time We Talked

[aztracker1]

Personally, I've been a fan of C# (.Net) over Java since the beginning... I also like Mono as an option. Mostly for portability in applications that may otherwise be Windows only. I wouldn't mind seeing a runtime like NodeJS (with some GUI extension) or Python become much more common. I'm not a fan of Python, but it would seem to be the way to go if you aren't doing anything on an it must be as fast as humanly possible level in Linux.

Re:It's Time We Talked

[Ossifer]

Yeah, let's throw out 60 years of progress -- everybody write assembler!

Java was declared dead so many times back in the '90s, it's hard for me to take these announcements seriously...

Re:It's Time We Talked

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Mr. Java Programmer:

I didn't say that Java was dead. It is all too alive and well. In essence, what I said was that it should be killed.

I'm a bit upset that you could even dream of being so arrogant as to think that eliminating Java, not even 20 years old, would be a 60 year regression. What about all the older languages still in use today? What about the newer languages that are just as good or arguably better than Java? It is arrogant delusional individuals like yourself, too lazy to use a lower level language, that have foisted this slow and encumbered crap on us all.

I understand that you are fearful of having your gravy train derailed and not being able to compete in today's job market using other languages. But really, so much hubris?

Re:It's Time We Talked

[Ossifer]

FUD.

Re:It's Time We Talked

[Toonol]

.Net is a nice platform; I like it much better than Java, except for the obvious non-portability. Mono is good, and in theory solves that problem, but something about it still makes me nervous. I'd use it for pet projects, but not for anything truly important.

Re:It's Time We Talked

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like you're the one fearful of having their gravy train derailed. Problems with .NOT much?

Re:It's Time We Talked

[aztracker1]

Mono works pretty well, though it's best if you have a good separation of concerns, or your GUI is very simple... most of my work is web based, and these days would be more likely to use nodejs if targeting *nix for a new project... but having a porting option (even if sometimes cumbersome) for .Net is a nice to have.

OSGi alternatives?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure whatever they develop, it's better than OSGi. Practically speaking, OSGi does not really fulfill on its promis(es). "Modularity Kool-Aid". Puuhleeez people. Java has modularity support on multiple levels (classloaders, object orientation, package access, services, IOC containers). Is a heavy-handed solution like OSGi worth the trouble for what it brings?

Re:OSGi alternatives?

[nullchar]

One use for OSGi on a web server is to host many separate applications. Currently, each application bundle (.war file) includes their own dependencies, but with an OSGi manifest, the app server can supply the dependencies so each application can be tiny - only include the resources it needs, not duplicate copies of shared .jar files. This saves a ton of memory in this situation. Additionally, hot-deploying of each application is much easier. Virgo is one such OSGi app server.

However, if your production app servers are only serving up your one production app, OSGi doesn't seem to help much (from my limited understanding), assuming you still have hot-deploy and session-replication and all the other clustered good stuff.

Re:OSGi alternatives?

[hey!]

I dunno. I took a cursory look at the Project Jigsaw page, and comparing it to OSGi seems a bit like apples and oranges.

From what I can see, Project Jigsaw addresses the problem of identifying dependencies between modules, so that you can package a framework into small, tightly coupled pieces that could be loaded as needed.

OSGi appears to me to be something more like an in-memory service oriented architecture framework. That necessarily covers some of the same ground of identifying dependencies, but it'd be overkill for most projects. However as far as not "fullling its promises", OSGi is widely used in container-ish projects that have to host an open ended set of modules and extensions: extensible IDEs like Netbeans and Eclipse, or Web/app containers like Tomcat or Glassfish. I haven't heard that OSGi has been a serious problem for those kinds of projects, although maybe that's because I'm not listening to the chatter.

I wouldn't be surprised if people tried to use OSGi for simpler problems and were put off by the complexity, but that's been a problem that's bedeviled the Java world for years: trying to drive tiny nails with Enormous Shiny Hammers. The problems that creates isn't always the fault of the ESH, sometimes it just means we need a smaller hammer. The attitude that we must protect the ESH at the cost of denying users a tack hammer is counterproductive. So is demanding that people driving railroad spikes do it with a 5 oz. tack hammer.

I don't see these as real issues

[Necroman]

I follow Java developments regularly and I don't see these points as being real issues.

Modularization: Project Jigsaw is meant to bring a more simple module system when compared to OSGi. OSGi is a great tool, but overly complicated for many people. Also, having Jigsaw built into the JRE will allow Oracle to split the base JRE into modules and hopefully reduce the memory required on initial load of a Java app. (Java core libraries have some horrible dependency trees, which cause a large chunk of the base JRE libraries to load on even the most simple applications).

Java Licensing: Sun started to push OpenJDK before it was bought by Oracle and that trend is continuing. The idea is that OpenJDK should be included with OS's like Ubuntu. OpenJDK is a GPL fork of a majority of the Oracle JDK, but some pieces could not be released as GPL because Sun originally licensed them from others (so those parts had to be re-written). I think it's better for everyone if OpenJDK gets more people using it so the bugs are worked out and it's a great open source Java implementation.

Re:I don't see these as real issues

[Anonymous Coward]

The reference implementation for Java 7 is OpenJDK - http://jdk7.java.net/java-se-7-ri/

Re:I don't see these as real issues

[slack_justyb]

I agree on your point with Jigsaw. OSGi and Jigsaw are pretty much the same approach to two different problems. OSGi looks to make applications modular, Jigsaw looks to make the JVM modular. Using one doesn't mean it precludes the other as they are just using modularization at different levels of the stack.

Also the Java Licensing issue is pretty mute. Sun and now Oracle have been banging the OpenJDK gong like its going out of style. OpenJDK is better kept up with and everyone should start moving over to OpenJDK. Yes it seems a bit dickish that they have changed the licensing agreement just to make the point, but at some point when distros aren't listening (mostly Ubuntu) somethings got to be done.

As far as security issues go, the Java Control Panel already allows the ability to disable the option where end-users get to decide if untrusted or invalid code gets ran. I highly suggest anyone wanting to work with Java and keep a secure environment to check out the options offered there.

Not to be a jerk, but I'm gonna be a jerk...

[The End Of Days]

Does anyone actually care if Ubuntu stops including Java? Let's not even bother considering that Canonical has shot themselves in the foot, calf, thigh, pelvis, and abdomen with their recent stewardship of the distro, how many people need a desktop with Java on it anyway? Are there that many Java devs using Ubuntu? There sure aren't that many desktop applications written for the platform anymore, and most of them are development tools.

Re:Not to be a jerk, but I'm gonna be a jerk...

[Anonymous Coward]

> implying that Linux's primary user base isn't populated vastly by developers, Ubuntu or no, Java or no, self-proclaimed and non-professional nerds/geeks/hobbyists/hackers or no

I mean really.

Re:Not to be a jerk, but I'm gonna be a jerk...

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately I need it. The SciFinder application, which ran perfectly under Wine, btw, is no longer supported and now you have to use the web version, which needs a Java plugin. :(

Installation was trivial: apt-get install some-non-free package.

Re:Not to be a jerk, but I'm gonna be a jerk...

[The End Of Days]

I seriously doubt Ubuntu is primarily populated with Java developers, which is the only thing I implied (more like stated.)

Your inferences are not my responsibility. In fact, on a site like this, mainly populated by undersocialized nerds, being responsible for all inferences would be madness. It's best to take it upon yourself to not read too much into things.

Re:Not to be a jerk, but I'm gonna be a jerk...

[Ossifer]

Java is primarily run on servers. Ubuntu (Canonical) makes great server OS(es).

I think Canonical is overreacting to the situation. They could easily distribute the "Sun JDK" the same way that they do Flash--where install downloads from the source site.

Alternately, if you are capable of putting one line of text in /etc/apt/sources, you're all set...

Re:Not to be a jerk, but I'm gonna be a jerk...

[dreemernj]

That part of the article isn't even a valid point. The Sun JDK is not being distributed any more because it is old. OpenJDK is still being distributed and that is the Java SE 7 Reference Implementation. So, the actual message behind the "Oracle is killing Java on Linux" fud is that old, closed source software, which has been replaced by new, open source software, will no longer be bundled with Ubuntu by default.

Re:Not to be a jerk, but I'm gonna be a jerk...

[txsable]

There are some of us who use a Linux desktop (in my case, Ubuntu 10.04, but possibly Mint on my next PC) who require Java -- Javasoft/Sun/Oracle/whatever "reference" JRE or JDK for either web applications or with Tomcat servers that won't run with OpenJDK, IceTea or whatever variants are out there now. Not happy about that, but it's my job and I do what is necessary to keep getting a paycheck.

Re:Not to be a jerk, but I'm gonna be a jerk...

[medv4380]

Clearly you don't play Minecraft

Re:Not to be a jerk, but I'm gonna be a jerk...

[Dr_Barnowl]

While the Minecraft download page insists that you should use the Sun JVM, I've yet to have a problem running it on OpenJDK (although I confess, I'm not a big player like some).

Re:Not to be a jerk, but I'm gonna be a jerk...

[medv4380]

The OpenJDK is slow and wonky with Minecraft. Even with basic GUI's I've seen the OpenJDK become unresponsive and behave as sluggish as the Microsoft Java Virtual Machine. Switching to Oracle JRE7 some apps that freeze with what should be basic File>Open using the OpenJDK go away. With Minecraft the start up is smooth and sweet. The frame rates become reasonable and Memory is no longer a big problem, and the parallel garbage collection is a lot better.

Re:Not to be a jerk, but I'm gonna be a jerk...

[slack_justyb]

There's a version of Tomcat that won't run with OpenJDK? Can you give a version combination? I've not heard this issue come up until now. Is it Tomcat or a WAR that is deployed to the server that holds it back?

Re:Not to be a jerk, but I'm gonna be a jerk...

[txsable]

I think it's the 3rd-party application that's the problem, and more that the vendor won't support their application (for which we pay a nice annual license and maintenance fee) if we don't run under the environment they prefer. I've never tested it with OpenJDK so I can't speak any more specifically on the versions.

Java, Ubuntu, and students

[Abalamahalamatandra]

I will say that this has been a major pain for me - I run nothing but Ubuntu at home and already spend enough time dealing with my kid's school's insane focus on Microsoft technologies.

Now, one of the most important sites for my kids to use (Aleks) is totally broken with Open Java. It was enough of a pain with Oracle's Java, but now it's unusable.

Thanks a lot Oracle! Wouldn't want anyone actually using your software or anything.

Re:Java, Ubuntu, and students

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get this. Don't you guys have OpenJDK (in the form of IcedTea) over there? You know, the open-source replacement for the Oracle JDK endorsed by Oracle?

All I had to do, was
emerge -C sun-jdk; emerge icedtea
(And perhaps an eselect java-vm and eselect java-nsplugin, in case you have another JDK [like Blackdown] installed.)

So what's all the bickering? Ignorance? Because it's not as if it didn't go around the news enough.

Re:Java, Ubuntu, and students

[Anonymous Coward]

You could simply download the Java Runtime from Oracle and install it on your Ubuntu machines. The ability to run on Ubuntu hasn't been removed. It has just been removed from the repository.

Re:Java, Ubuntu, and students

[kiwimate]

already spend enough time dealing with my kid's school's insane focus on Microsoft technologies

Yeah, stupid, insance, irrational school. The idiocy, using products that are niche and unpopular and barely used by anyone...

Oh wait...

Re:Java, Ubuntu, and students

[DrgnDancer]

I don't want to be an ass, and I agree in principle that school sites should be at least as platform independent as possible; but honestly how many possible OS configurations should a school test against? If you work on Windows you probably have 90% of parents covered. If you work on Windows and Mac you probably have 99.9% of parents covered. Is working on Ubuntu really worth that extra .1% of parents who could honestly just put Windows in a VM? I understand the desire to use what you want to use, and not let stuff like this dictate how you run your computer, but is it really worth a whole lot of tax payer money to make sure that the school website works for such a small user base? If so at what point do they stop? Do they have to test against every Linux distro? The various BSDs? 32 and 64 bit version of all of this? Install the most minimal cost/complexity Windows VM you can get away with and show the kids how to boot it to do their work.

Re:Java, Ubuntu, and students

[VGPowerlord]

I don't get this. Don't you guys have OpenJDK (in the form of IcedTea) over there? You know, the open-source replacement for the Oracle JDK endorsed by Oracle?

No, Ubuntu has the actual OpenJDK in its repositories, no IcedTea required.

Re:Java, Ubuntu, and students

[spacepimp]

I see your point, however some sites get built, use non standard browser/OS specific features and then don't get updated in a timely basis. You can be running Windows, except you're running IE 8 or 9, and the site only supports 6 or 7 (in a compatibility mode at that). At that point it is inappropriate that tax payer dollars get used, and in such a manner that Tax Payers need to forgo upgrades, or are screwed if the mistakenly try to use IE9 or a perfectly viable OS. Better off using open standards in my opinion than locking in Tax Payers to an OS of your schools choosing.

Re:Java, Ubuntu, and students

[leenks]

I don't get this. What is unusable? Why? You have OpenJDK and it is the reference implementation for Java7. Everything should be targeting that platform. If "Aleks" (whatever that is - got a link?) is broken on that then they should fix it.

Re:Java, Ubuntu, and students

[0ld_d0g]

If there is no alternative, then sure use the one that causes the least hassle. However for document formats, you can hardly say its a big deal to simply do a 'save as' in another format that works on more computers rather than less.

Re:Java, Ubuntu, and students

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called a STANDARD.

You code against it and then if it doesn't work on some platform, it's its fault. You might even go through the extra trouble to make it work, but it isn't on you. You were following the standards.

Re:Java, Ubuntu, and students

[Anonymous Coward]

The core problem with any public service: it has to support it's public. When you are talking about things at the government's scale, 1% can be 1 person or can be millions of people. Percentages are not very useful.

Let me paraphrase this poor argument to make my point clear, if very offensive:

I agree in principle that school sites should be at least as [disability accessible] as possible; but honestly how many possible [disabilities] should a school test against? If you work [for fully bodily-abled children] you probably have 90% of parents covered. If you work [with disability X] you probably have 99.9% of parents covered. Is working [for the disabled] really worth that extra .1% of parents who could honestly just put [their kids in a special needs school]? I understand the desire to use what you want to use, and not let stuff like this dictate how you run your [life], but is it really worth a whole lot of tax payer money to make sure that the school [grounds] works for such a small user base?

My answer would be yes.

Even in smaller absolute quantities these small user bases are vital. At a minimum, they force people to use standards and be vendor neutral. At a best they create a diverse community which doesn't alienate people for being different. (Yes, I know that USA schools are supposedly all about conformity and stamping out creativity in the rush to make future McJobs applicants who don't vote.)

However, I do wonder why isn't this school using some application developed by the larger government - thus getting those economies of scale - and writing it's own?

Re:Java, Ubuntu, and students

[slack_justyb]

There's a difference. I've heard of some schools in the area where I live that accept printed out homework and then there are two that require that homework be turned in a docx format, printed out version not allowed.

At some point I think schools can get carried away with technology that they miss the notion that the whole point is just to convey information. It's just like those PHB that want everything in Excel, even though Word would be a better choice. They're missing the entire idea that if the point is to get information from one person to another, then the best tool to complete that action should be used, not some favored technology.

So I do feel this guys pain somewhat. Some teachers can be irrational as to demands, especially if the teacher demands that you purchase a Windows license and a MS Office license, you can't say no and you can't write it off on taxes, so essentially you have to go blow $250+ just so your kid can stay in public school. Add that cost to the other slew of fees that public schools require, at least the MS Office lasts you until you snag another irrational teacher that says that you must have Office 2010 or better or your kid cannot attend their class.

Trust me my sister had a lot of these issues with the county schools here with my niece. Her 9th grade teacher (2009) required Office 2007 or better so an upgrade to 2003 had to be bought. Then her 10th grade teacher required Office 2010 so the very next school year yet another Office upgrade had to be bought. Of course, I hear about it all the time because my sister is asking me what technically is the difference.

So yeah, some schools, not saying all, but some can be pretty damn irrational about the whole thing.

Re:Java, Ubuntu, and students

[quacking duck]

It's called a STANDARD.

You code against it and then if it doesn't work on some platform, it's its fault. You might even go through the extra trouble to make it work, but it isn't on you. You were following the standards.

Meanwhile, in a place I like to call The Real World, the users of Internet Explorer will scream at the school administrators for wasting taxpayer money on something that doesn't work on the "standard" web browser that still owns over 50% of the market.

As a web developer I disobeyed my boss in 2005 and made sure to develop and test against Firefox first, not IE, even though our web stats at the time said over 95% of our visitors were IE6. It was the right decision and has saved a lot of work to re-do things once better browsers starting eating IE's lunch, and I take great glee watching Internet Exploder slip further down in market share. But the sad reality is you still have to account for it as the second-class citizen it deserves to be.

Re:Java, Ubuntu, and students

[Anonymous Coward]

As an Info Sys instructor, it is extremely important that kids are taught at an early age that there is more than one very good OS in the world and how to use them. Growing up with that level of ignorance is simply unnecessary and is like teaching the History of the World but only covering the U.S.

Re:Java, Ubuntu, and students

[Anonymous Coward]

You speak true Wisdom

I try not to see Microsoft or Oracle or Apple. I just use the right tool for the job at hand.

OSGi is awful

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but I welcome a competitor. This sounds a lot like FUD and butthurt from IBM.

damned if you do...

[blackfrancis75]

the really funny/sad part is that many of the same people here who will condemn Oracle for capitalizing on Java are the very people who sadly shook their heads that Sun *wasn't* able to leverage it commercially.

Re:damned if you do...

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish I had mod points.

Re:damned if you do...

[Tablizer]

You assume they are mutually exclusive.

Re:damned if you do...

[SleazyRidr]

I think the issue is that under Sun, Java didn't suck, where Oracle seems to have made it suck in order to make money from it. People here are (generally) in favour of companies making money by delivering good products. The issues come up when they try to squeeze too much money out and by doing so degrade their products quality.

Not an accurate summary of the case

[Anonymous Coward]

Those "two sides" are not correct. This lawsuit doesn't hinge on whether or not Java is open. The real situation is that if Google had licensed Java, it would be protected from Oracle's patent infringement lawsuits (due to licensing terms) regarding patents that have NOTHING PER SE TO DO WITH JAVA. Those patents cover techniques used to implement virtual machines, and they could potentially be used to sue Perl, Python, Ruby, and other virtual machine technologies.

Re:Not an accurate summary of the case

[WaywardGeek]

I love posts on slashdot by people who have more than the average clue about what's going on. Thanks for the info. I've been using openjdk for the last year, and I think it is finally something close to a real free software alternative for most Java programs. I also use Android's Java. Pretty much, I think we should be using any viable alternative to Oracle. They simply can't be counted on.

Re:Not an accurate summary of the case

[demachina]

So you did actually read what he said? I'm pretty sure he said OpenJDK and Android Java are at risk too because they are violating Oracles patents and so Oracle can shut them down or tax them the second they win a patent infringement claim in court.

Re:Not an accurate summary of the case

[voidphoenix]

OpenJDK (class libs, compiler, virtual machine) are were released under GPL by Sun/Oracle. It's not at risk.

Re:Not an accurate summary of the case

[Anonymous Coward]

Dont forget lpc. The old MUD's broke most of those patents 8 years before they were issued!

Re:Not an accurate summary of the case

[Rakishi]

Why? Where does the GPL version they were released under licence the patents in question to users or developers? Less of a risk doesn't mean no risk.

you Fail It

[Anonymous Coward]

poor priorities, all over America a dead man walking. users 4ll over the Our chances

The right tool for the job

[SilverJets]

If your kid's school is teaching them using Windows and the tools they provide work better in Windows then install Windows on a computer for your kids so they can get their shit done. When they are older and want to chose which OS is better for them, let them.

Re:The right tool for the job

[PReDiToR]

I set up the kid's PC with a dual boot that defaulted to openSUSE. Windows was there for him to play games on and this was made clear.
6 years later and he knows more about computers than his peers because he was given the chance to learn something other kids didn't know.

Re:The right tool for the job

[Anonymous Coward]

Now he gets to learn about the real world of computers, the land of walled gardens and closed platforms. Welcome to reality buddy.

Re:The right tool for the job

[Anonymous Coward]

Just cause you forced your kid to learn openSUSE (by setting it as a default) does not mean he is any smarter or had more opportunity than a kid who came up on the Microsoft stack. I myself came up via the Microsoft stack (self-taught in middle school) and now am proficient in ALL the MAJOR (wide-use) languages: C++, C#, Java, PHP, HTML5/JavaScript, and Objective-C. I am now also working on my Masters in HCI.

In my eyes this argument is complete FUD. Coders are BORN coders and they will code in ANY LANGUAGE on ANY PLATFORM.

That's what it is to be a real coder, not just a job-er.

Project Jigsaw?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good. I want to play a game. **timer starts**

No news in this article

[Anonymous Coward]

This article doesn't contain any news:
  - It talks about concerns about something not released yet. The goal of Jigsaw isn't to replace OSGi. Oracle uses OSGi too. Also nobody complains about Maven not being OGSi for example.
  - About the licensing and Canonical, I think it's about the old Java 6 and not about the latest and faster Java 7.
  - Then you have the security warning in case you don't have the latest version. I don't how it differs here from Windows, Firefox, Flash, Acrobat Reader, IE, ...

So they bend pretty much the reality behind in this article. On which slashdot jump on.

persistent system service?

[Chirs]

How about having a system service running with admin privs? On delete you move it somewhere inaccessible to prevent new users, then the service deletes it once it is no longer open.

Re:persistent system service?

[viperidaenz]

You forgot about a few points:
the bit where the process that has the file open can change the access to the file so your deleting process isn't allowed to delete it anymore - and shouldn't be allowed to either.
and the bit where its apparently Java's fault for not abstracting away a system limitation - adding another system service isn't in the scope of the JVM.

You also forgot that your system service can't move the file somewhere inaccessible to prevent new users because it is still open by another process.

Re:persistent system service?

[k8to]

It's not that it's Java's fault for being incapable of fulfilling its marketed features. It's Java's fault for proclaiming marketing features that cannot be fulfilled.

Re:persistent system service?

[viperidaenz]

With regards to the file deleting problem described above it is no different than saying it's Java's fault you can't delete a file you don't have access rights to. They should not have proclaimed it has the capability to delete files if it can't magically work around operating system and file system constraints. The fact the java.io.File.delete() method returns a value indicating success or failure means that it does work correctly under all platforms. I have never encounted a true return value when the file failed to be deleted. Have you? No? Case closed. WORA: 1. Naysayers: 0.

Decompile

[witherstaff]

Just curious, have you ever attempted to use one of the many decompilers out there on your lost code?

JDK java is deception for you!

[Anonymous Coward]

For tens of years, it was never released to developers, users, etc the essential features considered inside of a normal practice of developing applications that were habitual during many years of the computer science history:

1. 1. No statement label <label>:
2. 2. No statement goto <label>;
3. 3. So, it could not be easily used the java language as the intermediate representation or target of the following higher-level compilers or interpreters for the coming developers or users.
4. 4. No ASM assembler for the java's bytecodes although it did have its disassembler
5. 5. Unoptimal generated-code by its non-evolutionated linear scan register allocator vs the another optimal approaches as the bins packing and others.
6. 6. Objetive-C from atleast GCC-4.6.2 that has also LTO (Link Time Optimization) and optimization-expensive register allocators is the direct competition against the deficiencies of java.
7. 7. No released Development Kit for ARM architectures, to know that there are many ARMs as PCs worldwide.
8. 8. Advanced editors (e.g. of workspace with 4 window-frames for OO similar to Smalltalk's), IDEs and RADs are horribily slowly booted during seconds if written in java (e.g. eclipse, jbuilder foundation, etc.) vs the milliseconds if written in Objective-C.
9. 9. For minimizing the memory leaks of graphical applications written in Objective-C, the library Boehm's GC could help it to minimize this impact (e.g. not raising the exception of Out of Memory after of many hours of running versus the weird exceptions of threads of the JVM of java).
10. 10. For developers, Objective-C could be much better than java when it's for programming graphical applications.
11. 11. We think that in many years, the company did little research for improving the compiler technologies, so that it's much better to donate the investment to e.g. GCC's foundation for accelerating the researchs of the compiler technologies, overall for Objective-C and how to improve the Garbage Collector to be specialized specifically for Objective-C that uses also extensively C-compiled libraries.
12. 12. Freedom or liberty is much more important than the another damned circle based in the businesses-related laws's moral-ethic-tortures.
13. 13. Many researchers knew that the hard problems of many years ago and their hard algorithmic methods cannot be blocked by enterprises's interests.
14. 14. Objective-C always is good for interactivity. Java is justly the opposed.
15. 15. It's good to bring the "NeXTStep environment" from the past (in the abandonware) to the present for the near future.
16. 16. And so the many variants of Xerox Smalltalk from '72, '74, ''76, '80, and so on to the present for the near future.
17. 17. Apple did well during many tens of years with the many applications written in Objective-C for their electronic mobile devices and computers.
18. 18. When you've read the Red Dragon book of the Construction of Compilers of Aho-Sethi-Ullman, you will know that the java Development Kit will lack the essential pieces (impossible to connect every textual Ts) for the construction of advanced compilers using little efforts developing it.

During many years, the java company did the ridiculous to the developers, users, clients, etc. appointing for suscribing to their Business circles.

My 1st post (in spanish): http://www.javahispano.org/portada/2011/12/15/tutorial-de-lenguajes-dinamicos-en-java-7-por-roberto-monter.html

My 2nd post (in spanish)http://barrapunto.com/comments.pl?threshold=-1&mode=nested&commentsort=0&op=Cambiar&sid=87964

JCPM

Re:JDK java is deception for you!

[Anonymous Coward]

Those advanced hackers without fears of the oracle's capitalistic tortures could hack OpenJDK to fix some of their deficiencies, by example.

The lack of the statements label <label>: and goto <label>; could be solved atleast 3 manners that i could know:

1. To hack the Eclipse JDT compiler (ECJ) to recognize these statements and generate bytecode classes using this hacked Eclipse compiler.
2. To hack the JavaCC's grammar of OpenJDK javac for the same thing using this hacked OpenJDK compiler.
3. Or backwarding to Java2 and to use Polyglot / SOOT framework for extending this ancient language Java2 with new goto/label syntax features.

The deficiency of the register allocator could be solved replacing the linear scan by the bins packing approach or similar variants with good tradeoff of compilation-speed and generated-native-code-quality.

I think that it's enough for accomplishing the wishdoms of the developers, users, customers, etc. when it's in the terms of the construction of higher-level multiparadigmatic compilers (e.g. Prolog->Java, ML->Java, Lisp->Java, ..) unless complicated implementations (e.g. managing infinite-depth stacks in Scheme->Java)

It was an capitalistic/governamental/enterprise error of not-to-be-fixed it many years ago.

JCPM

Knife and Fork Solution

[vga_init]

Knife Oracle, fork Java. It's that simple.

Java could have been so much more than it is. If Sun had GPL'd the whole thing in the 90's, Java could have become a programming platform pervasively used in Linux environments for application development, perhaps even the primary one. However, other languages came along like Python and stole all the attention, and Java is forever doomed to play second fiddle. If it wasn't for Android and its new language they call "Java", I'd say Java is dead. Yes, it's wormed its way onto all sorts of commercial devices and platforms, but get too comfy--it could easily be dumped and replaced with a number of software.

Java still has a chance to be revived, but the open source community has to take the lead and make the free software Java the real, official Java. Oracle might just get fed up with Java eventually and wish to dump it, in which case they might just GPL everything they have or spin off the project as a type of community-based foundation. Either way Java must be free software.

Re:Knife and Fork Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Java could have become a programming platform pervasively used in Linux environments for application development

You must be living under a rock or in somebody's basement. Java development is not as sexy as the "Web 2.0" stuff using python ruby etc, but it is striving pretty much everywhere else.

Re:Knife and Fork Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Knife Oracle, fork Java.

Actually I'm beginning to hear "Fork Oracle" in hushed tones in all sorts of circles lately.

Re:Oracle and Java Vs. Java Programmer

[turkeyfish]

I invested thousands of hours of time and thousands of dollars in books on Java when Sun ran the show and Java held promise as an open platform that a user could use to do an incredible number of novel things.

However, Oracle proves only that whatever anyone does with Java they Oracle will parasitize it and take control of it, if they think it is their advantage. In the short run this is a great strategy for Oracle, but in the long run it is a disaster for anyone thinking of doing any development in Java, since nothing you create is your own.

I have moved on, I don't know about other Java coders but it no longer makes much sense as a platform for any kind of open work that the developer can retain control of.

java blows good thing i don't develop for android

[Anonymous Coward]

Java was always an abomination, which is why I'm strictly iOS, sorry I just don't want to mess with that awful crapola.

"security hindrance"

[Anonymous Coward]

When I learned Java back in 1996 me and some friends had several disussions on this issue. We decided that it was too early to answer back then, but most of us moved to other solutions for our projects. Mostly for other reasons, though.

For several years it seemed as if we had chosen wrong. The others made very well with Java.

But since a couple of years it shows our decision wasn't all that bad. Only one of us who delved deep into Java is still fond of the beast. The others use it because it would be too expensive to migrate both the code and the expertise of the team.

cb

Wot ? No unsigned ints ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Java... a "computer language" without unsigned ints. Yup. No unsigned ints.

Comical. Truly comical.

A crappy toy "sub language".

Re:Wot ? No unsigned ints ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Without unsigned is not a big problem at all (unless critical code parts as those used for CRC-32, MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, RIPEMD-192, etc. that use intensively 32-bit unsigned int or 64-bit unsigned long).

If you need the range of 32-bit unsigned int then use the extended range from 64-bit signed long that covers it.

If you need the range of 64-bit unsigned long then use the extended range from the class BigInteger that covers it.

Well, the issues are the poor performance using those easier user extensions, but by the contra, it gets the greater advantages of simplicity for all the application to be signed all.

But if the speed performance is critical then it's better "to add the feature unsigned" to the language java.

JCPM

Re:Wot ? No unsigned ints ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like someone didn't go to a university to learn about modulo arithmetic.

Re:Wot ? No unsigned ints ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey jackass... one-sentence-long paragraphs, overuse of bold, and AC posts signed at the bottom? Your posts look like they were written by APK. The only reason I know that you aren't him is because you're not a complete moron like he is.

Don't listen to Shuttleworth

[tomhudson]

Oracle has asked people to use the open-source version of Java, because the version they're putting out is only a reference implementation, and will not be updated in a timely manner.

MEMO:
To: Mark Shuttleworth
Canonical

Mark:
Nobody cares what you think any more. We've seen how you treat people in the discussion forums, refusing to answer legitimate questions; how you keep announcing products like the "Android Execution Environment" and then fail to deliver years later, how you flitter from one industry buzz-word to the next without actually developing anything in-house (rebadged cloud, rebadged music store, etc), and how you abandon existing users to chase your "latest greatest hope" in trying to make turn your failed marketing play into something that can be bought out.

Your latest "offering" - UbuntuTV - is a joke thrown together over the last couple of months using other people's code. No manufacturer will make a deal with you for this crap to save your investment. They can just go to the source - the original developers. Any distro can do what you did - root an existing linux TV and install whatever they want. There's a reason they don't.

Your failure to produce even ONE oem tablet deal almost 2 years after they were announced, and a year after they were supposed to be available shows that you need to resign. Now. Pack it in. You're an embarrassment. It's hard to tell who does more damage any more - you or Stallman.

Signed: The 99% of linux users who are fed up with your stupidity.

Re:Don't listen to Shuttleworth

[Anonymous Coward]

/.'s fed up w\ ur stupidity u fat diabetes ridden cunt. Die already.

Re:Don't listen to Shuttleworth

[Anonymous Coward]

Do u think anyone listens to u, u fat diabetes diseased cunt?

Re:Don't listen to Shuttleworth

[Anonymous Coward]

Hear hear!

The article is a FUD troll

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Project Jigsaw won't be allowed to see the light of day without a provable interoperability story with OSGi. They've been working under this assumption for quite a while now. 2) Oracle changed the license. It was unfortunate, but I think OpenJDK is a better default technology anyway. If you want the "Sun" JRE, you can still get it for free. 3) the Java plugin is a security hindrance, because so many people run older versions. However, that's no more news than a new article saying Flash is insecure.

Jigsaw vs OSGi

[fatp]

"...But some organizations are concerned with how Oracle's plans might conflict with the OSGi module system already geared to Java. ..."

So if Oracle integrates OSGi into Java, other organizations will concern with how Oracle's plans might conflict with the Jigsaw module system. So Oracle cannot do anything with Java.

Inline/embeded functions

[msobkow]

Erlang has a very powerful feature whose technical name I forget. It allows you to define a function within a function to be processed by higher level routine, such as a list iterator. My understanding is that a similar feature is to be added to Java 8. I think it'll be a very powerful addition to the Java syntax.

But as to Jigsaw and any competing approaches, I have no opinion or comment. May the best technology win.

Perl

[jbolden]

If you are talking about when Java took off, the early 1990s Python was immature. Perl would have been the better choice and was about 10x as popular.

The big issue is that Perl, Python and Ruby are all dynamic. Dynamic languages are prone to all sorts of runtime errors that static languages don't have. Further the theory of how to optimize static code is vastly more advanced, and was more advanced then. Given how Java was going to be running, dynamic languages were out. VBScript and Javascript were the dynamic web based languages. There were also more mature platform independent languages at the time like Smalltalk,

There wasn't anything else but Oak/Java to full the niche of cross platform, bytecode secure VM...

Hope unis dont teach java any more

[cheekyboy]

Because its a 100% corporate for profit language, I hope its banned in all universities because only real open languages should be tought there.

If zero grads know java, that will kill java.

any fast changing language is crap

[cheekyboy]

If the java lang requires constant updates new features, that just means the current java is 'not good enough' . If you have 100 variations in a language VM, then its already shit. IF its not perfect today, it will never be perfect, if it gets updated too often, its just bloat, and 10000 pages of refererences.

Turn on anti alias then

[cheekyboy]

Because of either java or X, they dont default to anti alias, you have to edit the netbeans.conf file and add an arg to java to force on antialias, then your netbeans will run at 5fps.

Come on, if gpu hardware can do millions of triangles per second, why not just put the whole editor gui in openGL, it would run faster than softrendered.

Hey, oracle

[kikito]

Can you buy Internet Explorer and Visual Basic?

Thnx bye

Oracle succeeds...

[tgv]

And once again, Oracle succeeds where many others have failed. This time they are going to make Java impopular!

The Empire Strikes Back!

[Anonymous Coward]

Darth Ellison strikes again

Try using JNI on other than Windows/Solaris

[Anonymous Coward]

Or I may be getting it confused with JNA, but one or the other basically only has documentation on how to get it to work on Solaris and Windows.

Jave was developed pretty obviously solely as a way to kill MS Windows.

Not only the language limitations indicate that, but (far more strongly), the official documentation does too.

Re:Try using JNI on other than Windows/Solaris

[jd]

JNI will work on any platform, but it's a bitch to get working with non-OO languages. (F77, in an example I give elsewhere, is a particular pain.)

JINI, the Java virtual bus technology, seems to have died a death years ago.

Java was designed to not just kill MS Windows but the PC as well. The Network Computer - machines that ran relatively small applets that were centrally dispensed - was to be the future. And, at least as far as handheld devices go, that is indeed what has happened.

Misleading article

[Anonymous Coward]

- The Ubuntu distribution issue wasn't an big issue at all: Oracle decided that the only distribution for Java in *nix machines is going to be the OpenJDK, which is better for Linux distributions (because is GPL'd). That's all the history, not a big issue since the "sun" packages had unpatched security problems. To me is a better move, since it implies that the OpenJDK is going to be the "standard" to follow (they made the same move for MacOSX).

- The F-Secure "Java considered harmful", was a misinterpretation of a lot of news sites. If you read the statement made by the security expert it says that the "Java Plugin" is an usual attack vector and should be disabled. Is not a big issue, since apart from some old intranet sites no one uses Java Applets these days. Is like saying that .Net is considered harmful because of the Silverlight plugin, or that C++ is harmful because of ActiveX.

To paraphase the punchline

[Genda]

Of an old joke, Java is now like an infected wiener, you don't need to amputate it... "In few days, turn black, and fall off all by self!

How to make your own .deb of Sun Java

[David Gerard]

How to handroll a .deb of Oracle JDK 6u30. We are using the result in production at work on Ubuntu 10.04 server.

learn c

[Anonymous Coward]

Learn c and start inventing...