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If Java Is Dying, It Sure Looks Awfully Healthy
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Andrew Binstock writes at Dr. Dobb's that a recurring prejudice in the forums where the cool kids hang out is against Java, often described as verbose and fading in popularity but Binstock sees little supporting evidence of Java being in some kind of long-term decline. While it is true that Java certainly can be verbose, several scripting languages have sprung up which are purpose-designed to spare developers from long syntactical passages to communicate a simple action, including NetRexx, Groovy, and Scala. As far as Java's popularity goes, normally, when technologies start their ultimate decline, tradeshows are the first to reflect the disintegrating community. But the recent JavaOne show was clearly larger and better attended than it has been in either of the last two years and vendors on the exhibiting floor were unanimous in saying that traffic, leads, and inquiries were up significantly over last year. Technically, the language continues to advance says Binstock. Java 8, expected in March, will add closures (that is, lambda expressions) that will reduce code, diminish the need for anonymous inner classes, and facilitate functional-like coding. Greater modularity which will be complete in Java 9 (due in 2016) will help efficient management of artifacts, as will several enhancements that simplify syntax in that release. 'When you add in the Android ecosystem, whose native development language is Java, it becomes very difficult to see how a language so widely used in so many areas — server, Web, desktop, mobile devices — is in some kind of decline,' concludes Binstock. 'What I'm seeing is a language that is under constant refinement and development, with a large and very active community, which enjoys a platform that is widely used for new languages. None of this looks to me like a language in decline.'"
Wake me up when netcraft confirms it. Until then it's not dying.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Java had closures in the form of Anonymous classes. While it is true that lamda expressions will be much more concise, it is not correct to suggest that closures are being added with Java 8.
I often hear that Java "doesn't have closures." Since anonymous methods can capture variables within the scope of their declaration, they are closures.
I also frequently hear that Java is "interpreted," but that's a whole 'nother discussion.
Funny, I thought Scala was a fully compiled, statically type-checked language (at least as much as Java is). A language is not a scripting language just because it doesn't suck.
I use it on mission critical applications at work and it does a very efficient job of testing all the functionality of Nagios to page me at 3:00 AM. I have other java applications that are designed to explore the limits of slab allocation and heap return in memory. Theres even a java application I wrote that calculates financial reports. I know what you're thinking, and yes, it performs well as it stress-tests VoIP bandwidth and the helpdesk ticket system.
there are still so many uses for java. one of my earliest and oldest projects I still use to this day! its an application to help post Slashdot comme!####)))!%[NO CARRIER]
Good people go to bed earlier.
The Dead Collector: Bring out yer dead.
[a company puts COBOL on the cart]
Oracle Corporation with Dead Body: Here's one.
The Dead Collector: That'll be ninepence.
Java: I'm not dead.
The Dead Collector: What?
Oracle: Nothing. There's your ninepence.
Java: I'm not dead.
The Dead Collector: 'Ere, he says he's not dead.
Oracle: Yes he is.
Java: I'm not.
The Dead Collector: He isn't.
Oracle: Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.
Java: I'm getting better.
Oracle: No you're not, you'll be stone dead in a moment.
The Dead Collector: Well, I can't take him like that. It's against regulations.
Java: I don't want to go on the cart.
Oracle: Oh, don't be such a baby.
The Dead Collector: I can't take him.
Java: I feel fine.
Oracle: Oh, do me a favor.
The Dead Collector: I can't.
Oracle: Well, can you hang around for a couple of minutes? He won't be long.
The Dead Collector: I promised I'd be at Microsoft. They've lost nine today.
Oracle: Well, when's your next round?
The Dead Collector: Thursday.
Java: I think I'll go for a walk.
Oracle: You're not fooling anyone, you know. Isn't there anything you could do?
Java: I feel happy. I feel happy.
[The Dead Collector glances up and down the street furtively, then silences the Body with his a whack of his club]
Oracle: Ah, thank you very much.
The Dead Collector: Not at all. See you on Thursday.
Oracle: Right.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Yes, we can all dream of a day when Oracle is just ashes on the ground, and a footnote in corporate history.
The reason Java is still alive and well is not because it's a good language. It's not because Oracle does a good job patching security faults with it. It's not because it may be able to run most of it's code on any given OS that can run its VM.
The reason Java is still alive and well is because it is the OO language most schools, universities and colleges teach in their CS classes.
The great part about Java is that there are so many libraries for it.
http://docs.guava-libraries.googlecode.com/git/javadoc/com/google/common/primitives/UnsignedInteger.html
Python, Perl, and Ruby are examples of other languages that don't support unsigned integers. These languages are independent of the underlying hardware and automatically upsize the integer to handle larger value. You can always use the AND operator to convert to an unsigned integer for C calls. (e.g. var & 0x0FFFFFFFF).
You're not a real programmer if you can't adapt to the lack of unsigned variables.
People don't understand the difference between Java the Language, Java the Virtual Machine (JVM) and Java the Browser Plug-in.
What do NetRexx, Groovy, and Scala have in common? They are all languages that are considered production stable running on top of the JVM. There are about a half dozen production ready languages that run on top of the JVM in fact. By running in the JVM these languages automatically pick up all sorts of performance and availability enhancements (JIT, Hotspoting, caching, etc.) the JVM offers. That's a lot of R&D the new languages don't have to invest in. It also allows new languages to be used in existing Java infrastructure with little to no change.
The reason this is all possible is because Java the language is just an abstraction that compiles to Java Op Code. Java Op Code is very stable. Since Java 1.0 all that's changed with the opcode is a couple new operations and couple deprecations. There's still around 100 codes total.
So why do people think Java is on the decline? Well the browser plug-in has been getting a bad name as of late. But that plug-in != Java. And frankly very few applications need a Java Plug-in. HTML5 and JS work just fine for the UI. It's not going to be a great loss if peopledisable it. You also get knee jerk reporting on this advising people to get all Java on their machines. Like it's somehow less secure than the VB runtime executors.
As far as jobs, I work in the java space. There's way more need than people to fill the need. I make extremely good money java programmer.
The JVM or the language?
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
https://ep2013.europython.eu/conference/talks/developing-android-apps-completely-in-python
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
You should tell John Carmack about your theory, I bet he'd be really interested:
https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/85734195644727297
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
I consult in a lot of sectors. Banking, Insurance, New Media, Old Media, Start-ups, etc. People who want to leave Java for some new language are doing it because of a set of features. I've yet to come across anyone, let alone an institution, that wanted to leave Java because of Oracles court proceedings (I would assume against Google for Android).
There was tons of talks on OpenJDK at JavaOne. If Oracle is the next Microsoft you would think they would have put the hammer down on that. I didn't see any of that happening. In fact Microsoft's cloud support of Java is based on OpenJDK and that was a keynote item.
On the other hand, I do hear a lot of dissatisfaction from the MySQL folks. They are moving to Maria (or other DBs). That has little to do with Java.
I don't think Java and Rails, Python, etc actually compete much. They're very different technologies.
Rails and Python are great when you don't have significant technical skills and just need to slap some shit together and throw in on a web server.
Java is better in areas where you need high performance and scalability, but it's also much more costly to do anything with it.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
It definitely doesn't help that the JRE installer tries to also install the Ask toolbar. Seriously? Even Microsoft doesn't try to install Bing with the .NET installers, and that's their own property they're desperately trying to push on everyone.
How am I supposed to take a platform seriously if the fundamental piece that has to be installed by all developers AND users to use it is doing the same sneaky things that half the crappy freeware on the internet is doing?
Just how much revenue does Oracle make from Ask anyway?
Speak before you think
Over datasets are in the terabytes. Calculations distribute over thousands of nodes and cores. Only in the 1990s was thre concern about efficiency. 64-bit JVMs have been a godsend. Formerly a FORTRAN-90/C++ shop.
Java allows seamless GUI front ends and web-service control.
The new features in Java-8 are very interesting.
Java's problem isn't verbosity IMHO. It's the general mindset and community that has grown around the language. Instead of simplicity, they've gone into massive over-engineering, with factory factory factories and the like. A combination of pattern mania, and "enterprise" java, has resulted in turning an otherwise simple language into a veritable nightmare. Contrast this with the python community for example. Language wise, compare Java with C#. C# has done things a lot better in general. It may help that newer versions of Java will achieve some degree of feature parity with it but in the long run, I think it also has to be accompanied by a shift in the general notion of what's "normal" design in the Java world.
You're not a real programmer if you can't adapt to the lack of unsigned variables.
Forget about being a "real programmer" and focus on being a "real developer.' There are functional requirements and then there are technical requirements. Functionally speaking, how important is it to have an unsigned data type rather than having the equivalent data type and enforcing a "no negative values" rule? I'm not sure I can think of any, aside from the case of being able to interpret unsigned data types for interoperability. But that says nothing about the need for the actual storage of that data.
I'm pretty sure that some respected Computer Scientist said something about premature optimization....... It's a good rule. Focus on meeting the functional requirements of the system you are developing, and then optimize where it makes sense. I don't think you are going to notice the lack of unsigned data types. But if you really need them, perhaps that should be a signal that a lower-level language is more appropriate for that particular component in the system.
The point was to list decent halfway-decent scripting languages.
Powershell is a batch file on steroids. It is good for automating system administration in a known environment, but not much else. While many Microsoft products do offer modules, there's still a lot of (especially older) ones that don't. Also, since much of the existing API is a direct port from Windows' internal structure, many of the designs are non-intuitive, like having IP addresses almost completely separate from NICs.
My biggest complain about PowerShell is what I now unaffectionately call "PHP syndrome": Extensible through modules, but there are no namespaces. As the system grows, the list of core commands grows as well, and there is no clear grouping available outside the documentation.
Yes, it is a nice enough replacement for the dozens of little VBScript files kicking around, because it offers easy access to WMI and .NET. Unfortunately, it also brings over a new "On Error Resume Next", in the form of silently continuing after each error.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Java is a lot bigger than Java Applets.
Java Applets fucking suck and deserve to die.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
I'm looking forward to having to support crappily-engineered code in some other language! I'm going to slap the first in-house engineer who suggests we jump on the NetRexx bandwagon.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
NativeActivity doesn't support most of the Android APIs, including most obviously the widget toolkit. It's intended for games that just need an OpenGL context and raw input, all other kinds of apps still need to use Java.
And you know what? That's not such a bad thing. A few years ago I guess I was basically a C++ programmer who was in the "Java sucks" camp, and I came back to Java only because I wanted to write stuff for Android. Over time I've come to appreciate the whole platform and ecosystem more. Things I especially appreciate:
I'm pretty sure that some respected Computer Scientist said something about premature optimization
I think there is a balance to be struck, putting too much effort into optimising early on is a waste of time but that doesn't mean that languages that make inefficient soloutions easy and efficient soloutions painful are a good thing. Unsigned types are just one of many cases where java does this.
Unsigned types are a good thing for several reasons.
1: They are easier to bounds check. If you have an unsigned type you only have to worry about making sure it is not too large. If you only have a signed type then you either have to make sure all your bounds checks cover the negative case or be very careful not to accidently generate negative values.
2: They can store values twice as large. Sometimes that is the difference between fitting the number you want in one size of data element and being forced up to the next size (which is likely to double your memory requirements).
3: Some algorithms (particulally in crypto) are designed arround unsigned integers of a specific size.
4: the interoperability requirement you mention. Sometimes you have to work with another system where it has been decided by someone outside your project that say a 32-bit signed integer is sufficient.
Don't get me wrong all these things CAN be worked arround but those workarrounds mean lower efficiency AND more potential for mistakes.
P.S. Java does have an unsigned 16 bit integer type despite lacking unsigned 8 , 32 and 64 bit types. It calls that 16 bit unsigned type "char".
But if you really need them, perhaps that should be a signal that a lower-level language is more appropriate for that particular component in the system.
Mixing languages adds extra complexity, especially with stuff like java. So IMO a good critera for a language is what range of "levels" it can cover without having to resort to mixing languages.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
I only have two issues with java:
- the constant nagging from the java updater. (Although to be fair, the updater has been killed on any and all of my devices.)
- the braindead way of keeping old version of the jdk and jre around. Words can't describe how freaking lame this is. I only want one java directory, with one jre and one jdk in it. The new versions need to replace the old ones and provide backwards compatibility.
You're not a real programmer if you can't adapt to the lack of unsigned variables.
You're not a True Programmer unless you use Gamemaker! Return! Return! Return! Return!
Return...TO GAMEMAKERDOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
- Most CS programs train their graduates in Java.
- Java is pretty much the enterprisey middleware language these days. I've seen so many J2EE applications alive inside organizations doing mundane but vital tasks.
- Unless you're a web startup, Java is almost universally used for line-of-business application development. That ugly GUI that collects budget numbers from 500 databases and displays an "executive dashboard" was probably slapped together by an Accenture type outfit using offshore new grad coders and sold to companies for millions.
It's just too prevalent now for people to say, "Oracle sucks, we're porting everything to C#." I can definitely see a market for Java talent similar to the COBOL market 30 years down the road. People won't need millions of Java coders anymore, but they'll need older expert types to go untangle messes.
For whatever reason, Java seems to be popular with the work to spec, outsourcing shop types.
Java must be dying - when's the last time you saw an applet? Let's ignore that it's hugely popular on servers, for enterprise development.
"Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh
But if you really need them, perhaps that should be a signal that a lower-level language is more appropriate for that particular component in the system.
Provided that the platform curator even allows the use of lower-level languages. For example, Java applets have to be written in Java, and Xbox Live Indie Games and Windows Phone 7 applications have to be written in C#.* An applet that attempts to use JNI or an XNA game for Xbox 360 or application for Windows Phone 7 that attempts to use P/Invoke will die with a security exception.
* Technically, XBLIG and WP7 allow the subset of verifiably type-safe CIL accepted by the .NET Compact Framework. But in practice, languages other than C# either aren't verifiably type-safe (such as standard C++ in C++/CLI) or require library facilities not present in the .NET Compact Framework (such as any DLR language).
Very much agree with this. The library/API that comes along with a language is just as important, if not more important than the language itself. You don't want your programmers spending any time writing their own hashtable or arraylist implementations. You don't want your developers writing their own sorting functions, and you don't want your developers spending time trying to write their own "date math" functionality. Thie is why I find that .Net is actually quite good. The API is amazing. It includes just about everything, and it's very consistently done. It's also relatively free of bugs, and extremely well documented.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
"unsigned integers" are an artefact of "bit twiddling" programming languages. Bit twiddlers are essentially high-level assembly language.
Java is not an assembly language, it is an abstract language. It is intended to create write-once/run-anywhere code that isn't dependent on the CPU or OS, byte/bit orders or how many bits are in an "unsigned integer".
Most programmers actually use "unsigned integer" to refer to a collection of bits, not actually as a mathematical unsigned integer (cardinal number), just as they erroneously refer to characters interchangeably with "bytes".
If you really DO want to work with cardinal numbers in Java, just don't use negative values. A java int can hold a respectably large integer value. And if that's not big enough, there are special classes that are more or less open-ended.
If you absolutely positively must work with 100%-guaranteed cardinal numbers, use Ada, which allows user-defined types to contain user-defined ranges that will be checked at compile time and enforced at run time and that includes integers whose range is from 0..whatever. Of course, there's a price to be paid for that.
Rails and Python are great when you don't have significant technical skills and just need to slap some shit together and throw in on a web server.
I've seen this from the other side. Java is a *great* language for the middle of the normal distribution. I'm not going to name the languages on the left side of the curve, because the point of this isn't to start a flame war, but if you have a large number of averagely competent programmers, then Java lets you (as architect/manager/etc.) have those programmers be productive for you, produce code that can be read in the future by the same segment of the population, and be reasonably sure the language will prevent them from making hidden catastrophic mistakes. Also there are a large number of existing tools that let you scale their work out both in depth and in breadth.
The alpha geeks employing Ruby, Python, modern Perl, erlang, etc. are usually at the right side of the curve, doing very efficient, agile, but abstract and terse stuff that takes exceptional (not heroic, just unusual) sysadmin skills to get to work on a grand scale.
Due to the nature of the available talent pool, it's natural to see projects start with the advanced scripting languages among the startup crowd and then migrate to the Java environment over time. Twitter would be a good example of this.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
(chrome is 32 bit, and java 1.7 is 64 only.)
Total bollocks. Here's 32-bit Java for:
Windows
Linux (tarball)
Linux (RPM)
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
1: They are easier to bounds check. If you have an unsigned type you only have to worry about making sure it is not too large. If you only have a signed type then you either have to make sure all your bounds checks cover the negative case or be very careful not to accidently generate negative values.
So, what does your code do if an end-user passes -1 which would get stored in your unsigned value? And as a reminder, your argument is that you don't have to do bounds checking for the lower bound.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Twitter didn't switch to Java to take advantage of the mediocre "kind of a programmer" Java talent pool.
They switched because their "alpha geeks" couldn't make Ruby/Rails perform adequately for the amount of traffic they get.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Quite a few people just hate it because its popular.
char []?
Because it would be a dozen times more efford in programming hours, because it lacks the relevant libraries, because the amount of capable C++ programmers is very low, because C++ is a dying language in the enterprise environment, because C++ is not truely portable across platforms, because in the end when it comes down to performance the C++ implementation (which costed you 5 times the money and 2 times the time to develop) will be only 5% faster than the Java implememtation.
And all arguments above will kill you when you plan to maintain it for the next 15 years.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Wake me up when java supports unsigned integers. Until then it's not a real language.
While unsigned numbers are great for a few things, mixing them with signed numbers is a real pain. Just consider all the C functions, which take in unsigned but return signed, and casting galore that follows. Of course you can just disable relevant warnings entirely and blindly hope implicit casts anywhere will never overflow, but that is kind of sloppy, and just asking for someone to find a way to use it for an exploit. Which incidentally is what most C code does.
Yeah, no Java programmer needs unsigned ints. It's not as though they need to interface to code which does have unsigned ints, like calling C++ libraries, or reading data from files or databases created by C or C++ programs, or reading files in standard, language-agnostic formats which are packed full of bytes that you then have to process as 16-bit signed integers instead.
Lack of unsigned variables is one of the most braindead ideas in Java.
Characters suck. C++ and Python both allow easy 32-bit characters, which at least allows you to store one Unicode codepoint per "char". But in non-Western languages there are still glyphs that must be composited from several codepoints.
But why would anyone care? UTF-8 works fine for sorting and comparing and so on, it's well designed that way.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
With Oracle doing everything possible to kill Java, it's shocking that Java serializes.
FTFY. :)
"In our tactical decisions, we are operating contrary to our strategic interest."
I agree that Rails / Python are definitely the more small scale / personal project side projects type solutions out there. Yes they can scale, but I'd argue that they're not good at it.
Java SUCKS for small scale. EE containers are heavy and require a good set of knowledge to even take crack at a reasonable site, but once that painful layer has been passed, adding more and more to the service becomes as trivial as the business domain requires. The extra leveraging from well architected services and API's makes working on larger scale Java systems a dream in comparison to others (Currently working on a Java Web/Services project single deplyment EAR that's over 3 million source lines BEFORE all the libraries and server container features that we're also leveraging).
I'd also argue that outside of hosting, you can easily get Java based web service tools/servers/etc.. for 0 dollars. You can't find much Java hosting in the zero dollar number (Redhat's cloud Jboss 7 or the non-standard Google appengine being a notable exceptions) which may be an issue to some enthusiasts who don't do their own hosting.
Bye!
No, I've seen pretty much that dynamic happen at Google where we use a lot of C++ and Java.
There are some places Java just can't follow C++ ... the Google core web search serving system is mostly C++ because it involves decoding extremely compact data structures at insanely high speeds, to the extent that the verymost inner code has branch prediction hints in it. Java can't do that nor will it ever be extended to do so. Lots of servers at Google are written in C++ for the same reason. I don't believe it's only 5% faster, the rule of thumb I see is you lose about 2x the performance by using Java when all the costs are taken into account (like constantly re-compiling the same code over and over on the live servers, the GC costs, etc).
Despite that, lots more code is written in Java, because the cost of using C++ is so high. Sure, when the sailing is smooth there isn't a huge difference between them as long as your libraries and support infrastructure are good, but the moment someone slips up and accidentally double frees memory on an error path you've got a problem that can take an entire team a week or more to track down. I've seen it and partaken in such bug hunts. There's nothing quite like trying to find memory corruptions that only show up in the production environment once a day, when you have thousands of servers.
Basically any programmer can screw up that way. Java strikes a reasonable balance between safety and performance, which makes sense even when you are a company like Twitter or Google.
The Windows JRE installer is an obnoxious piece of crap. Fortunately modern JDKs ship with something called the JavaFX Bundler, which makes native installers (exe, msi, dmg, rpm, deb) for each platform that bundles a stripped down JRE with the app, so there is no need to install the JRE or keep it up to date. If you are distributing consumer software or don't want to handle the problem of keeping JREs up to date, it's useful.
There are also tools that can eliminate the need for the JVM entirely, for instance by ahead of time compiling entirely to native (Excelsior JET is one such program), or alternative JVMs that sacrifice some performance for code size, like Avian.
ISO-8859-1
The one with those funny marks on the letters? Bah. ASCII. The eighth bit is just a spare. If you can't do it in English, then it isn't worth doing.