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Oracle Hasn't Killed Java -- But There's Still Time
snydeq (1272828) writes Java core has stagnated, Java EE is dead, and Spring is over, but the JVM marches on. C'mon Oracle, where are the big ideas? asks Andrew C. Oliver. 'I don't think Oracle knows how to create markets. It knows how to destroy them and create a product out of them, but it somehow failed to do that with Java. I think Java will have a long, long tail, but the days are numbered for it being anything more than a runtime and a language with a huge install base. I don't see Oracle stepping up to the plate to offer the kind of leadership that is needed. It just isn't who Oracle is. Instead, Oracle will sue some more people, do some more shortsighted and self-defeating things, then quietly fade into runtime maintainer before IBM, Red Hat, et al. pick up the slack independently. That's started to happen anyhow.'
Oracle can't figure out how to charge $5000 per CPU per year for Java, so it's not really interested.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Oracle bought sun to gut the outfit of IP and maybe con some of Sun's userbase in to Oracle products.
That, and some misplaced idea of becoming a vertically integrated one-stop solution. (Yeah. What kind of fucking moron that suffers Oracle's software pricing wants Oracle's cold clammy hands squeezing their nuts for hardware costs too)
They don't give a wet fart about Java, Java's users, or any of other's Sun's formerly important initiatives.
RMS was right about closed software. If you depend on it, you could find yourself at the mercy of some narcissistic slimy fuck like Larry Ellison who buys the company you used to have a good relationship with.
The world is now running away from Java in every possible place it's not irreplaceable (like, say, blu ray players)
'snydeq' isn't a member of the community, he's a paid writer. Go look at his submissions v. comments. This whole site is a sham anymore. This will be my last logged in post. Complete troll bait anymore. Have fun being cogs in a money making scheme. Like Facebook they're done making money off me.
More over... spring dead? =/
I think that Java started to fail when it went into a split of Standard Edition and Micro Edition instead of relying on the same core for both platforms and then have a good interface between the different libraries. Of course - today the mobile devices are often powerful enough to run Java SE, but it still comes with unnecessary overhead there. The problems with diverting code started when Java 5 was released when you could improve the code considerably when it comes to being type safe through the Generics feature. However Java ME did not follow and that caused problems for developers trying to create a write once, run everywhere app.
I think that the business model that Oracle has is not working when it comes to projects like Java where there is a large codebase depending on the openness of the platform - and by cutting the strings Oracle will suddenly make Java insignificant even though it has been in decline for some while. Cutting the strings might also alienate many major companies that have a large codebase in Java today and that depends on a long term support of that language. So Oracle may sit with something that they want to turn into a fully commercial unit while at the same time they can't because it will kill the product. And a dead product means that they can't find any software developers on the market for their own software written in Java. A catch 22.
The other way around would be to make Java fully open source under some useful license, e.g. the Apache License. But I don't think that Oracle understands how to maintain control then.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Oracle can't figure out how to screw over java, and we are complaining?
No. Oracle *IS* screwing over Java, and we are complaining. That's what OP was all about.
It's the same crap they did to MySQL, it's just slower. Do you really wonder why most big web hosts have switched to MariaDB? (Hint: they probably won't tell you about it either. They still advertise MySQL, which for practical purposes it still is.)
So, what you're saying is that Oracle's stagnant "sit on it" leadership is bad for people for whom the language and runtime are the end, the product, the point of it all.
As opposed to in the real world, in which the language and runtime are just tools to get shit done, and its users want stability.
You don't have to guess which community Oracle cares about. But if you're not sure, ask yourself which community can Oracle extort support contracts out of, or can be upsold on other products.
Follow the money. How much is the JCP paying Oracle to give a rat's ass about their concerns? Innovation is a cost center to someone protecting a market share, and competing against others who are protecting a market share.
If you want novelty, go find it someplace else. The other posters comparing Java to COBOL, even if jokingly, are very nearly right. Especially if you stipulate that, at the time of COBOL's dominance, the primary implementation of COBOL was associated with IBM big iron.
And that's your historical analogue of the day: COBOL was to IBM what Java is to Oracle.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
You need language innovation for the things that can't be expressed in libraries, e.g.
* async+await from F#/VB/C# (later adapted into C++, JS, Python).
* non-nullable reference types from Haskell/F# (later adapted into Swift)
Jave does what it needs to, and does it well. So does JEE.
There isn't a lot of "innovation" in the stack because the stack serves it's primary purpose quite well, and is used by tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of websites to deliver business functionality.
And that is, of course, the crux of the matter: functionality. Business is not interested in jumping on the latest and greatest craze just for the sake of doing so. Business wants stability. It wants predictability. It wants reliability.
Not "innovation" for the sake of being different.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
He wants new features, new syntactical elements, gamechangers like generics, enums, and closures. He wants fun things to learn while sticking with the "same" language, things which will hopefully let him use even higher layers of abstraction.
Which is not in itself a bad thing. If Java doesn't add new useful features it'll get replaced by something that has them. But I'm not sure Java has a lot of room left in its complexity budget to add new stuff without becoming too confusing to stick with (assuming it hasn't already, which is debatable :) It may be best to let Java coast for a bit.