Oracle Begins Aggressively Pursuing Java Licensing Fees (theregister.co.uk)

Java SE is free, but Java SE Suite and various flavors of Java SE Advanced are not, and now Oracle "is massively ramping up audits of Java customers it claims are in breach of its licenses," reports the Register. Oracle bought Java with Sun Microsystems in 2010 but only now is its License Management Services division chasing down people for payment, we are told by people familiar with the matter. The database giant is understood to have hired 20 individuals globally this year, whose sole job is the pursuit of businesses in breach of their Java licenses... Huge sums of money are at stake, with customers on the hook for multiple tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Slashdot reader rsilvergun writes, "Oracle had previously sued Google for the use of Java in Android but had lost that case. While that case is being appealed, it remains to be seen if the latest push to monetize Java is a response to that loss or part of a broader strategy on Oracle's part." The Register interviewed the head of an independent license management service who says Oracle's even targeting its own partners now.

But after acquiring Sun in 2010, why did Oracle's License Management Services wait a full six years? "It is believed to have taken that long for LMS to devise audit methodologies and to build a detailed knowledge of customers' Java estates on which to proceed."

Comments

Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

Larry Ellison is the greediest man on earth and Oracle is his prophet.

Re:Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

Sun created Java because they wanted to boost hardware (SPARC systems) sales. So, Java was not technically free. Now that Java is more valuable than Sparc systems, Oracle is not greedy charging for Java.

Re:Oracle

[ShanghaiBill]

Larry Ellison is the greediest man on earth and Oracle is his prophet.

Many believe that Larry is a Sith Lord. If he is indeed a Sith Master, then who is his apprentice?

Re: Oracle

[turbiina]

yes. But this time greed certainly cloud reason. In our organizatiom we have set certain course to free from oracle because of prices and agressive business practices.It started few years ago and next year we will reduce our oracle setup to two servers containing DB archives. And similar processes have started in many organizations. Good luck with yachting Larry :)

Re:Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

From TFA:

"Java SE Suite, for example, costs $300 per named user with a support bill of $66; there’s a per-processor option of $15,000 with a $3,300 support bill."

It has long been a standard practice with Oracle that they won't even sell you any of their 'Enterprise' products unless you also pay them for 'support' (i.e., their products are shit and after you buy them you have pay extra if you want them to actually work)

A while back, someone analyzed Oracle's financial reports and found that their licensing division, which also handles the support contracts, is responsible for nearly all of Oracle's profits.

Larry must want to buy a new island.

Re:Oracle

[geekmux]

...Oracle is not greedy...

Doesn't really matter what else you had to say because of this bullshit-flavored sack of lies.

Re:Oracle

[Hognoxious]

Many believe that Larry is a Sith Lord. If he is indeed a Sith Master, then who is his apprentice?

The clue is in the question.

Re:Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

But did people only use it because it was free?

Re:Oracle

[Cmdln Daco]

Ellison isn't anything magical or mystical.

It's a mistake to give what he is that kind of an aura.

Re:Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, with Trump as the next 'Dear Leader' and with the Supreme Court about to be packed with Good Ole Boys the climate will be right for ORacle to win in just about every court in the land.
They plan to rake in billions and billions from licensing.

Sorts reminds me of what SCO set out to do in 2003.

Re:Oracle

[tomhath]

Sun created Java because they wanted to boost hardware (SPARC systems) sales

More specifically, Sun needed a way to pry Microsoft customers away from Visual C++, hence the "run anywhere" claim. To some extent Sun's strategy worked, but most of those former Microsoft users went to PC/Linux servers rather than Sun.

Re:Oracle

[Hognoxious]

Sun created Java because they wanted to boost hardware (SPARC systems) sales. So, Java was not technically free.

If my local supermarket offers a free croissant to anyone who walks in the door, hoping that once they're there they'll buy something else, the croissant isn't technically free?

Re:Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

Mark Hurd obiviously.

Re:Oracle

[rubycodez]

False. Java was originally created as embedding controller language originally for interactive television. When it was released in 1995 it was released as a platform independent language, not SPARC specific.

Re: Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember when I was working in a large bank that went thru a merger of equals many years back.

The other bank is a Sybase shop with "enterprise" licensing based on total staff numbers.

Within a week of the merger, Sybase came knocking claiming that the bank now owes them USD 50 million because total staff numbers have basically more than doubled due to the merger.

To put that in perspective it was a few times larger than the then largest contract which was with Microsoft involving every windows desktop, laptop, windows server, office and other Microsoft stuff.

The CIO was so pissed that he had to spend all his time negotiating a new contract for the first month of the merger instead of actually planning the technology integration.

Naturally he ordered the bank to completely get rid of Sybase within 3 years. After 3 years, Sybase was almost completely gone except for a few trading systems that had major problems and risks moving.

Interestingly most of the DBs was switched to Oracle.

Anyway you screw with your customers enough, they will get rid of you. Even big banks which are dinosaurs when it comes to technology change will not be held ransom.

Re:Oracle

[unixisc]

Larry is not just a Dem, but an ex leader of the Democrat Leadership Council in 1992 which saw in the Clintons. He has nothing in common w/ Trump or the GOP. If anything, he's probably in bed w/ Sacramento Dems

Re:Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

Megalomania isn't an aura?

Re: Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the sound of one lip flapping?

Re:Oracle

[grep -v '.*' *]

[isn't] the croissant technically free?

Depends if the supermarket locks the door behind you after you enter. Yes, the croissant is free. YOU, however ....

Re:Oracle

[Tough Love]

Java was originally created as embedding controller language originally for interactive television.

And Java is the worst thing about Blu-ray.

Re:Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

I think its hilarious that Ellison was the anti Bill Gates/Microsoft charge leader in the 1990s, and now in comparison Gates seems positively tame. I wonder why this wasn't obvious even back then when Ellison was so much more ostentatious with his wealth than Gates.

Re: Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

It is very likely that is this is the strategy that oracle decides to go down, there will be a mass dumping of Java for A C-family for performance applications, and scripting languages for others.

Re:Oracle

[careysub]

Larry is not just a Dem, but an ex leader of the Democrat Leadership Council in 1992 which saw in the Clintons. He has nothing in common w/ Trump or the GOP. If anything, he's probably in bed w/ Sacramento Dems

Not so fast. Trump himself was a Democrat from August 2001 to September 2009, eight years.

Being a self-interested opportunist of no fixed allegiance makes Ellison nearly a Trump clone (except, more competent business-wise).

Re: Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

And oracle shoots Java in the gut after starving it and beating it like a red headed step child.. Bye Java, was nice knowing you..

Re: Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

Looking at job postings I think it'll be replaced with C#, not C.

Re: Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at it from the Sybase management point of view. It takes time for customer to change vendors meanwhile the increased income means bonuses and even a rise in the stock price. So by the time sales drop off management is gone having left with golden parachutes. The incentives for management of public companies is heavily weighted toward short term profits. Not necessarily a major cause but certainly part of the reason for the gradual economic decline of the US.

Re:Oracle

[BlackPignouf]

I don't get the joke. Could you please explain it?

Re:Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

Many believe that Larry is a Sith Lord. If he is indeed a Sith Master, then who is his apprentice?

His previous apprentice was Darl McBride. I do not know who took his place..

Re:Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get the joke. Could you please explain it?

The joke:

Many believe that Larry is a Sith Lord. If he is indeed a Sith Master, then who is his apprentice?

The clue is in the question.

The clue is the word apprentice. The US version of the TV show "The Apprentice" was hosted by Trump for the longest time until recently (for obvious reasons), hence the apprentice is Trump. Don't worry, it took me a while to work this out until I noticed the comments started talking about Trump.

Re:Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

I smell the next JAVA Oracle slashdot article. Or is that the reason there are no free PC Blu-ray software players?

Re:Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

> with the Supreme Court about to be packed with Good Ole Boys the climate will be right for ORacle to win

Don't be ridiculous... that would require climate change, which everyone knows is a hoax.

Re:Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

Larry is not just a Dem, but an ex leader of the Democrat Leadership Council in 1992 which saw in the Clintons. He has nothing in common w/ Trump or the GOP. If anything, he's probably in bed w/ Sacramento Dems

First of all, wave that "Democrat" around a bit higher, I'm not sure everyone could tell you're a Republican operative.

Also, the Democratic Leadership Council? Do you know anything about them other than the name? It's basically a bunch of corporate types who ran the "Democrats would do a lot better if they supported the Republican agenda" wing of the Democratic Party. People who, for the most part, ran campaigns right into the ground when they discovered that people who liked Republican policies voted for Republicans, not Democrats. People like Harold Ford. Who? Yeah, me neither. If the DLC is even still around, nobody takes them seriously. They wrote the book on how to still lose as a Democrat while riding Obama's coattails.

Sounds like Larry pretended to be a Democrat around the same time as Trump.

Re:Oracle

[Notegg Nornoggin]

Homey check yo internetsplorah he done writ it in dem slanty fancy-pants lettras it some TV bizzniss bullshit for crackers, nowamean?

Re:Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

Always two there are.... Eric Schmidt is one too...

Re:Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

Larry is not an idiot. He knows how to play the game. Safra was there at the Trump-Tech Exec meeting bowing and scraping with the rest of them.
Meanwhile, tech workers are vowing to never help Trump do anything that would result in loss of rights or persecution of Muslims and others.

Re: Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

As soon as the ORCL-SUN merger was hinted at, customers calling the Solaris support lines were telling us that Solaris was being torn out of their data centers in favor of Linux. And sometimes Microsoft. The incoming call volume fell and fell and fell over the first 5 years after the merger, partially due to that and to the fact that all the workstations and lower end server lines were ended Always wondered if or how the story would have ended if IBM purchased Sun instead of Oracle.

Re:Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

Filter the result omitting zero or more everythings?

Re:Oracle

[PCM2]

A while back, someone analyzed Oracle's financial reports and found that their licensing division, which also handles the support contracts, is responsible for nearly all of Oracle's profits.

Wait, you needed an analyst to figure this out? Oracle is a software company. Of course most of its profits come from software licensing. That is literally the single least insightful conclusion you could draw about Oracle's business.

Re: Oracle

[molarmass192]

See the little red arrow pointing down beside C#:

Tiobe

see the negative number beside C# here:

PYPL

I think you're wrong.

Re:Oracle

[molarmass192]

All true ... but I'd bet Sparc played some role in deciding that ints would be big endian in Java. I have a hard time believing that network byte order was the sole deciding factor.

Oracle JAVA is not that much.

[rholtzjr]

Having worked with both Java from Sun and Java from Oracle, there is a vast difference in ideology . It still seems that Oracle does not want to give up that the Database Engine is application and not just a data store. This is the reason I avoid any ADF type work. The database is just that a data store not the application.

Re: Oracle JAVA is not that much.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not entirely sure where your comment about the database being the "application" or not comes from but the fact is that oracle, as well as many other databases has very strongly built features for data processing that you'd be I'll advised to ignore. My argument has always been for good applications to use the right tool and techniques at the right time. Far to often I see appallingly slow applications because the insist on doing data processing with a general purpose language (often Java) instead of with pl/SQL or transact SQL. In fact oracle even builds a JVM into the database if you'd rather use it Java instead of pl/SQL. Alas, it seems that far too many developers only know how to use one language and are totally confused by the idea that SQL can do it better.

Re: Oracle JAVA is not that much.

[Anonymous Coward]

But the purpose of a database is also to ensure the integrity of its own data. This is typically accomplished via triggers for example.

If two or people are using the same database, the burden should not be on each of those ppl to ensure db integrity.

In this case some app logic moves into the db but its well worth it. Of course you dont want to move all your app logic into the db....only enough of what is needed to maintain integrity.

Its sad how many db features are under-utilized these days...

Re:Oracle JAVA is not that much.

[Tough Love]

The database is just that a data store not the application.

Oracle also sells an enterprise application suite and they are the most gawdawfully unusable, clumsy, slow applications I have ever had the misfortune to be subjected to. Oracle application superpower: throwing away user's data part way through an unbelievably tortuous chain of slow loading screens.

Re: Oracle JAVA is not that much.

[HornWumpus]

About a decade ago I knew someone who worked at Oracle (spit). Do you know what Oracle used for Email? An Oracle database...the email row has to replicate to your server before you got it. It took about a half day for an email to be delivered from the next office.

Re:Oracle JAVA is not that much.

[HornWumpus]

Oracle apps are a tell. If a business runs Oracle apps run away. It tells you everything you need to know about the culture. Just like 'united way partners'...run away.

Re:Oracle JAVA is not that much.

[Anonymous Coward]

If a business runs Oracle apps run away. It tells you everything you need to know about the culture.

Google runs Oracle apps and forces all employees to use them.

Re:Oracle JAVA is not that much.

[HornWumpus]

If true, run away.

Re: Oracle JAVA is not that much.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm ... no ... I worked at Oracle a decade ago and Oracle used Sun ONE mail at the time. This was before they even bought Sun. The *metadata* was in an Oracle DB, but the messages absolutely were not. Regardless, you don't use symmetric replication for mail servers. I can't imaging anyone at Oracle having made that mind blowingly massive of an architectural mistake. You don't plan to replicate entire Mail databases unless you are massively high or have severe head trauma. Above and beyond the implausibility, if symmetric replication took half a day, something was seriously borked in the configuration or the network line got cut.

Re: Oracle JAVA is not that much.

[HornWumpus]

It was the explanation I received for why their email was so fucking broken. Consistently taking the better part of the day to get a message to the recipient.

JavaScript

[backslashdot]

Switch to JavaScript. Seriously. Why do business with Nazis? Java offers nothing you can't get anywhere else or you can't implement another way. And btw, we need to switch CPUs to POWER and get off both ARM and x86 proprietary nonsense. It's worth the perf hit, though actually POWER is better than x86.

Re:JavaScript

[Tablizer]

The industry prefers a strongly typed language for certain mission-critical applications, but the choices are dwindling there. Dynamic languages are just a poor fit for certain applications.

JavaScript is not a viable alternative also because it has an awkward OOP model and/or syntax that forces one to over-use anonymous functions or lamdbas.

Re:JavaScript

[Z00L00K]

I agree, the question is if this headache may cause Ada to grow stronger. But even though C# isn't as good and strict as Java it's likely the language that will benefit from this.

Re:JavaScript

[Anonymous Coward]

Javascript is a joke of a developer experience.

For starters theres no IDE, so if u make a dumb mistake like typing or leaving out a curly or parens, you dont find out until you waste your time running the app...

Re:JavaScript

[benjymouse]

But even though C# isn't as good and strict as Java .....

"Good" is subjective, but how is C# not as "strict" as Java? Is it because C# has a dynamic type? Honestly curious here,

Re:JavaScript

[Anonymous Coward]

JavaScript is not a viable alternative also because it has an awkward OOP model and/or syntax that forces one to over-use anonymous functions or lamdbas.

That's the most ridiculous reason why not to use Javascript.
That's like saying Java is a poor fit because it forces you to use curly brackets.

It's particularly stupid given that now that Java has lamdas, I can guarantee they'll appear everywhere. And do you know why they appear everywhere? Because they're really fucking useful.

Javascript has its oddities, but it's maturing very well - ES6 is a very good language. Yes the OO model is different. But ever since the Java Beans pattern came into vogue, Java hasn't really made good use of OO either. Everyone just treats classes as static Hash Maps.

The strongly-typed language argument is utter bullshit too. Yes, it's a class of bugs that is sometimes limited a bit in statically typed languages (but definitely not eliminated), but the contortions you have to go through to compensate for it introduce new ones.

If you're writing tests anyway, you'll still find the bugs before production, and there's plenty of auto-build frameworks that will run unit tests on file save, which means that you're getting the feedback at the same time you would with a static language anyway.

Re:JavaScript

[Anonymous Coward]

You haven't actually done any Javascript development, have you?

Not really, and not in the last few years....

Re:JavaScript

[phantomfive]

Javas is not a proprietary language. Most people who use Java never do business with Oracle.

Re:JavaScript

[Master5000]

Very fucking great. So now, instead of letting the compiler do its job, I also have to write the parse for the compiler myself as an unit test so that when I save the file I get the same result as I would in a fucking IDE with a fucking sane static language with a fucking normal compiler.

Re:JavaScript

[Anonymous Coward]

One example off the top of my head is exceptions. Unless the language has softened in the last few years since I had reason to use it, in Java each method must declare every exception that can hypothetically be thrown if it is called. By extension, no other method can use that method unless it catches or also declares those same exceptions. By contrast, C# implicitly assumes that every method can throw a generic exception and it is valid for exceptions to go uncaught.

Re:JavaScript

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, Java code can throw a lot of exceptions implicitly and these need not be declared. Especially class loader exceptions are nasty in this regard as they can pop up at seemingly random and quite unpredictable locations. All you need is some broken or outdated class files in your jar.

Re: JavaScript

[Anonymous Coward]

Also debugging JS test suite dependency setup code is obnoxious as hell, and constantly necessary if you're using any JS framework with DI/constructor injection.

Re:JavaScript

[Anonymous Coward]

RISC-V is a better option than POWER and there is substantial and growing support behind it. Good point about ARM by the way; people tend to forget that it is also proprietary since there is a competitive market build around it. However, ARM still maintains control and Softbank will be looking to squeeze more out of it. Open architectures provide a better foundation for innovation, allowing hardware to be composed in ways that are simply not possible today, or greatly complicated by licensing and other IP nonsense. Opening the architecture also enables participation and contributions by educational institutions.

Re:JavaScript

[Anonymous Coward]

100% agreed. I just don't see how dynamic type advocates think this can just be handwaved away.

Re:JavaScript

[TheRaven64]

Most of those issues are ones of taste, not significant barriers. The real problem with JavaScript is that it has a single numerical type, and that type is a stupid choice. You can't do 64-bit integer arithmetic in JavaScript in a remotely sane way.

Re: JavaScript

[Anonymous Coward]

Just don't bother with the debate. Scripting languages are great and useful and all, but people who ONLY write in them are not programmers. They are either sysadmins (a different discipline worthy of respect) or "web developers" (not so much).

Re:JavaScript

[TheRaven64]

However, ARM still maintains control

And if you want to see what happens when they don't, look at what happened to MIPS. Every MIPS vendor implemented their own extensions and you have a choice between portable code and code that runs at a reasonable speed. In contrast, ARM binaries run on any ARM system. RISC-V still hasn't yet designated different parts of their NOP space for trapping and non-trapping NOPs, so extension is going to be difficult, and the RISC-V Foundation still doesn't have a process for introducing extensions for review and standardisation. This is why the ARM ecosystem is so valuable and the MIPS ecosystem is a wasteland.

Re:JavaScript

[tomhath]

Dynamic languages are just a poor fit for certain applications.

That's true. Different languages have different uses. There might be a few places where Java is the best choice - but not many.

I've seen far more projects (mostly database/web stuff) where a dynamic language like Javascript or Python would have been far better choices than Java. But Java programmers often don't know anything else (many can't even write a simple SQL query) so they try to use it on everything.

Re:JavaScript

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem what Java exceptions is that the caller usually doesn't know what to do with them. Take a look at any large Java program and you'll see it swallowing exceptions all over the place. I'm not saying that's good, just that it happens.

Re:JavaScript

[jrumney]

It's only a marginal advantage. I've seen plenty of bad Java code that rethrows exceptions from the Java API as RuntimeException (which acts like C# exceptions, in that it can be silently thrown from any method without warning) or has catch (Exception e) {} everywhere to avoid dealing with exceptions "until later".

Re:JavaScript

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen far more projects (mostly critical server stuff) where a strongly typed language like Java would have been far better choices than JavaScript. But JavaScript programmers often don't know anything else (many can't even write a simple SQL query) so they try to use it on everything.

Re:JavaScript

[Anonymous Coward]

Spoken like somebody who has limited real-world experience. Sure, JavaScript is useful in some situations, but is woefully inadequate for other problems. Not every application is a web page slapped on the front of a small database.

Re:JavaScript

[Anonymous Coward]

Java seems to have been designed with the "everything must be handled" philosophy in mind. That's fine and all, but it's unrealistic, and it leads to empty catch blocks everywhere. That turns into bugs and logic problems that the users report because testing doesn't find them.

C# was designed with the more pragmatic "handle it if you need to" philosophy. This leads to uncaught exceptions, which lead to more developer work prior to release as the devs work through "well, it's throwing a NullReferenceException here" (everyone's favorite...until they encounter TypeLoadException). This leads to actually fixing the source of various problems in the code before even sending it to the testers.

Re:JavaScript

[tomhath]

Yes, we're saying the same thing. Pick the right tool for the job.

Re: JavaScript

[Anonymous Coward]

Just don't bother with the debate. Scripting languages are great and useful and all, but people who ONLY write in them are not programmers. They are either sysadmins (a different discipline worthy of respect) or "web developers" (not so much).

Scripting languages are extremely useful and powerful in all manner of data processing tasks which is increasingly spreading into data analysis.

Re:JavaScript

[lenski]

RISC-V still hasn't yet designated different parts of their NOP space for trapping and non-trapping NOPs, so extension is going to be difficult, and the RISC-V Foundation still doesn't have a process for introducing extensions for review and standardisation. This is why the ARM ecosystem is so valuable and the MIPS ecosystem is a wasteland.

I remember ARM's earlier work, which had the very same difficulties you describe for MIPS architectures. Every implementer had a separate memory protection/paging architecture, every one had a different interrupt routing architecture. What a grinding mess that was... They wised up *just in time* (IMHO), establishing core ("Cortex") functionality which is required for all implementers. That stabilized the ARM ecosystem enough to allow it to grow dramatically.

If the implementers of RISC-V are wise, they would establish and agree on functional (powerful, effective) support structures such that it's possible for developers to implement kernels and OSes around it.

Given Softbank's purchase of ARM, I am watching their actions very closely. All of the embedded devices used in my company and many others are Cortex-M3, -M4F, and the many -A series processors. Softbank is in a position to increase their IP licensing fees for immediate profit, screw over the entire embedded marketplace, and would end up, after much consternation in the embedded world, ceding the market to competitive low-end X86 and one of the lesser-known architectures (MIPS: Microchip's choice for PIC32. Irony... :-) ). This is a good place to mention RISC-V *if* they are smart about portability.

Re:JavaScript

[Anonymous Coward]

While you raise an interesting point, it is a bit ironic considering what a disaster the ARM platform is, if you can even call it that. ARM binaries may be portable, but virtually every ARM system requires a custom OS build. No doubt, there is work to be done on standardizing the RISC-V platform and ensuring that extensions play nicely, but that is under way.

The standardization process doesn't need a corporation to enforce it with intellectual property, and the ARM model smothers innovation. At any rate, those who desire to should be free to go their own way, as with the BSD licensing model. Few will extend the architecture in non-standard ways, because of the trouble that entails in the toolchain. Most uses will just be composing various SoCs and embedded controllers with standard cores, only without the trouble and expense of licensing.

Re:JavaScript

[Tough Love]

The real problem with JavaScript is that it has a single numerical type, and that type is a stupid choice. You can't do 64-bit integer arithmetic in JavaScript in a remotely sane way.

It seemed to make sense at the time, when Livescript was just a quick hack for simple dynamic web glue. But the fact that this gaping wound made it through multiple upgrade and standardization cycles has to be a major embarrassment for all concerned.

Re:JavaScript

[Tablizer]

And do you know why [lambdas] appear everywhere? Because they're really fucking useful.

I have to disagree. Almost every use-case I've seen for them is because either the language, including Java, also has a poor OOP model (which you seem to agree to later), or the API is poorly designed.

For example, why can't one add an OnClick method *directly* to a button object? Why go through the Listener middle-man thingy? That's silly. 98% of the time a GUI implementer shouldn't have to give a damn about a Listener engine; that should mostly be hidden guts.

but the contortions you have to go through to compensate for [strong typing] introduce new ones.

I kind of agree. I wish languages were better designed to be strong/static, and dynamic where needed instead of all or nothing. Root API's are usually best as strong/static typing, but the outer layers usually best as dynamic. It would be nice to declare some modules as strict and others dynamic.

Re:JavaScript

[tepples]

Javas is not a proprietary language.

That will be decided when Oracle v. Google is appealed.

Re: JavaScript

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude I'm probably a better programmer than you and I'm a 'sysadmin'. I've written shit in over a dozen language and amount of hubris you have is crazy. To assume that you require static typing too program will is ridiculous. There is no perfect program and there are trade offs for every choice.

Re: JavaScript

[Anonymous Coward]

So what is your definition of a programmer then?

Re:JavaScript

[phantomfive]

No, you are wrong. Oracle v Google has nothing to do with whether Java is a proprietary language, because it is not addressing whether languages are copyrightable (only the APIs).

And if you're thinking that the APIs are a critical part of the language and thus should be included in your sloppilly worded sentence, then you're still wrong: Java is licensed under the GPL, and Google's problem is entirely that they didn't release their implementation under the GPL (which they've changed now, and thus will continue to use Java freely even if they lose the lawsuit).

Re:JavaScript

[TheRaven64]

It's especially annoying as there are idioms that will force all major JavaScript implementations to treat a value as a 32-bit integer, yet none that will work properly for 64-bit arithmetic, because the standard explicitly prohibits providing more than IEEE 64-bit floating point precision. It's even more annoying when you use the TypedArray types, where you can load and store 32-bit floats, 64-bit floats, 8-, 16-, and 32-bit (signed and unsigned) integers, but you can't even store 64-bit values - you have to treat them as a pair of 32-bit integers and perform your calculations as if you were dealing with a bignum.

The depressing thing is that Smalltalk solved this for dynamic languages sensibly in the '70s. Smalltalk had SmallInt objects that were embedded in pointers and were transparently promoted to BigInt objects on overflow. It also has a family of Float classes that implement fixed-precision floating point values (either the IEEE standard sizes or user-defined sizes if you'd prefer to trade speed for more precision).

Re:JavaScript

[TheRaven64]

virtually every ARM system requires a custom OS build.

That's not really true. With FDT (or ACPI in ARMv8), kernels can auto-configure. It's only older (pre-ARMv7) systems that need a lot of system configuration. We have had working generic ARM kernels for FreeBSD for a while now.

Few will extend the architecture in non-standard ways, because of the trouble that entails in the toolchain

This is exactly what happened with MIPS. People extended it and provided their own GCC version. The GCC changes were never upstreamed because, in most cases, they broke other MIPS targets. The vendors didn't maintain them, so you're always stuck with some vendor's old GCC version and all of the bugs that it brings. ARM managed to avoid this, encouraging people to move the innovation to other cores on the SoC.

Re: JavaScript

[Anonymous Coward]

Scripting languages are programming languages. They just target other software instead of the system interface.

Re:JavaScript

[HornWumpus]

Because having a final else clause for the unexpected ones is better?

I suppose that depends on what the final else case does. If it ignores them, it's much worse, if it raises them, it's the same. No better in any case.

Re:JavaScript

[Anonymous Coward]

The strongly-typed language argument is utter bullshit too. Yes, it's a class of bugs that is sometimes limited a bit in statically typed languages (but definitely not eliminated), but the contortions you have to go through to compensate for it introduce new ones.

It's not utter bullshit. Hardware languages have moved in the direction of strongly typed for years. VHDL is like Ada, and SystemVerilog is a strongly typed version of Verilog.

These days I do Ruby, Java, VHDL, and SystemVerilog. I enjoy programming in Ruby - it's a wonderful language - but I have to admit that there are times using languages with static checking capabilities makes a lot of sense. I've seen potentially very expensive bugs caught by static checking. Strong types are the first step in supporting static checking.

Industry experience has shown that static checking is extremely important when designing systems that have to work right with a small number of iterations. In hardware systems, for example, making mistakes can be very expensive, and having to do multiple spins of an ASIC is not a good thing. A mask set in a modern process can cost millions of dollars - and the lost engineering time can dwarf that, and the lost revenues can dwarf the engineering time!

Of course, in that business, people are used to relying on static checking tools such as lint and formal verification - so it's not a huge step to move to languages with better support for static checking. It's a very different world from that occupied by the script-kiddies.

Strong types also make it a lot easier to document libraries. I see that benefit every time I program in Java - the libraries are FAR easier to understand than similar libraries in Ruby, or a lot of stuff in the Microsoft World (such as that horrible Visual Basic language).

There is a net gain for having the option to do static checking in a programming language. It would make a lot of sense for every mainstream language to support this - even if the language designer gives the user the option to turn it off (or has it turned off by default).

Having said that, I can appreciate the desire of people to not end up in "template hell". C++ can be a monster - but since it's also a dinosaur that's not surprising.

It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[Required Snark]

I don't much care for Java and now Oracle is trying to kill it.

I never thought I would be on the same side as them.

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[phantomfive]

Worth mentioning that if Java dies, the thing that will replace it will be C#. So pick your poison.

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[GuB-42]

According to most developers who know both C# and Java, C# is the better one.
The only problem is that only Windows get first-class support.

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[phantomfive]

According to most developers who know both C# and Java, C# is the better one.

That's like saying you prefer drinking the water from the Pacific ocean over water from the Atlantic ocean. For th emost part, both languages are the same......enough so that you can accidentally be looking at one and think you are looking at the other.

C# programmers will say they prefer C# over Java, and the reasons they give are usually syntax-sugar related. Properties are kind of cool, I agree, but that misses the point of the purpose of Java:

Java exists to make things very simple, so that even incompetent programmers can work in it without messing things up too badly. By adding extra features, although they are fun features, C# messes that up, allowing programmers to do really stupid things. That's not the worst insult I have for C# programmers, but I ought to keep it polite.

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[The Evil Atheist]

Java makes things simple so that any competent programmer overcomplicate things to get around the simpleness of Java's design.

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[JcMorin]

Java is lagging behind C# for years now on every new features: enum (2004 vs 2002), generic (2004 vs 2002), anonymous function, lambda (2011 vs 2008).. pick your own and compare. Java is still lacking of 64-bit addressable arrays, async code as of Java SE9. Regarding poison pill worth mentioning that C# language is an open source Ecma and ISO standard... something Java is not. The compiler is open source so the whole framework. Microsoft repeatedly said that they want interoperability with other implementations such as mono... they even helped them at some point. During that time Java user get sue and now fine. I don't think we can say both C# and Java are the same at all.

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[Anonymous Coward]

They've been doing this for a while. We made an agreement with them, but we're dumping them for the Open JDK as soon as possible after.

Re: It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[Anonymous Coward]

Mono was recently taken over by .NET Core, which is Microsoft's fully open sourced portable implementation of CLR, .NET Framework, and the compilers. It runs on Linux, Mac, and Windows, and it is clearly where the .NET platform is heading, while previous Windows-only generations now becoming a legacy.

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[phantomfive]

During that time Java user get sue and now fine. I don't think we can say both C# and Java are the same at all.

Java and C# are protected by the same kinds of licenses, so you're deluded if you think the kinds of things happening to Java users can't happen to you.

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[rubycodez]

nonsense, the standard java EE libraries absurdly over-complicate simple tasks, java libraries are not for the 99% use case

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that unlike Sun/Oracle with Java, Microsoft has made public pledges against suing anybody. Laches would then apply if they tried to do so after the fact.

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[Tough Love]

Worth mentioning that if Java dies, the thing that will replace it will be C#. So pick your poison.

Never thought I'd say this, but leaning towards C# to fill the role of training wheels for the internet and fountainhead of crappy applications. The devil we don't know, you see. Or do we?

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never met a Java programmer who was programming in Java because he loved it. Your company moving at a snails pace and refusing to ever refactor or rewrite anything doesn't mean the language is good.

And yes, from a turing complete perspective you can pick whatever language you want. Can we argue the real world now and not whatever your professor is making you write today?

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[phantomfive]

but leaning towards C# to fill the role of training wheels for the internet and fountainhead of crappy applications.

Why, specifically? I've done both, I can give you advice, maybe.

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[Tough Love]

but leaning towards C# to fill the role of training wheels for the internet and fountainhead of crappy applications.

Why, specifically? I've done both, I can give you advice, maybe.

Demonstrated legal minefield for Java, in the form of troll Ellison.

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[phantomfive]

Nah, that's not a reason for switching to C#. Unless all your projects are short term, because anything that Oracle is doing now is something that Microsoft's buyer might do in the future.

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[Tough Love]

anything that Oracle is doing now is something that Microsoft's buyer might do in the future.

Seems like a pretty far-fetched theory to me.

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[phantomfive]

That's what everyone said about Sun, too, when they started using Java.
It doesn't have to be a buyer, Microsoft could just get a new CEO.

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[Anonymous Coward]

Having worked moderately with both Java and C#, in my opinion the implementation of generics is superior in C#. In Java there is type erasure that felt unnecessarily constraining, but your mileage may vary.

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[Tough Love]

It doesn't have to be a buyer, Microsoft could just get a new CEO.

No. You have no idea what you are talking about. Microsoft's "promise" carries considerable legal weight and cannot be undone by a new CEO on a whim. There may indeed be questions to ask about the coverage and durability of Microsoft's promises, but such questions lie well beyond your limited comprehension of the situation.

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably the only thing in the world that could dispose of the Java cancer.
Hail the return to sanity of C++ and C. C# is not any better.

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[exomondo]

Java and C# are protected by the same kinds of licenses, so you're deluded if you think the kinds of things happening to Java users can't happen to you.

Can you cite those licenses? I don't believe Java is protected by anything akin to Microsoft's legally-binding Community/Open Specification Promises (covenant not to sue), hence the Oracle V Google litigation.

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what everyone said about Sun, too, when they started using Java.

Sun never offerred Java users any protection and retained all rights. Therefore the freedom of Java could be stripped away (or at least legally challenged) anytime Sun (or whoever owns it) wished.

It doesn't have to be a buyer, Microsoft could just get a new CEO.

No. A Covenant Not To Sue is not something you can just decide you don't want to abide by anymore and it has nothing to do with the CEO. Im not sure why you think this is the case but suffice to say you need to go and do some reading on this because you appear to fundamentally lack an understanding of the legal constructs involved here.

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[phantomfive]

No. You have no idea what you are talking about. Microsoft's "promise" carries considerable legal weight and cannot be undone by a new CEO on a whim.

What legal cases have addressed this question before? The real truth is you have no clue what you are talking about, because 'promises' not to sue are paper thin.
A good lawyer can always find a way around 'promises'.

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[phantomfive]

I don't believe Java is protected by anything akin to Microsoft's legally-binding Community/Open Specification Promises (covenant not to sue)

Check it

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[phantomfive]

Sun never offerred Java users any protection

Yes they did.

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[exomondo]

I don't believe Java is protected by anything akin to Microsoft's legally-binding Community/Open Specification Promises (covenant not to sue)

Check it

That's the license for the JDK and isn't a covenant not to sue.

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[phantomfive]

Yeah, notice that it's an actual license, with legal weight, not some kind of novel legal concept that has never been tried in court.

You're better off with the license, legally speaking, than some vague 'promise.' Note also, if you read the actual 'covenant not to sue', it has loopholes. They can still sue you, or they can change the terms at any time.

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[exomondo]

Yeah, notice that it's an actual license, with legal weight, not some kind of novel legal concept that has never been tried in court.

You actually think a covenant not to sue and promissory estoppel are novel legal concepts that have never been tried in court? Really?

You're better off with the license, legally speaking, than some vague 'promise.'

But what we are talking about is not "some vague promise", it just appears vague to you because you are unfamiliar with the concept. And perhaps you haven't heard of Oracle Vs Google lawsuit? How did the JDK license help them out there?

They can still sue you, or they can change the terms at any time.

Sue you over what specifically in the context of the promise with relation to C#? What terms do you understand them to be able to change retroactively (of course retroactive changes are what is important here)? What is the specific thing you are concerned about here? It's seems your objection is based on the fact that you don't really understand the legal principles.

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[phantomfive]

Nah, the same kinds of arguments you're making here are the ones Java programmers made a decade ago.

And those Java programmers sounded just as smug as you do now. Look where that got them.

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[Tough Love]

Like I said, you have not the slightest clue what you are talking about. I'm betting that you do not even know the word "estoppel".

"Better to shut one's mouth and be thought a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt."

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[snadrus]

GoLang is picking up speed too. It's the fastest growing language int TIOBE's top 20. At current acceleration, it'll have more programmers then C# by next year!

Then there's Node, Rust and even Elixir. No need for 15-year-old, slow tech anymore.

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[phantomfive]

Like I said, you have not the slightest clue what you are talking about.

Like I said, you sound just like those smug Java developers years ago.
And now you probably think that people can't use Java because of lawsuit/licensing threats. Of course, you are wrong again.

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[phantomfive]

I can assure you I will not be starting any new projects in C#, or Java, for that matter.

It's not always my choice, though.

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[Tough Love]

You try to mask your ignorance by bleating in platitudes, but it doesn't work.

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[Anonymous Coward]

Java is lagging behind C# for years now on every new features: enum (2004 vs 2002), generic (2004 vs 2002), anonymous function, lambda (2011 vs 2008).. pick your own and compare.

In the time scale of programming language life, two years is trivial.

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[phantomfive]

You probably read the word 'estoppel' on a blog somewhere, and haven't even read the licensing for C#.

Anyway, I thought I linked to this earlier, but it was on another thread. Java is covered by the same kind of 'promise' as .net,, except it's an actual license, not a 'promise.'

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[Anonymous Coward]

It's true, but to be fair, C# got to benefit from lessons learned by Java.

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[Tough Love]

What an incredibly crappy license. I had no idea Oracle was abusing their stewardship of Java so badly. Just one of many little gems: according to Oracle, you have "rights to view, download, use and reproduce the Specification only for the purpose of internal evaluation. This includes (i) developing applications intended to run on an implementation of the Specification, provided that such applications do not themselves implement any portion(s) of the Specification..."

Fuck Oracle.

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[phantomfive]

At least you showed you can read licenses. So good job.

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[exomondo]

Nah, the same kinds of arguments you're making here are the ones Java programmers made a decade ago.

No, you only think that because as you have continually demonstrated you fail to understand the legal concepts involved here. It's really not very complex so I can't see why you're having such difficulty with it. You can't even explain what you're concerned about because you don't understand it anyway.

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[phantomfive]

I'm not concerned lol. I merely pointed out that Java and C# are protected by similar licenses, although you didn't know it. For some reason you were expressing your concern about Java.

Also, I think that C# is an excellent language overall, and .NET is a fine platform. The reason I choose not to use it is so I can avoid working with incompetent programmers.

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[exomondo]

I merely pointed out that Java and C# are protected by similar licenses

No, wrong. They are not protected by similar licenses at all - what I'm talking about is the community promise which is not a license at all. What you pointed out was the license for the JDK (Java Development Kit, which is not all of Java, the license for the JDK does not apply to other parts of Java) and then asserted that you think the Community Promise is some kind of novel legal concept that has never been tried in court, which is obviously untrue. Now you have changed your mind and think the Community Promise is a license and that it is similar to the JDK license while even a cursory reading of them will demonstrate to you that they are not similar at all.

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[phantomfive]

then asserted that you think the Community Promise is some kind of novel legal concept that has never been tried in court [slashdot.org], which is obviously untrue.

Link to the case or STFU.

Re:It's nice that Oracle and I agree

[exomondo]

It's not a case, it is the legal principle of promissory estoppel which is not a "novel legal concept".

Death moans

[Tablizer]

The rats know the Oracle Ship is burning and are trying to milk every last drop from the Java cash cow before they scurry into rafts.

Re: Death moans

[Anonymous Coward]

They go after companies that explicitly enable pay to use features of the Oracle JVM. The flag used is even called something like EnableComercialFeatures .

There is even a simple solution if you really want to ensure nobody in the company tries that: use the OpenJDK, which is the official reference implementation.

Re:Death moans

[phantomfive]

I would agree with you, but it's hard to call this a burning ship when they've been doing the same thing for over two decades.

Re:Death moans

[Tough Love]

The rats know the Oracle Ship is burning and are trying to milk every last drop from the Java cash cow before they scurry into rafts.

It's beyond me why anyone would use Oracle when Postgres is available.

I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't there an open source version of Java? What's the issue? Who cares what Oracle does if there's code available?

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

the JVM has never been 'fully' open sourced (IIRC) and the "enterprise" SDK, JDK, JRE are apparently closed sourced (in some way) (I'm sure some lawyer will tell me I'm wrong, but that is the basic gist of it) so this has no impact on Android... and honestly that is really all anyone cares about... except some companies that were violating their service contracts with Oracle... and were stupid enough to do so while having service contracts with Oracle....

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

the JVM has never been 'fully' open sourced (IIRC) and the "enterprise" SDK, JDK, JRE are apparently closed sourced (in some way) (I'm sure some lawyer will tell me I'm wrong, but that is the basic gist of it) so this has no impact on Android... and honestly that is really all anyone cares about... except some companies that were violating their service contracts with Oracle... and were stupid enough to do so while having service contracts with Oracle....

Would someone using other JVM languages such as Clojure or Scala be under any potential legal threat?

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

the JVM has never been 'fully' open sourced (IIRC)

The reference implementation is fully open source, it uses a variation of the GPL with various exceptions. It also does not provide the features in question.

"enterprise" SDK, JDK, JRE are apparently closed sourced (in some way) (I'm sure some lawyer will tell me I'm wrong

The enterprise implementations share a lot of code with the OpenJDK however they also ship with various proprietary extensions that have to be turned on by the user. So you are mostly right with this.

except some companies that were violating their service contracts with Oracle.

The only ugly part here is that the features could be used with the freely available ORACLE JDK - no contract needed, free to use outside of actual production. So any brainless intern could enable these features without thinking about it and land a company in a lot of financial trouble.

Re:I don't get it

[tepples]

Someone running Clojure or Scala code in a JVM with the premium features enabled without a license for said premium features would be liable.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

So what's the complaining about if those features have to be manually enabled and neither Scala, nor Clojure or any other JVM language requires this? It seems completely fair to me. If you choose to manually enable (it's hard to do accidentally) certain commercial features, you have to pay. Booo hooo! We expect everything to be free and Oracle just to have no reason to develop the platform at all?

In the case that someone screwed up and enabled commercial features network-wide "accidentally", sorry but that's a poorly managed organization and they deserve anything coming to them. They should know what they're running. If I confuse my wallet with someone else's and take it, my mistake still doesn't make it OK.

The only way I'd see an issue with this is if the commercial features were automatically enabled.

I really hate to defend ORACLE on this

[Anonymous Coward]

They are only going after companies that explicitly enable pay to use features of the ORACLE JVM. As in you cannot accidentally use these features, they just wont work. Of course any shitty intern can write a script that includes the required EnableCommercialFeatures flag, at which point you fire the intern and switch to the OpenJDK, which is the official reference implementation of Java without the commercial features of the ORACLE JVM.

Re:I really hate to defend ORACLE on this

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course crappy companies like Juniper write software that plain does not run on OpenJDK. And unfortunately some IT departments are too stupid to see this as the giant red "under no circumstances buy from this shitty company" sign that it is.

Re:I really hate to defend ORACLE on this

[JaredOfEuropa]

A former client actually had this policy specifically related to Oracle products. No stuff allowed that doesn't run on the free JRE, and no Oracle database products at all, unless it applied to a mission critical piece of software for which there was no viable alternative. The reason: Oracle was too expensive, and they were tired of the audits and the constant nickel & diming. And this was a Fortune 500 company with deep pockets and no fear of (over)spending.

Re:I really hate to defend ORACLE on this

[Anonymous Coward]

Navigating their license labyrinth is never worth it.

Re:I really hate to defend ORACLE on this

[tepples]

A former client actually had this policy specifically related to Oracle products. [...] no Oracle database products at all

Was this interpreted broadly enough to cover MySQL? Or MariaDB, which is a fork of MySQL?

Re:I really hate to defend ORACLE on this

[Anonymous Coward]

As in you cannot accidentally use these features,

Perhaps now, let's see if it becomes like the Ask toolbar.

Re:I really hate to defend ORACLE on this

[HornWumpus]

Those should just be banned because of suckage.

CS curriculum

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps now is the time for all those university courses to abandon Java and start teaching C++1X with best practices as the first language. It's better to open the world to the students rather put them into a cube composed of symmetrically transforming interconnected cubes, with traps, and close the door until one survival walks out.

Re: CS curriculum

[SirAudioMan]

I agree with you! However, C/C++ isn't 'sexy' and isn't a buzzword thrown around to attract more students. Learning C/C++ is hard as a first language, though it makes for better programmers. Java looks easy but encourages bad design principals. I wish more CS schools would teach first principals like used to be taught 20-30 years ago.

Re: CS curriculum

[jareth-0205]

Learning C/C++ is hard as a first language, though it makes for better programmers.

Yah, sure. I don't know of many that actually believe this, and you're gonna have to back up that statement a little...

Re: CS curriculum

[tippen]

Learning C/C++ is hard as a first language, though it makes for better programmers.

Yah, sure. I don't know of many that actually believe this, and you're gonna have to back up that statement a little...

The Perils of JavaSchools

Re: CS curriculum

[smallfries]

It's a good article, but he does not make the argument that you say. He says that teaching C first filters out a lot of bad programmers, not makes good programmers. These are not quite the same thing.

If a school wants to make good programmers then they shouldn't teach C first as it is a horrifically bad language for learning. Joel makes the argument that it is good for testing ability. Python is actually a good first language for learning. Maybe C as a second language to learn about memory and pointers. Probably Haskell as a third language to open their minds a little.

Re: CS curriculum

[Anonymous Coward]

Learning C/C++ is hard as a first language, though it makes for better programmers.

Yah, sure. I don't know of many that actually believe this, and you're gonna have to back up that statement a little...

BASIC is the perfect first programming languages to introduce the fundamentals during the first semester of an undergraduate CS/EE/Math curriculum. Second semester use of Python (modern language) or Modula-2/3 (older language) depending whether the student is a CS, EE, or Math major due to the dynamic versus strict data typing philosophy. Afterwards introducing the students to C, ASM, and C++ during the third and fourth years, respectively to CS and EE students. For Math majors they should be introduced to Python, R, Octave as early as possible in their degree programme. All programming courses should be taught using a *nix terminal interface especially for the CS and EE students.

Re: CS curriculum

[Anonymous Coward]

When you do "modern C++" (after C++11) C++ is actually a quite nice language with much of the niceties that we know from scripting languages.
Of course you can do horrible stuff in it (e.g. when you treat it as C), but that is true for many languages.

Re: CS curriculum

[Anonymous Coward]

No not R. Please. And no MATLAB either.

Makes incompetent bozos think they can program. Yikes, worst code ever

Re: CS curriculum

[Anonymous Coward]

C++ *could* be easier to learn. Instead their naming convention does not match what comp sci teaches everyone.

std::map is actually a balanced tree with a key lookup
std::unordered_map is hash table with a key lookup
The safe pointer stuff is a pain. You have to continuously look up what to use. Where as you could just new/delete. But be 'unsafe'. So I am still managing pointers. Just in a different way. But most likely it does not leak (usually).

They throw templates at people and expect them to grasp it right away. When templates/defines are sort of advanced sorts of things. Yet good portions of the code are based on that.

Then you dig into the std lib code and it is a nasty nightmare of single letter abbreviations that is kind of hard to follow. The code could work *exactly* the same with the same flow and conditionals. But a bit of spacing and better naming would go a long way in that library. So the one major piece of code where people could learn how to write good code is obfuscated into near gibberish that should not pass any code review.

Then debugging any of that. I can not tell you how many times I have ended up in the std::string constructor. Pass a string around and you want to pass by value in c++ you get to find out quick that you are copying more data around than needed.

C is dead simple to learn. C++ is also fairly simple to learn. But C++ goes onto radically over complicate the whole thing.

Also anyone who thinks 'java' is going away because of cost has no idea about that. I am looking for a job right now. I would say a good 80% of the job listings are for people who know java. The rest are evenly split between C#/C++/javascript or some other niche language/library.

Re: CS curriculum

[johannesg]

I agree with you! However, C/C++ isn't 'sexy' and isn't a buzzword thrown around to attract more students. Learning C/C++ is hard as a first language, though it makes for better programmers.

There is no language called "C/C++"! There is a language called C, and there is another called C++. They share some syntax (but not all), and one is occasionally (and incorrectly) considered to be a subset of the other. Not only is it not a subset, it isn't even a true that "a large majority of C programs also compile as C++ programs". They are very different languages, and using them proficiently requires a completely different mindset from the programmer.

This lady explains how C++ should be taught, and it is not as a superset of C: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:CS curriculum

[HiThere]

Both C++ and Java are LOUSY first languages. C is all right, but not really great. Still, you can get quick results with C, so teach a month or two of C and then switch to something like a simple assembler (it'll have to be the assembler for a pseudo-machine rather than a real one, as the real machines have gotten too complex). I believe that some of the MUDs have suitable pseudo-machines, or if not that, perhaps the Perl6 pseudo-machine. MIX would have it's points, but with a MUD machine you can get fast results that are interesting. It needs to address variable allocation, indirection, registers, etc. Even the i6502 was more complex than is ideal. From that point of view MIX was nearly ideal, but it didn't yield interesting results easily. Then ideally you'd cover extending the MUD with routines written in C, but I think this is already probably more than a first year course.

One thing I really missed when I got out of college was that none of my courses had covered handling files. But unless the interpreter handles that easily perhaps that should be left for the second course. It's not really basic. OTOH, large hard disks have made the topic much more important.

Re: CS curriculum

[Anonymous Coward]

No shit, but c/c++ is the common way to describe a certain skill set. Moreover, if you know c++, you will have learned c and probably remembered much of it.

There are tons of decent c programmers who've never touched c++ and any object-oriented language, and it's non-trivial for them to learn C++ well. I've never encountered anyone who thought they were related to each other to the extent your straw man believes.

Re: CS curriculum

[roman_mir]

You are saying Java encourages bad design 'principals'? :). Seriously? I think it is not going to be easy to find a language (language, not a framework) that 'encourages' good design 'principals'. OK, I think languages so not encourage good or bad design principles at all. I think a language is a tool for a job and choosing an incorrect tool for a particular type of a job makes it difficult to have any 'design principles' . However I must say that I find the Java ecosystem trying extremely hard to encourage pretty good design principle, reusing code, using libraries, more or less defining APIs. I would agree with this though: the syntactic sugar edded since Java 5 is trying hard to masquerade, to hide the difference between a good and a bad programmer. Of course the good programmer will still produce more modular, more readable, easier testable (and even easier provable) code than a bad programmer, but syntactic sugar is trying to make it more difficult not less to immediately see and evaluate the difference. What language promotes 'good design principles', a functional one? I can create absolute nonsense and garbage in any language, that much I can promise.

Re: CS curriculum

[mario6915]

"C++ is a superset of C" -- Source: http://www.stroustrup.com/bs_f...

Re:CS curriculum

[Anonymous Coward]

How does a multi-user dungeon help here? That doesn't really seem like anything compelling.

Re: CS curriculum

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I'll invent a language and name it "C/C++" just to piss you off. Plus think of all the free Google hits.

(Nah, seriously, I agree with you and the slash notation irks me too.)

Re: CS curriculum

[Anonymous Coward]

"In the strict mathematical sense, C isn't a subset of C++." -- Source: http://www.stroustrup.com/bs_faq.html

Re: CS curriculum

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a silly point to make. "C/C++" should be read "C and/or C++" - it doesn't imply that they are a single language, just that you're talking about both. If you want I'll draw you a Venn diagram, but anyone with any programming experience knows what is meant by it.

Re: CS curriculum

[HornWumpus]

C isn't a great 'first language'. But it better be the second or third or the programmer will be forever handicapped by low level blindness (see also: every Java only programmer you know). It makes a good segway into assembler (which should be the third or fourth language). Forth would also be a good early down and dirty language choice, but C derived is a very common pattern.

First language should be an easy peasy toy, but one with minimal 'stupid shit', so not Python.

Re: CS curriculum

[HornWumpus]

Nobody should be allowed to start a CS or EE program without a demonstrated ability to program three high level languages (or one high level and assembler). Also assembler was a freshman course in my EE program. Your understanding or high/low level is backwards, EEs are down and dirty in the silicon, CSs argue about 'Turing completeness' and the 43rd normal form for databases.

Re: CS curriculum

[HornWumpus]

You can write Fortran in any language.

Re: CS curriculum

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody should be allowed to start a CS or EE program without a demonstrated ability to program three high level languages (or one high level and assembler).

That is setting the bar unrealistically high. In most secondary schools you're lucky to even cover 2 languages.

Re: CS curriculum

[nazrhyn]

I think it's probably reasonable to interpret "C/C++" as "C or C++" in good faith to the poster.

Re: CS curriculum

[HornWumpus]

Why would you learn your programming in school? There is this thing called the internet, it make self learning easy for computer related subjects. Actually has some competent programmers, unlike almost all HSs.

I had more than that requirement, learning from books and coding an 8 bit microcomputer (and some punched cards at the local Jr College).

These days, that standard is low. Ask around the successful programmers you know, I bet all the best of them are initially self taught at a young age, then backfilled with formal/on the job training.

Re: CS curriculum

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you're talking about an academic topic. And believe it or not, some people don't actually choose a major until they're already in college.

Re: CS curriculum

[HornWumpus]

None of those programmers will ever be worth hiring.

Re:CS curriculum

[HiThere]

It helps by being interesting to the students. Got some other really simple interpreter that yields interesting results and maps nicely onto assembler? If so, pick that, and be just as satisfactory. Some of the MUD interpreters (at least used to) have the equivalent of registers, jump tests, program counters, address registers, etc. What you do(did) with it is design a simple Zorkish game. It's valuable only for the same reason that essays are valuable in English classes.

Re: CS curriculum

[Anonymous Coward]

What's that? I can't hear you over the grating screech of your elitism.

Re: CS curriculum

[HornWumpus]

There are no 'programming degrees' worth discussing, people who go to college for CS or EE that only start programming in college are like music majors who don't pick up an instrument before college, useless. You may not like this fact, but it remains true.

Re: CS curriculum

[Anonymous Coward]

Java looks easy but encourages bad design principals. I wish more CS schools would teach first principals like used to be taught 20-30 years ago.

You've confused the language with the instruction. Nothing prevents a creative, motivated, and capable instructor from doing a good job teaching principles in Java. It's better than a lot of languages, actually.

For that matter, it's possible to teach good design principles in assembly language - my instructor for that class did exactly that, and he did a good job. I came out of that class knowing exactly how my code would be implemented on the computer, and that's helped me be a better programmer for almost two decades.

The problem with CS programs is not "the" language, it's the publish-or-perish system. It creates an ethical conflict of interest between teaching and research. The rewards that really matter to academics are tied to research - and the result is a lot of bad teaching (often hidden behind a smokescreen of complaints about how bad their students are).

The ethics problems in academia are almost as bad as those in politics or law - but not as widely acknowledged.

The push for large class sizes also involves an ethical conflict of interest. It's not possible to do a good job teaching an art with a large class size. You end up with the students having to mostly teach themselves - very inefficient in terms of their time, and the skill levels they can reach are a lot lower.

In the small state school that I did my undergraduate degree at, there were 18 students in the data structures class - and the instructor read every line of every programming assignment. He also often required us to come into his office to discuss our programs. Passing the automated test gave you a D, any higher grade depended on how well written the program was.

In the large, highly-ranked school that I did my graduate degrees at, the beginning undergrad class sizes were over 100 - and the instructor never read a line of code - that was left to graduate students. Since most of the graduate students were foreign, they didn't speak English particularly well - and didn't particularly want to interact with undergraduates - which meant that useful feedback wasn't an option, and as you might expect the only thing that mattered was passing an automated test.

As a TA, I helped quite a few people pass their CS classes - essentially doing the job of the professor, but at a much lower pay grade (less than minimum wage given all the extra hours I had to spend on research as well as teaching). These were smart people, too - but they couldn't learn the material from an unmotivated professor doing a cookie-cutter approach to teaching.

Different people learn in different ways - and without individual interaction you can't possibly hope to figure out what approach will work with a given student. Very few people living in the publish-or-perish system have the integrity and energy to put in the time to make this happen.

Fix the ethics problems in academia and you'll have better CS training - whether in Java or any other language.

Politicians are also jumping on the CS bandwagon, hoping to raise their ratings by supporting more CS education - but since they have no idea how good education works they end up doing more harm than good. They throw lots of money at the problem - but it doesn't actually make things better, as is so often the case in politics. But fixing the political system is a hard task - let's just start with academia.

Re: CS curriculum

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I have worked with a number of good programmers (some excellent) who never touched a keyboard before college, so your 'fact' is bullshit.

It's all in how you apply yourself.

Re: CS curriculum

[HornWumpus]

Many PHBs have worked with only 'excellent programmers'. Your opinion means as much as theirs.

Re: CS curriculum

[Anonymous Coward]

Screeeeeeech, elitism again. Hurts my ears.

At which point do you need to pay for Java?

[PhunkySchtuff]

I honestly don't know. At which point do you need to pay for Java?
Is it you need to buy a licence to write code in Java? Run the code you've written? Distribute your Java code to others?

Re:At which point do you need to pay for Java?

[NotInHere]

I guess if its after oracle, you'll already have to pay them if you are asking these questions on slashdot.

Re:At which point do you need to pay for Java?

[PhunkySchtuff]

It wasn't me, my cat walked across my keyboard!

Re:At which point do you need to pay for Java?

[phantomfive]

I honestly don't know. At which point do you need to pay for Java?

You don't need to pay for Java. Java is open source, and there's some question of whether a language is even copyrightable at all.

You have to pay Oracle if you start using J2EE, or other proprietary libraries. This is the same as it's been for a long time now.

Re:At which point do you need to pay for Java?

[Anonymous Coward]

... and Java happened. The cat just wrote a compiler by randomly rolling on the keyboard. We're calling the language it compiles, Javascript.

Re:At which point do you need to pay for Java?

[burnetd]

You have to pay if you need to use this flag...

-XX:+UnlockCommercialFeatures

...which is a damn sight clearer than most of Oracle licensing which can be literally a user selected from the wrong table.

Re:At which point do you need to pay for Java?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Java: Write once, run anywhere.

Pay everywhere.

Re:At which point do you need to pay for Java?

[Anonymous Coward]

From Oracle's FAQ:

How are Oracle Java SE Advanced, Oracle Java SE Advanced Desktop and Oracle Java SE Suite different from free Java SE?
Oracle Java SE Advanced and Oracle Java SE Suite have some features that are not available in the free version

Those packages contain features like Microsoft's MSI compatible java enterprise installer, Java Mission Control and the Advanced Management Control, which are GUI for monitoring and configuring java applications

It should be noted, that the download of these non-free versions are seperate from the free JRE, JDK and Java SE (which are free to use and redistrubute) downloads on Oracle's page

Since these licenses are per user, if you rely on JMC or AMC, install them server side and make sure only admins and/or devs have access to them.

Re:At which point do you need to pay for Java?

[The Evil Atheist]

You pay for it as soon as you use it. You'll pay, you'll see.

Re:At which point do you need to pay for Java?

[Anonymous Coward]

J2EE is free to download and use, according to their web page.

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javaee/javaee-faq-jsp-135209.html#how

Re:At which point do you need to pay for Java?

[El_Muerte_TDS]

JEE is not proprietary. JEE is a (dead-end) standard for which multiple open source and proprietary implementations exists, both free to use (with paid commercial support) and fully paid.

What the article is about is about Java SE (Standard Edition) Suite and Advanced. This is apparently just Java SE with some additional (non-gratis) tools.

Re:At which point do you need to pay for Java?

[Anonymous Coward]

Long-time java developer here. I had to search myself as TFA is incredibly vague and the focus seems to be more on generating some sensationalist FUD.
To me it seems you're in the clear if you use the "standard" java stack for reading/running software such as jre, jdk, java ee,....
I think Oracle is only ramping up license inspection for clearly marked pay-for products such as http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javaseproducts/overview/java-advanced-getstarted-2249239.html (java desktop, never heard of it), seems to contain the jrockit vm, monitoring tools, enterprise grade installer,....
I'm no Oracle fanboy (at all), but this seems no different from open source companies providing commercial enterprise-grade tooling on top of their base product.

Anyway, I could be wrong. But realistically speaking if Oracle really touches on the free character of java they will lose their developer community overnight.

Re:At which point do you need to pay for Java?

[El_Muerte_TDS]

If your software contains this commandline argument you have to pay Oracle:
-XX:+UnlockCommercialFeatures

Or if you use something else than the standard edition of Java (i.e. the one for PCs).

Stick to OpenJDK builds and you should be safe.

Re:At which point do you need to pay for Java?

[Anonymous Coward]

> You have to pay Oracle if you start using J2EE, or other proprietary libraries.

*cough* Or if you don't have the shitloads of cash needed to demonstrate that your use of the Java APIs is actually Fair Use and must -instead- settle for an "API licensing" fee. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_America,_Inc._v._Google,_Inc.#Appeals_Court )

Re:At which point do you need to pay for Java?

[Anonymous Coward]

See this: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/12/16/oracle_targets_java_users_non_compliance/

Re:At which point do you need to pay for Java?

[Cmdln Daco]

I wasn't aware that every player of Minecraft for the PC is paying Oracle for a license. I don't think Mojang/Microsoft pay a per-seat license, though Minecraft itself is not free. In the more recent versions for Windows, there is even it's own self-contained copy of the JVM packaged with the installer for Minecraft. Most newer players probably don't even know there is Java in there.

Re:At which point do you need to pay for Java?

[Anonymous Coward]

Minecraft doesn't require Java SE, it requires the JVM which is free.
The seats in question aren't the end-users of Java. If any of Minecraft requires licensing to Oracle (and I doubt it uses any of commercial Java's features), it's the devs that pay for it based on the number of seats they use.
Companies that make money off SDKs (like Oracle) do so by licensing their product to developers, who have to pay the licensing fees to use the product commercially. They don't typically charge the end-users.

Removing Pulse Audio from Fedora 24

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it not possible anymore? yum remove pulseaudio removed the entire desktop.

Google is serving up fake news information from 2011 and 2014.

Overall story: Java is dead.

[Anonymous Coward]

The overall story: Java is dead.

Java will die at a speed limited the by ability of large corporations to move away from using it.

Re:Overall story: Java is dead.

[Hylandr]

Java will die at a speed limited the by ability of large corporations to move away from using it.

This is hugely accurate.

It will probably stick around for a while in small shops, but any large corp that gets a bill will ditch Java in favor of the bottom line.

Re:Overall story: Java is dead.

[Cmdln Daco]

The free part of Java can live on. Not under the custody of Oracle, though. There are always people who view their chosen platform as the best, who want other competing platforms to die.

The part of Java that Sun Microsystems set free can live on. The captive part that Oracle acquired when they acquired Sun is foundering, because of the clumsy way Oracle chooses to license it. Oracle could operate more like Red Hat does and make their Java Product line something that would carry forward. Oracle doesn't have the corporate culture to do so, however,

Re: Overall story: Java is dead.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, it will push a movement to open JDKwhich runs on Linux. Sparking a push to the Linux desktop.

Re:Overall story: Java is dead.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's just ridiculous. First of all Java SE is open source.

It was open sourced just about a year before SUN sold to Oracle. This means that Oracle is looking to enforce licenses for their Java up-sells. Much like they do with their cheap RedHat knock-off "Unbreakable Oracle" they're planning to put the screws to anyone stupid enough to use their "enhanced Java" JVMs.

Re:Overall story: Java is dead.

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

Ditch java in favor of what? The body shops will need some re-training time to converge all their marginal resources into the new tech so they're ready to feed at the corporate trough.

Re:Overall story: Java is dead.

[Anonymous Coward]

"The more you tighten your grip, Oracle, the more computer systems will slip between your fingers"

Re:Overall story: Java is dead.

[Xyrus]

How is this insightful? Oracle is not the end all be all of java.

Re:Overall story: Java is dead.

[roman_mir]

Is it? I am surprised, I see it everywhere, I run my business on the software that is almost completely written in Java, it is all server side and it doesn't use any of those Commercial Flag JVM settings to run things like Flight Recorder.

Is the JVM dead?
Is the JDK dead?

In fact maybe the Flight Recorder is *WORTH THE MONEY* for those people who are using it if they keep using it.

How is Java dead because some enterprise tools for it are not free as in beer?

Re:Overall story: Java is dead.

[Tough Love]

Oracle is not the end all be all of java.

No, it's the troll under the bridge.

Re:Overall story: Java is dead.

[Anonymous Coward]

At this point, Java will never die. It's powering every relevant Big Data technology out there.You can say that Big Data is just a hipster buzzword, but what you'd really be saying is that you aren't going to be employed for very long. Oracle doesn't really control Java at this point; the cat is out of the bag.

You may hate Oracle (for good reason) or Java itself (for stupid reasons), but to think that Java is somehow on a path towards death is to ignore pretty much every piece of evidence that is plainly available to you.

Re: Overall story: Java is dead.

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody was watching Star Wars this weekend on TBS. ;P or TNT, one of the stations

Re:Overall story: Java is dead.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ditch java in favor of what? The body shops will need some re-training time to converge all their marginal resources into the new tech so they're ready to feed at the corporate trough.

Ditch Oracle Java on Windows in favour of RedHat java on Linux. As long as you stick with what RedHat installs by default or what you pull of Apache.org you are fine.

In the end, this is exactly the same as Microsoft does with .NET. Sure, the base run-time and language core are free. However there are lots of bits of Windows that are used in normal .NET applications which Microsoft will demand you pay for.

Re:Overall story: Java is dead.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a slashdot prediction, like Microsoft is dying or Year of the Linux Desktop or No wifi, less space than a Nomad, lame.

If it's predicted on slashdot then it's almost always wrong because despite what you might think, most of the people here are completely out of touch with the reality of technology and that leads to them being overly idealistic rather than pragmatic, and ultimately wrong most of the time. Case in point: Java is alive and well, as is Microsoft. Linux has about the same low single digit share of the desktop that it had a decade ago and the Nomad died out a long time ago as it got whalloped by the runaway success of the iPod.

Even on mobile if you believed the idealists on slashdot then Android should be the most advanced, secure operating system on the planet with features far surpassing that of any closed-source competitor because it is open source...of course again this is not the case, it's pretty much the opposite.

Re:Overall story: Java is dead.

[HornWumpus]

Nothing with a significant installed base ever dies. No doubt there is still an instance of mainframe DOS running somewhere. I'd hope it's running on a VM but I doubt it.

Jave's promise of write once run everywhere is dead as the dodo. That was it's most promising feature. As a server language it sucks balls, slightly better than javascript.

Re: Overall story: Java is dead.

[Anonymous Coward]

Open Source is not always Free.

You know what ADA needs?

[Anonymous Coward]

A C bootstrap compiler, a second open source implementation, and auditing of GNAT.

As it stands right now, if you want to run Ada, you probably run a binary bootstrapped copy of GNAT (open or proprietary). Furthermore you are using all the GNAT Ada tools, which may or may not interoperate well with third party implementations. Furthermore, AFAIK two of the current Ada 'standards', aren't standards at all, but proprietary extensions on top of the latest ada release (2012 or something?)

Another helpful feature might be an MIT/BSD licensed core library. AFAIK all the GNAT releases are GPL licensed libraries, unless and until the GNU release, at which time they are still LGPL'd which for many people is a non-starter for app development.

Besides GNAT has anyone used an alternative Ada compiler in the past decade or so that wasn't a legacy implementation?

double post

[Anonymous Coward]

Disregard the "RE: death moans" comment, I didn't see that this got posted when I was using my phone, so I wrote it again. In case someone wonders why there are two responses making the same point.

C# here we come!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think those scripts that convert Java to C# are going to become very popular!

Re:C# here we come!

[donaldm]

I think those scripts that convert Java to C# are going to become very popular!

How about a Java to C++ converter at least it will run on pretty much all Linux and Windows systems or in the interim use OpenJDK

Re:C# here we come!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? Why would anyone be stupid enough to do that? It has every potential to turn into a case of "out of the fire into the frying pan".

Microsoft is not one bit more trustworthy than Oracle.

Re:C# here we come!

[TheRaven64]

Microsoft has released a CLR implementation under an MIT license, has put everything required to implement the CLR into an ECMA standard, and has released a public promise not to sue for any patents involved in the implementation of a CLR. Some of the APIs are exempt, but these are largely the Windows-specific ones. If you write portable C# code, then it's basically impossible for Microsoft to sue anyone that provides you with a platform on which to run it. Oracle has shown that this is not true for Java.

Re: C# here we come!

[Anonymous Coward]

.NET Core is the newly released evolution of .NET platform. It is portable and runs on Linux, Windows, and Mac. It is also fully open sourced, including the compilers. Looks like quite a promising direction to move for projects that want to leave Java.

Re: C# here we come!

[Anonymous Coward]

Java is also open source and has indemnification. .Net is just the Shelbyville version of Java.

Re:C# here we come!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to know if there have been any lawyers that specialize in software law that would actually say there's no way for Microsoft to sue you with that license, and/or change the license terms in some obscure way, or generally come up with another way to fuck you over. It would be too easy for them to slip in something innocuous that they could turn against you.

Re:C# here we come!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think those scripts that convert Java to C# are going to become very popular!

How about a Java to C++ converter at least it will run on pretty much all Linux and Windows systems or in the interim use OpenJDK

If Oracle's appeal is successful (an API subject to copyright?), then OpenJDK is also threatened.

Re:C# here we come!

[Anonymous Coward]

Java and C++, while syntactically similar, handle memory management in a fundamentally different way, so a Java to C++ converter might be difficult to do properly.

Re:C# here we come!

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft has released a CLR implementation under an MIT license, has put everything required to implement the CLR into an ECMA standard, and has released a public promise not to sue for any patents involved in the implementation of a CLR. Some of the APIs are exempt, but these are largely the Windows-specific ones. If you write portable C# code, then it's basically impossible for Microsoft to sue anyone that provides you with a platform on which to run it. Oracle has shown that this is not true for Java.

I was under the impression that ECMA is a Javascript standards organisation.

Re:C# here we come!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle have very publicly sued companies for large amounts of money over Java.
Microsoft have (to my knowledge) not sued anybody over the .net stack, but have publicly said that they will not and put that into their licenses.
It is not a mater of "trust" it is a matter of public record and legally binding documents.
Stop the FUD already.

Re: C# here we come!

[Anonymous Coward]

No because c++ needs to die

Re:C# here we come!

[Anonymous Coward]

.net is already supported on most. At least Windows, Linux, macos, FreeBSD and NetBsd (according to https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr ) covers most real world deployments. Porting to c++ will probably be quite a bit harder (i.e. more costly).

Re:C# here we come!

[Anonymous Coward]

Linky link to the organization formally known as the European Computer Manufacturers Association

Re: C# here we come!

[HiThere]

I understand the C# has some advantages over Java, but as I don't use either this is just second- or third-hand information. I really *should* investigate C# more thoroughly, but it's my expectation that it's not any better than Java, and Java isn't a viable choice for various reasons, but the main one is the piss-poor handling of unicode strings. I could understand utf-8 or utf-32, but utf-16 is a garbage choice made for historical reasons.

This article give me yet another reason to avoid Java.

Re: C# here we come!

[Anonymous Coward]

They're not idiots tho. The direction they went was purposeful. Businesses want long revenue, not short. Microsoft springing a trap would be like a farmer killing all his livestock for a decent pay check in the short term at the cost of having no future profit. It was a sound business decision they made, they understand the software world and are kicking ass.

Re: C# here we come!

[Hylandr]

No because C# needs to die.

You may not like it, but C++ and C are what interfaces directly to your hardware.

Re: C# here we come!

[Anonymous Coward]

C# is a pretty worthwhile language, and while Java has continued to languish, C# continues to evolve and improve itself. There's some overhead getting into it, but once you get into it, it's a powerful and flexible language... Especially since it does the multi-platform thing, is used in the Unity3D game engine, and shows up in other unexpected places.

It's not the perfect language for everything, but it's a good strongly typed get-things-done language.

Re: C# here we come!

[Anonymous Coward]

> You may not like it, but C++ and C are what interfaces directly to your hardware.

Huh? What does that mean? It's not even wrong.

Re:C# here we come!

[Anonymous Coward]

don't be stupid, even Apple is more trustworthy than Oracle

Re:C# here we come!

[molarmass192]

Do you really think people will be running C# on all the Linux boxes these systems run on? Beyond Exchange servers and SQLServer, I know of few server side apps running on Windows servers.

Dealing with Oracle is risky

[Anonymous Coward]

I have seen them try to claim license fees for trivial things within my own company. It cost them in the long run, since IT abandoned their software in short order, due to this vindictive approach.
The crazy API copyright case made Java a non-starter for any new projects, since they effectively want to contaminate third party code bases with their copyright, if you use any Oracle APIs, making it impossible to port/wrap Oracle designed interfaces. It was something our legal people couldn't countenance, resulting in a Java ban. Not a good way to run your business.
I don't see Oracle having any long term future. Nobody would make a new deployment of any of their products. The Oracle database is still a good product, but for most workloads, open source or commercial alternatives are cheaper/faster. In my opinion Oracle is still a better all round product than nearly all the alternatives. That's not enough any more though. The prohibitive costs, poor support, threats, and contempt for customers are insurmountable barriers. Like Sun, I think Oracle will vanish in the long run.

Re:Dealing with Oracle is risky

[plover]

Once the lawsuits were over and SCO was finally unplugged from the life support lawyers, Darl McBride was leaving the courthouse. Ironically, he slipped on a banana peel on the courthouse steps, and as he fell, he dropped the mantle of 'Litigious Bastards'. Larry was walking by, picked it up, and tried it on. It was still warm and comfy! So he brought it back home, had the tailors in the licensing department do some alterations, and now he's going to put it on as everyday wear, just like Zuckerberg and his hoodies.

"And that, my children, is how the Ghost of Larry Ellison came to haunt the valley. Now, off to bed with you all!"

Re:Dealing with Oracle is risky

[Big Hairy Ian]

SCO's not dead they just re-branded themselves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....

The end of java

[Anonymous Coward]

Is at hand.

OpenJDK

[xororand]

What's wrong with OpenJDK?

Re:OpenJDK

[Anonymous Coward]

icetea is slow

Bait and switch?

[NimbleSquirrel]

So, as the article states, the Java SE downloadable comes with the JDK and JRE which are free to use "for general purpose computing", but the one of the key issues is that additional components such as Java SE Advanced Desktop, Java SE Advanced and Java SE Suite are also included in the same software package, but are not free to use without a license. While there is an EULA, there is nothing to warn users that installing those extra components is not free and there is no form of license checking to prevent user installation without a license. As a result there are many installations where the non-free components have been installed and it is this (in large part) Oracle are chasing money for. While Oracle may be able to point to the EULA, it may be possible this will fail the Reasonable Person test (ie. an average person downloading the package for free, and allowed to install the extra components unopposed, might reasonably believe that all the software in that package is free to use). It seems to be the software equivalent of a bait and switch. I wonder how long it will be before someone challenges Oracle on this tactic.

Re:Bait and switch?

[ledow]

Why wait? Just remove anything Java from your systems.

Seriously, when the owner of a technology starts getting like this, there's no clawing back custom.

Just start planning to leave the entire platform now. Because the situation isn't going to get any better, even if you do win a lawsuit on reasonableness grounds.

Re:Bait and switch?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget to tell your local Oracle Subsidiary (And Larry himself) the reasons why you have abandoned Java.
In the end, (and yeah, pigs might learn to fly) Oracle might see the error of their ways.
Remember to remind them what happened when SCO tried the same grand plan

OpenSores has lots of puss

[Anonymous Coward]

and don't imagine you saw a y.

mod do3n

[Anonymous Coward]

from the FreeBSD progress. Any shaRe, this news

Since the Sun purchase, anyone still using Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the Sun purchase, anyone still using Oracle stuff is just stupid. Even running their DBMS has been crazy for years.

Oracle has been acting like a thug. They pressured their sales people to push "Oracle Cloud" on clients who didn't want it.

Thugs need to be left to play with themselves. Alone.

Anyone ever tried to use any other Oracle product knows they all suck. It is only the formerly-F/LOSS projects that are worth anything and most have been forked.

Remember the OpenOffice debacle? More of the same folks.

RUN! If you don't, you deserve what happens.

It's time for a little uninstaller project

[Tangential]

It's time for a little uninstaller project. A nice piece of software that will make sure that you only have the free bits installed.

Re:Since the Sun purchase, anyone still using Orac

[Cmdln Daco]

How does the Oracle culture impact VirtualBox. A lot of people like me still use it on our home desktops.

Ob

[Hognoxious]

Don't forget to pay your $6,999,999 licensing fee, you cock-smoking teabaggers!

Overall story: Java inertia isn't dead.

[Anonymous Coward]

Java lives on in the same way x86 lives on...inertia. There's a LOT of software written in Java, a good portion of that is open source. e.g ArgoUML,CompendiumNG, etc Programs that would be hard to move to something else.

Re:Overall story: Java inertia isn't dead.

[Anonymous Coward]

Java lives on in the same way x86 lives on...inertia. There's a LOT of software written in Java, a good portion of that is open source. e.g ArgoUML,CompendiumNG, etc Programs that would be hard to move to something else.

I refuse to touch any software written in Java. If there is a problem with the software I tell my manager to assign it to someone else. I have more important work to do for the organisation and my systems never require break-fix maintenance once in production; the only maintenance comes in the form of new features to streamline operations and business processes.

If you want an example of a hellish application written in Java look no further than BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) and its web server based administration console written in Java.

Re:Overall story: Java inertia isn't dead.

[Anonymous Coward]

I refuse to touch any software written in Java. If there is a problem with the software I tell my manager to assign it to someone else.

Sounds like you have some bad software script kiddies trying to write Java code. I just rebooted a Java based system for the first time in 240 days, not because of any problems, but because I had to physically move the box and apply a single security update I'd been putting off.

I have more important work to do for the organisation

Yep, apparently your work is more important than supporting the systems that make the company money (generally where I work Java systems are the core of the revenue flows)

and my systems never require break-fix maintenance once in production; the only maintenance comes in the form of new features to streamline operations and business processes.

Yep, right, bug-free code with no security patches ever.

If you want an example of a hellish application written in Java look no further than BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) and its web server based administration console written in Java.

Is ZFS next?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are so many products that make use of ZFS technologies. I wonder if Oracle eventually plans to go after those as well.

Here's the reason behind the wait

[Anonymous Coward]

The Java [garbage collection] license [garbage collection] [garbage collection] [garbage collection] audit [garbage collection] [garbage collection] routines were
[garbage collection] written in [garbage collection] [garbage collection] [garbage collection] java and [garbage collection] [garbage collection] because of the code [garbage collection] [garbage collection][garbage collection] size the gar [garbage collection] [garbage collection] bage collector [garbage collection] [garbage collection] could [garbage collection] [garbage collection] not keep up.

Java is faster [garbage collection] [garbage collection] [garbage collection][garbage collection] than C [garbage collection] [garbage collection] you [garbage collection] [garbage collection] [garbage collection] just have to [garbage collection] [garbage collection][garbage collection] wait [garbage collection] [garbage collection] [garbage collection] for the JIT and [garbage collection] [garbage collection] GC routines [garbage collection] [garbage collection][garbage collection] to profile [garbage collection] [garbage collection][garbage collection] your [garbage collection] [garbage collection][garbage collection] code.

Re: Here's the reason behind the wait

[Anonymous Coward]

You just need to up you memory, and you'll get the right(tm) experience:

The Java license audit routines were written in java and because of the code size the garbage colle[stop the world - garbage collection]... Frustrated closes program after 10 min

GAWD!!! The commercial products are NOT Java!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle does NOT charge for Java or for the JVM. They charge for ancillary, additional products that can be used WITH Java. A lot of companies either didn't pay enough attention to the licenses or thought they could squeek by under the radar. And their getting caught. Complaining about this is like complaining that someone charges money for a Firefox plugin and saying Firefox is dead, yet not saying a thing when someone charges money for a Chrome plugin.

The amount of conflation and trumped-up hysteria around this topic boggles my mind. Look, I hate Oracle AND Microsoft. But use your brains people. Both are gonna try to rope you in with just enough "free" stuff in hopes that you will end up paying for their very-not-free stuff. Get over it. It is part of your job as a programmer to make sure you don't use any products or code you aren't willing to pay for.

-XX:+UnlockCommercialFeatures

[Corporate T00l]

I know everyone loves to hate on Java and Oracle, but my understanding is that in order to access the licensed features, you have to deliberately add the command line arg "-XX:+UnlockCommercialFeatures". It doesn't seem like rocket science what this might mean...

Re:-XX:+UnlockCommercialFeatures

[Just Some Guy]

Very true. Now pay your legal team $1400 an hour to supervise the audit to show you've never done that.

Re:-XX:+UnlockCommercialFeatures

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. The software may be free, but audits cost money. Preparing for audits costs money. Making sure your licensing is up to par so that you can begin to prepare for audits costs money.

What you doing Larry?

[pjv936]

Nothing really, just busy killing Java.

Java is a Bag o' Bugs

[CAOgdin]

How about Oracle focus on its' well-deserved greedy reputation, and resolve to actually produce products that have been designed for reliability and verified by competent testers before unleashing bags of bugs on the Internet?

The whole POINT of Java has been: Make the platform open source, and license the developer half of the project: Developers pay for the tool, and right to run on the freely distributed platform.

The whole RESULT of Java has been: Customers have to frequently update "free" Java to "fix bugs," which--in the process--makes prior dependent code unreliable.

The entire idea is founded on a thin layer of fermenting bullshit, and I wish we'd just all abandon it. In fact, all platforms serve a (usually short) useful life, compared to other durable products. If we developed cars like we develop most commercial software, we'd still be driving V8.111 of the original Nash Rambler, with its' monthly required return to the shop for repairs.

Android created a generation of Java programmers

[raymorris]

Most computing devices sold in the last few years run Android, and are therefore programmed primarily in Java. As a result we now have a whole new generation of programmers raised on Java.

One can certainly make the argument that Java SHOULD die, but half of young programmers are below average and therefore would have difficulty switching to a new language built around a different paradigm. They'll stick to Java.

Translation....

[Lumpy]

Oracle begins aggressively trying to Kill Java.

Java is already starting the death phase, and Oracle just wants it to die already by trying to encourage companies to not use it.

Re:Translation....

[Anonymous Coward]

Good. The sooner it's dead the better.

Re:Translation....

[Anonymous Coward]

Meaning, Oracle is making money by helping the world. Can't sound better.

Java, strictness can be good

[Anonymous Coward]

oh man, programming in Java felt like walking in cement shoes. But, programming in perl gave me a big appreciation for rigid programming languages under certain conditions. A big code base, with lots of libraries, some of which do heavy lifting, is a good place for Java. Done with a strict compiler can save lots of time hunting for bugs.

Why Sun created Java

[unixisc]

Actually, Sun originally aimed to create an entire ecosystem of a platform from Java. It included modifications to C++ as a language, including virtual machines to solve the issue of cross-platform portability, and even a (short lived) CPU platform that would have used bytecode as the instruction set.

The reason most of the users went to PC/Linux platforms was that you had Linux that was a common factor to both x86 and SPARC, and you not only had lower prices for the former, but it also had a wide range of price points compared to SPARC.

Re: Android created a generation of Java programme

[rantrantrant]

Half of all programmers are below average. It's a statistical tautology and meaningless. How does it follow that being less than average at being a professional programmer would make them incapable of being less than average at another programming language?

Re:Since the Sun purchase, anyone still using Orac

[Anonymous Coward]

How does the Oracle culture impact VirtualBox. A lot of people like me still use it on our home desktops.

There are two variations of Oracle VirtualBox, the open source / free software edition and the enhanced features edition. That is unless Oracle has merged these into a single product. You can download the software source code for VirtualBox any time if you are worried Oracle might remove it from publicly accessible website.

Whoracle Strikes Again

[BrendaEM]

How bad will anyone feel when they go belly up like SCO.

Re: Android created a generation of Java programme

[Tough Love]

Half of all programmers are below average. It's a statistical tautology and meaningless.

Not quite meaningless, it implies that the average as the same as the mean. BTW, isn't "meaningless tautology" a superfluous redundancy?

Good example

[raymorris]

Let me be a bit more explicit, since you had trouble understanding the more diplomatic language:

There are 3 million Java programmers who aren't that bright. They won't be able to easily switch to a completely different way of doing things.

Speaking of the fact that many people aren't that bright and have trouble understanding new things ...

Re:Good example

[Gr8Apes]

Having just programmed a couple of Android apps, I can honestly tell you that what's on Android is certainly not Java. It shares some basic JDK interfaces but overall it certainly isn't Java and you can't do some simple things with it.

Contest? Who can be the most abusive?

[Futurepower(R)]

"Microsoft is not one bit more trustworthy than Oracle."

From a Network World article: Windows 10 is possibly the worst spyware ever made. Quote: "Buried in the service agreement is permission to poke through everything on your PC."

Re: Android created a generation of Java programme

[careysub]

BTW, isn't "meaningless tautology" a superfluous redundancy?

Well played, sir.

Makes you wonder.

[Anonymous Coward]

This just makes you wonder if their strategy is to make people who have used Java quit using it and use or create another platform. I think they need to think long and hard about their position here. It is entirely possible that they will end up suing their way right out of business. There have been other companies that decided to go with the sue everybody that uses it strategy and ended up going broke.

Re:Android created a generation of Java programmer

[Anonymous Coward]

but half of young programmers are below average

And most older ones are, hence the reason software these days is more stable than it used to be. But by all means continue blaming all your failures on millennials.

Excellent example of a self-refuting post

[raymorris]

That's a very concise way to refute your points. Your appear to be indicating that:

a) Millennials are highly competent, at least at at programming / mathematical type tasks.

b) You take personal offense at anything you perceive as a criticism of "millennials".

c) Half of younger people, and most older peopler (more than half of all people) are below average.

Points (a) and (b) strongly suggest that you *are* a millennial, point (c) demonstrates you are incapable of understanding fourth grade arithmetic.

Re:Excellent example of a self-refuting post

[Gr8Apes]

Of all programmers that are below average, the vast majority are millenials. The older programmers still left tend to be better at the job or they would have been marginalized out long ago. There are of course those exceptions where there are some old programmers working in a defunct language or system that no millenial would touch, lest it taint their world view or something.

Like This Form Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

Java has been dead for years, it is slow, clunky, always needs an update, updates break everything, insecure, etc. I hope this will finally get programmers to stop using it. Bye Bye Java YES!

Good!

[tentative]

Just in time to pump up the awesome C++17.

Oracle Bussiness Solution

[kd8bny]

For every engineer hired, also hire 2 lawyers

Welcome Open Source world to...Microsoft and .NET

[rhyous]

Welcome Open Source world to...Microsoft and .NET.

Shakedown

[LesserWeevil]

If the golden goose isn't laying enough eggs, threaten it with a carving knife - and shakedown our customers while you're at it. --Uncle Larry

The end os Java

[pabloesgalhardo]

If the idea is to charge licensing and support fees they will probably kill Java. To me its great I never liked Java.

oracle abbrev

[Anonymous Coward]

ORACLE = One Real Asshole Called Larry Ellison

What about the Ask toolbar...

[Anonymous Coward]

Do i have to pay for that too?

Java is not going anywhere

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, Java is Enterprise and used in large Enterprise business servers such as SAP, Databases, etc. So Java is not going anywhere. C# is for the client side, and the big money is in enterprise servers, not client side. Enterprise is the reason Java is slow at adapting new functionality, because in Enterprise you have very long support cycles (decades) and you dont want to break compatibility. Sun said that Java must evolve slow because Sun was targeting Enterprise servers, but the Java libraries would evolve fast. So all Java evolution would occur in the libraries, said Sun. Oracle has inherited the thinking, being enterprise server company.
.
OTOH, C# is a client side language so it can evolve fast, with short support cycles. You can shut down the desktop PC and upgrade and reboot without affecting thousands of users. That is the reason C# adds all the fancy functionality without hesitation. Microsoft is not targeting enterprise servers, but desktops. So Microsoft does not understand the enterprise market, and evolve C# fast.
.
Another large reason Java is not going anywhere, is because Java is very very fast. All fast stock exchanges with extreme throughput and ultra low latency (sub 100 microseconds) use Java or C++. Adaptive compilers that Java has, can in theory be faster than static compiling C++. Because C++ will compile to the lowest common denominator (can not use SSE vector instructions), but Java will recompile in flight optimizing to your specific hardware (maybe activating SSE vector instructions). Another example why adaptive compilers are faster: say you want to run a for loop on a million HourlyEmployee objects, this means Java will optimize that run for HourlyEmployee objects. The next second you want to run the same for loop on a million MonthlyEmployee objects, this means Java will optimize on the fly for a different kind of objects. C++ can not do this, optimize differently depending on different objects. C# is way way slower than Java, and if you need the highest performance, you need to go to Java.
.
Also, the worlds fastest cpu is 32-core SPARC M7, there is no contest. M7 is 2-3x faster than IBM POWER8 or the fastest Intel Xeons (all the way up to 11x faster). Even the next IBM POWER9 will be slower than M7. Here are 30ish world records for M7 (SPARC S7 is a crippled M7 with 8-cores):
https://blogs.oracle.com/BestPerf/entry/20161206_ycsb_s7_2l_cassandra
.
This means the fastest business servers (they all run Java) will be SPARC M7 servers. So if you have extreme performance demands for business software such as SAP or databases, you need to go to large Oracle 16-socket SPARC M7 servers. There is no other choice. You can not use C#. Oracle knows you have no other choice for extreme business workloads, and can therefore claim money from every large Enterprise company and the companies can therefore not leave Oracle's grip.

I'm against stealing copyrighted software.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is Oracle's right to defend themself against copyright violation. Nothing wrong about this. I have been a proud shardholder of Oracle for around 5 years and have to say I'm really happy with the high yield of their stock's interest. Java is copyright by Oracle Corp. it's illegal to steal software. You ought to know what you are doing and understand the license carefully.