Ask Slashdot: How Dead Is Java? (jaxenter.com)

This week HackerRank reported Java is now only the second most popular programming language, finally dropping behind JavaScript in the year 2018.

Now long-time Slashdot reader shanen asks about the rumors that Java is dead -- or is it?

Can you convince me that Java isn't as dead as it seems? It's just playing dead and will spring to life?
This week one Java news site argued that Java-based Minecraft has in fact "spawned a new generation of Java developers," citing an interview with Red Hat's JBoss Middleware CTO. (And he adds that "It's still the dominant programming language in the enterprise, so whether you're building enterprise clients, services or something in between, Java likely features in there somewhere.") Yet the original submission drew some interesting comments:

• "The licensing scheme for Java kills it..."

• "Java programs still are 'the alien on your desktop'. They suck in many ways. Users have learned to avoid them and install 'real programs' instead..."

But what do Slashdot's readers think? Leave your own answers in the comments.

How dead is Java?

Comments

Part of me hopes it is dead

[DaMattster]

So that Oracle can get butt fucked by their decision to be so consumer unfriendly when it comes to their policies on Java.

Re:Part of me hopes it is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle's touch-of-death to any previously successful product they touch/acquire. :( sigh
Not that Java was a real success. It is a horrid language with and even horrider (it's a word now) runtime 'environment.' I don't know if Open/Libre Office are still depending on Java, but judging from the startup times, yes.
Many years ago I was a bit of a Perl whizkid and worked at a company where the vision went to Java and another poorer choice {cough: something from the .NYET stable}. I recall my boss asking me to "throw together some Perl" to "check if their Java code was creating JSON objects correctly." Another coding ace from the Java-only degree mills education system of the 2000's spent many weeks trying to get simple things like calculations to behave in a financially reliable way. Java is IMHO a big mess. It is the PL/1 of the web era. Ok, I just dated myself :)

Re:Part of me hopes it is dead

[Bert64]

Oracle are consumer-unfriendly across the board, not just with java... They are very good at killing off any goodwill and community support they bought from sun.

Not dead

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

It's alive and well server-side. It's dead on the desktop because it's dreadful, slow, memory-hungry and extremely annoying each time Oracle forcibly imposes things that break legacy applications.

Re:Not dead

[Anonymous Coward]

It's alive and well server-side. It's dead on the desktop because it's dreadful, slow, memory-hungry and extremely annoying each time Oracle forcibly imposes things that break legacy applications.

Sounds like great reasons to avoid using it on the server side also.

Re:Not dead

[phantomfive]

It's dead on the desktop

In fairness, almost everything is dead on the desktop at this point.

Re:Not dead

[ctilsie242]

The ironic thing is that the Java runtime was one of the few major Mac attack vectors until Apple killed it.

Java is definitely useful, but the problem is that it has been ignored, and its structure not fundamentally updated for decades to handle modern day attacks.

Had Java kept up with the times, there would have been no need for Flash or HTML5. However, because of the neglect, it just got surpassed by newer technologies.

Re: Not dead

[ctilsie242]

It had one awesome point: Write once, run anywhere. In theory, an application could run the same on AIX as it does on a Java "decoder ring", without issue.

In reality, because of the differences in JVMs, an application that worked well on Mac will just throw an exception and die... or even worse, run and end without any error messages and no real way to trace it unless you go through line by line. Trying to have the same code work well on Macs, Windows, and Linux was an exercise in futility.

I do think there is still a need for one language that runs across platforms... but it looks like that language is turning into Python.

What?

[CaptainJeff]

It's dead .. in that it's now the NUMBER TWO MOST POPULAR LANGUAGE IN THE WORLD? Wow. Perhaps my understanding of the meaning of "dead" is misinformed. The commentary here seems to center around Java as a language for desktop applications or similar. It's not. It hasn't been for decades. Java is used mostly to make enterprise-class server-side software. It's used extensively in the financial services sector. Most of the code for any FI's web applications you interact with is Java. And so is all of the backend code. And it's not going anywhere in that space.

Re: What?

[weilawei]

Definitely not dead or gravely wounded. Python may not be the new hotness, but it's absolutely a go-to language for new code for me. I have been, in point of fact, writing new Python code for my employer recently. It's still the tool I reach for when I need something working Now. I don't spend time writing code for small reasons either--if it isn't making us significantly more money than it costs to build, I don't build it.

Python makes us money, and that's the bottom line.

Now, I'm no picky eater. I've been coding 26 years, and I'll use the correct tool for the job any time I can, rather than "work like an asshole" [favorite saying of an old boss]. For me, that's often Python, but I won't hesistate to drop down to C/C++ or assembler if that's the appropriate tool--or work with Java or C# or Objective-C or Clojure or Ruby or Javascript or Erlang or Haskell or HTML or CSS (and once upon a time, BASIC, Pascal, et al...).

Why are people so stuck on one language or one way of thinking? I was listening to a software engineering podcast recently, and this guy with 8 years of experience is saying he thinks he knows it all now. Well, sorry to break it to you, 8 Year Master, but after 26+ years of this, I've realized that I will never learn it all (even though I keep trying).

Pay your bills first, keep your deadlines and promises, go home to your loved ones, and do things that expand your horizons.

Java, Python, C, Go, Rust: these things aren't important in the same way.

Re: What?

[jma05]

> Python isn't dead, but it was gravely wounded by the Python 2/3 debacle.

That is absurd. Python is more popular than ever. Take a look at historical ranks.
Python transition was planned for a long time (Python 3K) and was extensively discussed. The transition was expected to take a long time when introduced and was managed as such. Its community managed breaking changes better than most languages.

You might have had that case with Perl 5/6. It lost all its clout in the transition.

Both Java and Python have grown tremendously. It was just that no one saw Javascript to have the resurgence it did in the meantime.

That's a little bit like asking "is Linux dead?"

[andy16666]

That's a little bit like asking "is Linux dead?", simply because it's not a popular desktop OS. Just because the majority of users don't realize they're interacting with something, doesn't mean it's not widely used. In the case of Java, the Android platform is a major client-facing deployment. However, the majority of enterprise and webservices are still Java/Java EE and that application is growing, driven by the move to the cloud and the popularity of microservice architecture in new enterprise installations.

JavaScript obviously is a bit deal too, given the increasing importance of heavy client-side web-apps. But most of those webapps have Java on the back end.

Re:Oracle's Whims

[phantomfive]

The thing I've recently heard about Java is that you are subject to Oracle's random whims. Right now, you can get and use the runtime environment and development environment for free, but you don't know if they will randomly decide to charge you a ton of money to use it and send an army of lawyers after you.

Use OpenJDK. Problem solved.

Re:How many times do we need to have this conversa

[p4nther2004]

I have to second this option. Java isn't "dying"...it's 2020's Cobol.

It'll be around for at least the next 10-20 years. (There's that much code based of Java out there)

But Java has been dying for years. Applets died a long time ago. JSP and Servlets are pretty much dead in favor of using a JavaScript front-end and a proper application back-end. JDBC will continue to hold java for a number of years...but watch as other languages start taking it's place. Hell, Docker killed Java's last remaining strength - write once, run anywhere. With Docker, everywhere became X86-64bit.

I don't expect C# to do well either.

On the desktop maybe, but everywhere else...

[cloud.pt]

Java has an image problem, not due to the fact its desktop frameworks look ugly but also that it looks ancient as object-oriented programming, licensing and performance trends go. It has a public relations problem, but for those that are in the industry, its pretty obvious its life-support system is alive and well.

If you look outside the desktop, Java is fine. As previously stated, Java is core to business players - it serves a central purpose in many middleware, server and database-related solutions. Then there's the fact that Oracle is its owner and major sponsor, and RedHat closely behind it both maintain its momentum, while its essential role in the world's largest mobile platform accelerates it. Some will say even in Android Java is faltering, but Kotlin avid programmers know full well that, like Kobol and other tech in critical applications, Java will take decades to be detached from Android. The same can be side about the businesses solutions where it is central.

So while Java's core language development might stall in favor of supporting cooler, "du jour" paradigms that act as stepping stones for new players to have something fresh to stand upon, the JVM and its many clone runtimes are here to stay. And while languages that code for them keep basing themselves off of Java for bytecode endgame, so is Java.

Re: C# Killed Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Well la-tee-da for you. You're constricted to staying within .NET v2.0 Core-only for as long as you wish to maintain cross-platform compatibility. Somehow you're happy about that? Someday, you'll own the fact that you are in a dead end platform that is going nowhere, by design. Your only way up will be to drop cross-platform compatibility so that you can use .NET proper. And Microsoft will be smiling evilly all the way to bank when that day arrives. Good luck, have fun with that.

Re: C# Killed Java

[murdocj]

Every platform is eventually a dead end platform.