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Sun Gives Up on Java Tools
According to a story published yesterday evening on the ZDNet Web site, Sun Microsystems, Inc. is going to drop Java Workshop and Java Studio. Instead, the article says, they are shopping for an outside company that produces and supports Java tools. NetBeans is mentioned as a possible acquisition, but that's only a rumor at this point.
Though I use texteditor mostly, I can see the benefit. Servlets are typically made up of several more or less standard non visual components (beans) that are connected together. IDEs like visual age contain nice functionality for connecting such components, so not only is it possible, it is probably a nice thing to have too!
Jilles
Most benchmarks show both IBM's vm and Sun's hotspot to be way faster than anything MS has. I think there are several other VMs out there that are faster to. MS more or less stopped developing their VM and J++ long time ago.
Jilles
- The only future they see for Java is as a client in a client/server world where Sun makes all the servers. Um... Java runs great on AS/400s, System 390, RS/6000, OS/2, Linux, FreeBSD, Windows NT and HPUX. Here's clue #1: Sun doesn't make all these servers.
- They claim Java is a write-once-run-anywhere system, but they haven't worked very hard at getting other operating systems to run period. That's right, they haven't, but IBM, Microsoft, and HP have. What's your point again?
- Sun is hedging their bets on the SunRay1, which is a Java thinclient, that will more than likely only work with Sun servers. Interesting. Let's see some actual information about the SunRay: "Sun Ray can run any kind of software, including Windows 98, Windows NT, Linux and Sun's own Solaris operating system." Wait a minute! It's not a Java thin client... you're just full of shit!
- I stopped supporting Sun *long* ago... it's making me sick. Maybe if you took the nice pills the nice doctors give you, you'll get better and they'll let you out of the padded room.
BTW, who marked this guy's post "Insightful"?You are right about sun using Java as a tool to stimulate hardware sales but everything else you say is BS.
First Java is getting big on the server side. Suns vm is particularly good in running server side stuff. They are also pushing it on the embedded machine side (again good for hw sales).
Your qualification of the sunray as a Java thin client is not correct. The new SunRay1 machines do not include a clientside vm. They don't need to because all they do is display the output of apps (possibly Java apps) on the server side.
"but I stopped supporting Sun *long* ago"
That is no excuse for spreading ill informed rumours.
Jilles
"Why don't I see them? Oh, yeah I forgot, its all "server side". Right. "
Yeah, it's all hype. Millions of Java programmers are just playing quake all day and reading slashdot. Of course they are not producing anything that works.
DUH!!!!
"Don't believe the hype. Java isn't mature."
Are you?
Jilles
If you want a nice, lean Java IDE, go with Kawa. VisualAge is nice (as well as nice and fat) but more suited for a team doing a big project.
If you are working on your own, Kawa is nice. If provides just about everything you need for small Java projects.
It is especially nice for students, as it is cheap ($29 academic pricing) and simple.
Frankly, I'd rather Sun concentrated on the core language and left tools (and many of the APIs) to third parties.
-Dana
Emacs, JDE and JDK. do we need something else to write and compile java code? no.
---> Did you know Linux stands for Linux Is Not UniX ?
Bzzzt! Would you care to try again?
Java's original intention was to run on small devices (the *7 smart remote and smart TVs (I know, oxymoron)). The AWT was a hack that came later; written quickly and released far too soon by people who clearly knew nothing about GUIs.
Where is Sun focusing now? Jini (embedded devices, mostly) and server-side Java. These are the places that Java shines. If anything, the embrace of server-side Java is an EXPANSION of the original goals, not a retraction. If Sun can sucessfully execute on Jini, the original dream (lots of embedded devices with different CPUs from different manufacturers can all be programmed in the same language and communicate with each other seamlessly) will win.
What has changes is the temporary focus on applications for PCs has been dropped. This isn't a big surprise, since there's virtually no money in software for PCs. MS owns the office market. Adobe and Quark control the page layout and photo editing market. Other large companies own their specific bits. While there are plenty of small companies picking the scraps from the teeth of the giants, there's no serious money in going head-to-head with these companies. There's a reason why all the well-funded startups are providing services over the Internet, and not software for PCs.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
I doubt if they are giving up on Java as a whole. They probably just found some better tools, and figured that re-inventing the wheel wasn't that smart.
Hat's off to Sun for being able to say that the competition has better stuff, and consolidating.
Hanzie
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
Last time I tried (the evaluation versions of) JavaStudio and JavaWorkshop (about a year ago, if not longer), some hacking was involved in order to get them to work on Linux, even though the tools were entirely written in Java.
--
bgphints - internet routing news, hints and ti
Way back in December, Sun said that they'd release the source sometime this year under the Sun Community Source License. Well, instead of giving the Open Source community a chance to improve the product and make it work well, they never released the source and are now dumping the whole thing to gobble up yet another company. Seems like if they just would've taken a chance on Open Source, they could've possibly saved themselves a lot of money. Message to Open Source community: Sun obviously doesn't trust you -- think long and hard before you trust them.
As an aside: Java really is a pretty nice language. I can't imagine any other company being such a screw-up when it comes to Java -- they fscking invented it, for chrissakes!
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
A few weeks back, Sun announced the takeover of Forte Software, an Enterprise end-to-end development and integration tools supplier. Forte have a product called SynerJ (it's in Beta 2 at the moment)which is a Java Development environment something like JBuilder or Cafe - but it can be used to build distributed apps very easily. Sun paid millions for Forte - so they must rate SynerJ rather highly. JavaStudio was cack, so no surprises about this story. Maybe they want SynerJ to be the dev enironment of choice.
I believe Sun arranged for Borland to port their JBuilder IDE to Solaris. This product is now in beta.
Apparently this is a 100% Java product, so it is also expected to be available for Linux, assuming the Linux JVM is up to it...
JBuilder on NT is a good product, so if the 100% Java conversion doesn't slow it down too much (and JBuilder 3 is 80% Java already) this is certainly something to look forward to.
I have discovered a wonderful
The Java IDE has been something of a mess for a while, so it's good to see it get cleaned up a bit. Sensible decision from Sun too (shocker).
[cue plug-my-favourite spout] So this leaves us with Kawa (nice and simple), JBuilder (hideously unstable) and VisualAge (a proper object development environment).
I wish more IDEs for "object" languages took the VisualAge approach and didn't act like Java is really just a different C or C++. It's not! It's a different Smalltalk.
This is why VisualAge's environment, built on the VisualAge Smalltalk product, works so much better than the rest for serious object development. I know a lot of people seem to think it's weird - but I think this is the fence you have to climb over to get away from all that C-style worrying about source files and compilers and all that old stuff.
Just my 0.0^2.
__ Em
Sun's Java tools never were excelent. Although they maybe have the best GridBagLayout editor of all IDEs. But that doesn't compensate for other glitches.
The reason why the stuff was - hmmm - so uncool was explained by a developer of the JWS v2 to me: Not a single developer from the first version was on the development team of the next version. They all left, because of better offeres from other companies.
Imagine, you can write on your CV that you not only know Java, not only worked for Sun, but build Sun's Java tools. These people were in demand like hot applepie.
So v2 was build by "newbees". And most likely they all spend their time now in higher payed jobs somewere else. From that point of view it is a good idea by Sun not to go through this for a v3, but instead give up. Beeing Sun in that business might really mean, that you can't keep a Java developer for more than a few month.
Hmm,
You are right about the tools, not about the language. I've been using Java since the 1.02 version and I always found that IDEs did not support the latest features. Since those often were the features I relied on I often ended up using an editor and a compiler. Over the years I have become convinced that most experienced Java programmers work this way. Perhaps they use an IDE to make editing/compiling/debugging more easy, but they sure don't use an IDE to drag and drop apps together. The latter is done by less experienced programmers. I have not seen the latest generation of IDEs for Java. I heard they are much better at supporting beans and swing which is good for newbies but not for me. I always disliked GUI editors because I always end up changing stuff manually at which point the GUI editor becomes useless.
As for the application you tried to build, a heavy server app, it really depends on which virtual machine you use what the performance of your system will be. Especially the number of threads that is supported varies from machine to machine (and is also OS dependend). I think at this moment you should either use sun's hotspot vm or IBM's vm to get maximum performance.
"Anyway, it's a chicken and egg thing. Better tools mean better apps. The best Java IDE anyone could find was written in Java. That's a very scary thing to think about."
It doesn't surprise me that the best IDEs were Java programs. To test and debug a Java program you need to run a vm anyway. To read out properties and events from a bean, you need to do Java stuff. To run a Java GUI component, you need a Java vm. A Java IDE needs to do all these things at the same time so you might as well implement the whole thing in Java. Doing so also speeds up the development process of the IDE dramatically so that's good. And most developers have fast machines on their desk so performance is not a real big issue.
Jilles
An additional advantage of this simplicity is that development time is much lower than with c/c++. Because of this development cost is lower and more features can be built into the system.
:)) ) "
C/C++ is nice if you need to deal with hardware directly since it gives a lot of flexibility in this area. The same flexibility backfires if you apply these languages in domains where hardware interaction is not needed (for instance an object oriented ecommerce server application). Generally an expert C/C++ programmer is needed to deliver clean code. Expert C/C++ programmers are scarce and it is a waste of their skill top let them chase stupid errors in pointer arithmetic. You could benefit more from their skill if they applied their knowledge to the actual problem that needs to be solved: how to meet the requirements efficiently. Java allows this. because of its simplicity even newby programmers can deliver nice applications. Expert Java programmers can be very productive in Java.
When I started my CS study, the language we had to learn was C. I had to learn the hard way about pointers and stuff like that. Then Java came along. Within weeks I was producing programs more quickly then I ever could in C. Generally you need only a fraction of the LOC needed to implement the same stuff in C.
"I cannot see any advantages in using Java (beside of attracting programmers that cannot handle pointers and dynamic allocation
Boy you must be blind. Perhaps handling pointers and static allocation is special hobby of you (it bores me since it slows me down). You should realize that each time you spend time on that you are wasting time because these are tasks that can and should be automated (like Java does). The only reason not to automate them has always been performance. And that argument is becoming of less relevance with each new release of Java. The garbage collection algoritms in the current generation of VMs are pretty good and the performance penalty of using dynamic allocation is not so big as it used to be. Further improvements in that area are on the way.
Jilles
Its even more fun to watch c programmers become obsolete like Cobol programmers are these days. In a few years there will be a huge amount of legacy of code written in C/C++. It will no longer be the default choice for most programming tasks with the sole exception of very low level hardware stuff. Of course legacy code needs to be maintained so there will be plenty of jobs for these fellows.
Java has been closing the infamous speed gap during the past few years. Most whining about Java performance in this tread seems to be obsolete. Guys this is slashdot, news for nerds stuff that matters. You should know better. True some pioneer projects like corel's wordperfect for Java failed miserably, but there are commercial and succesfull Java programs all over the place nowadays (or millions of Java programmers are wasting their time each day). Netbeans, which is mentioned in the article is a nice example.
As for myself, I think I can counter the claim about not knowing about other technologies. I programmed a lot of languages ranging from logic languages like prolog to functional languages like Gofer and Lisp. I also did C, Pascal, basic, C++ and smalltalk. I even spent some time with scripting languages like Javascript and perl (puke, if you've seen a decent language before you just have to dislike it's syntax).
Jilles
Sun doesn't need JBuilder to be on Solaris.
Most people who run Solaris are interested in have stable, enterprise-class applications.
Sun already owns (or will officially own very shortly) the best product for building these applications in Java-- SynerJ from Forte.
These guys were building cross-platform tremendously stable applications long before Java was around, and they have taken the good parts of their proprietary language and put them into SynerJ. It's seriously so much more advanced in certain areas than other tools, I'll be surprised if Sun keeps any of the other Java development or deployment stuff they've got.
Disclaimer: I don't work for Forte, but I have used their TOOL product, and seen what the Java product can do. It's *very* impressive.
Just as Microsoft got it's true start by developing BASIC (read your history kiddies, that's where Billion-dollar Bill got started), Sun developed Java from the ground up and should stick with the language development aspects of Java. Sun is wise to contract out or otherwise semi-divest themselves of the development of tools for Java.
Additionally, while some would argue that only the people who truly know Java from the inside out, from the ground up, would know how to build the best tools... I don't see the masses beating down doors for the Microsoft development tools. In fact, a fresh set of eyes that is NOT completely steeped in the language development hurdles works without the encumberance of that knowledge. They work on the language in it's existing state of development.
As I heard Fats Waller (Jazz/Blues LEGEND) say in an interview once: "Be what you is."
D. Keith Higgs
CWRU. Kelvin Smith Library
My office has been taken over by iPod people.
Sure there are bugs in Java 2. Some are annoying but usually you can work around them. As for printing, I've no experience using that part of the API but surely its not as bad as you say or otherwise I had been hearing about it more often. Java AWT sucked but was small and functional which made it useful. You could do more with it than with HTML forms and that was the idea. Of course for application development it was useless which is why we have swing today. I have yet to see a GUI framework that allows you to write such complex and portable applications like Swing does. Sure it is a bit slow on lowend machines but for most applications the performance is fine. I have no complaints about performance on my pretty average 233 PII with 64 Mb.
I'm sorry to see that you decided to give up Java after a few minor disappointments. Has it occured to you that the bad performance you had might be caused by your programming style rather than Java. Java allows you to do much flexible stuff but that usually involves a performance price. Creating objects all over the place for instance, is usually a bad idea, especially in loops.
Jilles
worked fine for me.
Jilles
If you can't write a decent IDE in Java, then perhaps Java isn't worth using as a language. A corollary to "Write once, run anywhere" should be the ability to develop on any platform that will run Java -- something that you CAN NOT do in ANSI C!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Borland's Linux page
Borland is seriously committing to Linux, which is good to see. And I like the "well, what do you want" angle instead of a "this is what we want you to have" approach to the project. I've used Borland Delphi & C++ Builder (cut my teeth on Borland's C++ v1.0 :) ) for quite some time, and quite frankly, they rock. A bit weak on debugging, but there's always the excellent Numega debug tools to help out...
What Borland must focus on is making the path for Win * programmers to migrate to Linux as easy and intuitive as possible. This may irk the hardcore "never run windows" Linux programmers; how about it if they produce a development tool with skins like WinAmp, to please both camps?
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
So, how do you write a function that will print to the system printer in C++ that works across all systems?
Or do anything that involves graphic displays?
The point is while there are differences in the speed and memory requirements of the various VMs, they (At least to be java certified) will all perform the same functionality. Yes, there's still clutter between differences of M$'s VM and Sun's VM, and the like, but that's why Sun insists that only programs that have been tested to be fully compatible to be able to display this logo.
Now, I won't argue that there are C and C++ toolkits that work across platforms. But too many of the times, these toolkits are limited to Unix and WinXX. And they are closed source, so that if you aren't one of the priveledged many, you're screwed.
While Java's Open source-ness is still not for sure, there is nothing stopping anyone from making a new VM for their system, as they know what calls they have to put in.
I would agrue that Java's dream never materiallized... but in the sense of being the windows killer. But Java's found other niches that they are easily killing. Any device with WinCE, for example... Java's footprint is much smaller, and more open and robust.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
I cannot see any advantages in using Java (beside of attracting programmers that cannot handle pointers and dynamic allocation :)) )
Or programmers who simply don't want the hassle of doing so. Java is easier to program in, in many ways (in some ways it's harder, I agree). Easier to some people, particularly geeks, means not worth doing. Personally, I want to code mathematical algorithms. I don't want to deal with hardware issues - ever! I don't like getting down and dirty with file formats, video display programming, etc... So, Java is perfect for me.
First, make it work, then make it right, then make it fast, then, make it bloated!
Sorry 'bout the ghastly pun.
I knew a guy who worked in Sun's "Visual IDE" tools division a couple yrs ago, and couldn't help asking the obvious - How is it that Sun created Java, and the main tools being used to code java come from Symantec, MS, and IBM. It struck me as profoundly ironic that sun was releasing this revolutionary language and their competitor was making more money off it than they were. His view was that sun really sucked at developing GUI/IDE type stuff. I believe it.
OTOH, sun is REALLY good at *nix stuff. I'm surprised that they didn't take the initiative to figure out how to win in the GUI world. This is quite a contrast to MS, which is ruthlessly quick at changing its focus, adapting, and winning marketshare.
I also can't believe how badly they handled the core java people - half of them quit after the product took off, which doesn't exactly help.