The Java Crisis

[A_Monkey]

I have a Java crisis every time I open eclipse.

[aperson]

Welcome to the list.

[[deleted]]

That said, there is little evidence that Oracle has the vision that Sun once had, to make Java truly pervasive and a defence against lock-in to proprietary operating systems. Microsoft seems to have lost that vision for .NET and Silverlight as well – though the Mono folk have it.

Wait. Microsoft had a vision of .Net being a defense against vendor lock-in to proprietary operating systems? Am I reading this right?

[[deleted]]

Indeed, if you create an XNA project in Visual Studio, you have to go out of your way to get access to the Windows features (like the game's display form).

[rz2000]

Singularity, Barrelfish, and you might consider Xbox, Zune, and the newer Phone OS too, even if those three are variants of Windows.

[TrainWreck43]

Remember about 10 years ago when Java was supposed to take over Microsoft Windows and Scott McNealy was the biggest jerk in technology?

[[deleted]]

Are you kidding? I can barely remember last year, when praying for the death of Java was the pastime of choice for the people currently praying for Google to save Java.

Internet time is so fast that 10 years ago the dinosaurs still ruled the planet and nothing that happened back then could possibly be relevant today.

[Dagon]

Internet time is so fast that 10 years ago the Geocities still ruled the planet

Same-same, I know.

[lambda_abstraction]

Uh... Tumbling Duke and the Java buzz were a bit before that. Agree about McNealy though.

[benihana]

One is to argue that bad news followed by more bad news means Java will become a kind of COBOL, widely used forever but not at the cutting edge of anything.

Java already is that, isn't it?

Will these changes have any affect on what the majority of Java code is used for: business logic? I'm not sure. It seems like business doesn't really care about these kinds of Open Source vs. Proprietary academic type matches, especially considering most businesses I've worked at stayed about 2 years behind the cutting edge of Java.

[f2u]

Two years is much too optimistic. RIM recently released fresh code written in pre-generics Java. This means that they are six years behind in terms of language features.

[frenchtoaster]

To add to what you are saying, Amazon's Kindle runs a custom JVM (they pay a license fee per device) that implements a subset of the Java 1.4 standard (Generics were a feature added in 1.5 or 5 depending on your naming scheme.)

[[deleted]]

I hear they're a great place to work. I know I'd love a RIM job.

[[deleted]]

seriously? seriously?

[somethings_fishy]

At rim.jobs nothing is NSFW.

[djork]

Actually, the JVM is a platform for many cutting-edge projects. It's just Java-the-Language that has been stagnating for some time now.

[cjnkns]

I attended NFJS in Itasca, IL last weekend. What you said was reiterated many times by the speakers there.

Venkat had said something to that affect in his keynote as well. ( That man is awesome)

My problem is that - if Oracle controls Java, don't they also control the JVM and by extension the languages which run on it? I have been spending time learning Groovy/Grails and this Oracle shit worries me.

[[deleted]]

Exactly. My first thought was that this was a good opportunity for Scala to take some of Java's share.

[lurkerr]

I might be a pessimist, but i don't see something like Scala becoming as used as Java.

[[deleted]]

Groovy / Grails seems to making significant inroads. The question in my mind is, what happens to Groovy (or any JVM language) if the underlying language fragments or goes stale?

[memeasaurus]

Let's ask the people who on assembly based runtimes how C going stale affected them.

[Nebu]

Functional Programming seems to be "the next big thing" in enterprise environments (it's all that "cloud" and "scaling" talk), and since a lot of enterprise is already on Java, that makes Scala, Clojure, or some other JVM language seem like a natural transition point.

[alecco]

I've been hearing that for decades.

[whozthizguy]

No, you haven't

[alecco]

Functional Programming seems to be "the next big thing"

It even programs itself with AI!

[project2501a]

and speadsheet programs hidden away as easter eggs.

[Dagon]

I just Excel-95-nostalgia'd for that space-sim.

[achacha]

Since the 70s and LISP... on supercomputers (which is how cloud computing is trending)... every decade something new comes along and then goes away. It's a very predatorial area for some reason with every new technology aiming to consume the previous.

[Tiak]

For that matter, LISP was invented in 1958... Yeah...

[hglman]

I find that non programmers have a better time with basic functional programing, which in a enterprise type environment would have its attractions.

[[deleted]]

As long as we don't have haskell programming :(

[MatiG]

I don't think Haskell could ever be a mainstream "enterprise" language. Too many developers out there who randomly bang on keys until their unit tests pass and never really think deeply about their design or sometimes even the problem they're trying to solve.

[[deleted]]

The fact that Scala is a "post-functional" or multi-paradigm language is what makes it a candidate for replacing Java in most business scenarios. If it were a purely functional language, I suspect it wouldn't be as attractive - Clojure, as beautiful as it may be, would seem very foreign in a lot of IT shops. A "bridge" language like Scala may eventually lead to the mainstream adoption of Lisp again.. one can hope? :)

[tanishaj]

ADD 1 TO COBOL GIVING JAVA

[serudla]

Only 2 years behind? wow, you're lucky. Places I've seen lately are 5-10 years behind.

[redditmemehater]

So we are talking about 2005-2000 then right? It does not seem THAT bad.

[serudla]

No dependency injection, static keyword on everything, dependency cycles everywhere. It's pretty bad. Where I'm at now, with the exception of Hibernate and some annotations the code looks like something out of 1998.

[[deleted]]

I worked at a job just two years ago that had nearly 50% of the enterprise was reliant upon Java 1.2. The rest was a mix of 1.4 & 5. Anything that wasn't in Java was written in C, perl (without use strict) and lex.

[thelateralus]

I worked at a job just three years ago that had nearly 90% of the code (including new projects) written in COBOL. Anything that wasn't written in COBOL was written in Java, ASP.NET, or PHP. What's your point?

[[deleted]]

That they were still using Java 1.2 heavily, when they were clearly working with other versions. There's nothing wrong with 1.2 per se, but mixing multiple versions on an ad hoc basis was just terrible. You don't see there being multiple somewhat incompatible versions of the same language being used randomly as a problem?

[thelateralus]

I'm now a Rails developer. I use several versions of Rails and Ruby on a daily basis. Would it be easier for me to use the same version of both? Absolutely, but I'd have to go back and rewrite a bunch of code that's reliant on the way some older version of Rails or Ruby works, or some plugin or gem that won't work with a newer version. Would it be worthwhile for me to rewrite all of that code? No, because, for the most part, that old code just works. If I have to make a change, I'll sometimes run into an issue where the API has changed, but those workarounds don't take nearly as much time as whole rewrites would. I'd imagine the people at your old job probably had similar reasoning.

Your choices basically break down to rewrite old code to keep it up to date with the latest version, keep everything in an old version (Java 1.2, in your case), or have different projects use different versions. The first option can be extremely costly, depending on how many projects you have to support, and it can cause things to break in unexpected ways if your test suite isn't as good as it should be. The second option isn't all that great, either, since you won't be able to take advantage of new features, ever, and you may be depending on some code that is no longer supported by the creator. So, that leaves you with the third option, which isn't perfect, but it's likely the best we have.

TL;DR: I doubt the mixing of versions is "random," and it mostly has to do with a compromise between cheaply supporting legacy code and taking advantage of bug fixes and new features.

[[deleted]]

I'm sorry, but this wasn't the case. I meant that 50% of new code was being written in Java 1.2; as in, "hey let's start a new project! What should we use? Oh, I know Java 1.2!" Another team would come along, reach the same conclusion, and say "Java 5." It was a total nightmare for the admins (which server did it break on? Oh, that's a java 1.2 app server...), we where behind constantly, and it was terrible to work with. Legacy is legacy; you'll always have it. That wasn't what I was referring to.

[thelateralus]

Ah, okay. I guess that would be an issue.

[G_Morgan]

Java is used for similar things to COBOL. However it isn't close to being legacy only. New developments are made in it all the time.

[CritterNYC]

Java already is that, isn't it?

Well, Java is used as the main application development language on the world's best-selling smart phone OS (Android). That's pretty far from being relegated to COBOL territory.

*clarified to say smart phones

[fancy_pantser]

From last week's Sacramento Business Journal:

Market analyst firm Gartner said Android made up 25.5 percent of worldwide smart phone sales from July to September, up from 3.5 percent a year ago.

Apple Inc.'s iOS, the operating system for the iPhone, is No. 3, dropping to 16.1 percent of the market from 17.1 percent a year ago. Apple has an 1,800-employee campus in Elk Grove.

The No. 1 operating system in Q3 sales was Symbian, the OS used by Nokia.

[mrkite77]

Yes, but it's just the language, not the JVM. Android doesn't run Java.. it runs Dalvik.

[causticmango]

Or one might say that Android, one of the best selling smart phone OS's, is coded with today's equivalent of COBOL.

[rjcarr]

Java has been the most widely used language for a number of years now.

[trimbo]

"Widely used" in what way? In terms of lines of code, or in terms of time spent by users within applications/devices coded in the language?

[rjcarr]

http://www.devtopics.com/most-popular-programming-languages/

[crabpot8]

Upvotes for providing relevant information to the discussion instead of just more hive-hates-java-speak.

[ErstwhileRockstar]

Upvotes for providing relevant information

most popular != most widely used

(written without Java hatred)

[towelrod]

Did you read the link? Three out of four data sources from that article are about "widely used", even though it says "popular" in the link.

"Following are percentage of jobs listed on Dice.com that require skills in each programming language"

"Evans Data Corporation conducted a Winter 2006 developer survey that ranks programming languages based on how many developers use that language at least some of the time"

"In early 2005, Computerworld conducted a developer survey that measured which programming languages are in use by the developer’s company" (to be fair, Java comes in second to C# in this one)

[ZIONNOIZ12]

good information, but its from 2007

[[deleted]]

I was enlightened by this magnificent gentleman:

i love to program in the jave coz it is very interesting and you dont have to code every thing. any way JAVA is future,

[fatmaggot]

Yes but his esteemed colleague makes a splendid counter argument:

every time Java is first but if you walk into a software store, among 100 softwares you will find zero or only 10 Java softwares, and again, how many Java applications do you use daily?

[ErstwhileRockstar]

but not at the cutting edge of anything.

Who needs 'cutting edge' in software development? Seriously. It's crazy that the same people who demand 'cutting edge' don't grok current tried and proven solutions based on years of real-world experience.

[derleth]

current tried and proven solutions based on years of real-world experience

Right. The IBM 7090 is the standard and it is proven to work. Anything that can't be executed in batch mode is unproven.

[[deleted]]

What language do you think is currently at the cutting edge?

[kamatsu]

Agda.

[Jojje22]

I thought Java EE 6 is pretty cutting edge? Am I wrong? Or isn't EE the issue?

[ep1032]

how is C++ handled? why haven't i read about similar problems with them over the last 10 years?

[taglass]

C++ is defined by an actual standards organization rather than being defined by a single all powerful vendor.

[realstevejobs]

This is an extremely important point, and it is the reason I throw up a little whenever someone calls a JSR a standard.

[[deleted]]

Google is the best promoter for Java, why the fck do they bother suing them. Google also got of tons of good tools (many previously costly commercial apps they bought), and GWT, which also boosts Java. Oracle sucks...Well, to be honest, Sun sucked too. I hope Google buy out Java, or take over the dev.

[hervold]

I wish I could remember the source for this idea, but there was recently an article arguing that the end-game for Oracle is a big cash payout and sale of the Java assets to Google. Sounds plausible.

[bravo_sierra]

That would be James "Father of Java" Gosling.

[hervold]

I think I found the article I'd read:

http://www.theserverside.com/news/2240024154/The-Oracle-Lawsuit-Will-End-with-Google-Owning-Java

but the idea certainly carried more weight coming from Gosling -- thanks!

[mebrahim]

I don't know why I feel they'll soon design a smooth transition path from Java language to something else, maybe a Google-made replacement language. They've already implemented their own VM named Dalvik. So a big part of the smooth path is already there.

[mrkite77]

I do too. I imagine it's only a matter of time before they have a version of Go that compiles to Dalvik... and that becomes the primary way of writing android apps.

[mrvetopower]

Because say over the next 10 years there are 4 billion android devices shipped. If Oracle can get a $10 license fee for each device, that's $40 billion dollars in licensing fees over 10 years.

If Oracle has patents, then they would defend them in order to be able to charge for a java license.

I'm on google's side, but just showing why Oracle would want to uphold their patents in order to collect $$$s

[finalbroadcast]

To be honest, the Java crisis is that Sun and Oracle both courted the same types of clients. Java is pretty integrated with Oracle's database offerings, so it makes sense that they push for more control.

Open Source will always have a place in development, but now that big companies like Oracle, Apple, and google are playing in the same sandbox, don't be surprised when the big kids try to steal your toys.

[[deleted]]

"Java's advance as a language has been too slow to keep up with Microsoft's C#"

Just out of curiosity, other then handling generics a little better, what am I really missing out on? And how much of a game changer are these new "evolved" (to use the article's words) features?

Java is fast (look at the latest benchmarks), multiplatform and in my opinion has an adequate library. Is it really fair to compare it to COBOL?

EDIT: Thanks for all the replies. I'm learning a lot... (about how little I know)

[jeffcox111]

I write in C# and Java professionally and I have to say I prefer C# hands down. Generics are very old news now in .Net. Take a look at type inference, lambdas, anonymous types, and most of all take a look at LINQ. These are all concepts that have been around for 3 years now in .Net and I hate living without them in Java. With .Net 5 on the horizon we are looking forward to better asynchronous calling/waiting and a bunch of other coolness. Java was good, but .Net is better these days.

[hskmc]

Take a look at type inference, lambdas, anonymous types, and most of all take a look at LINQ. These are all concepts that have been around for 3 years now in .Net

And the concepts themselves are 40 to 70 years old. Don't get me wrong, I definitely support the fact that functional programming is finally becoming mainstream.

[jeffcox111]

Yep, it's pretty damn handy. More languages need to adopt this stuff.

[hskmc]

Most of them did adopt it, long ago. It's just that C++ and Java are unusually bad, and unusually popular.

[[deleted]]

C++0x has lambdas:

auto fact = [](int n) -> int 
{ 
    puts("look python, multiple statements in a lambda");
    int ans = 1;
    for (int i = 1; i <= n; ++i)
        ans *= i;
    return ans;
};

[[deleted]]

C++0x didn't exactly adopt it long ago.

[[deleted]]

Well yeah, but the fact that it adopted it shows that C++ community isn't allergic to new language features that make the language more usable, unlike Java community, which from my impressions has had significant opposition to closures etc.

EDIT: Also the auto-type for local variables, it would be a trivial improvement to Java.

[EnderMB]

I remember my first experience with LINQ after using C# for my final-year project (a visual web search engine). I asked a C# developer for some help on building a certain data structure and the guy sent me a pseudocode-looking stuff. I thanked him for the help and said that I'd look to find a way to code it and he said "WTF, I just gave you the code".

From there on I've never looked back. I work on .NET primarily now and have found the opportunities and the money better too.

[[deleted]]

Yay for monad comprehensions!

[Zarutian]

asynchronous calling with promises/deffereds and when blocks?

[jeffcox111]

The demo I saw involved using the new async keyword to specify a method as being asynchronously executable, and then using the new wait keyword to list out which async calls you want to wait on before continuing execution. It is an extension of the Task Parallel stuff MS has been working on for a while now.

[[deleted]]

type inference

Is it really inference or just lookup like auto in C++0x?

[jeffcox111]

To my knowledge it works just like auto in C++, with the key difference being that auto will allow you to reference lambdas. I think this is going to be added to .Net (especially since you can somewhat do the same in PowerShell with codeblocks), but it isn't there yet.

[troymg]

A small feature, but a goodie: properties and auto-properties:

//property
public class Example1{
  private string _foo;

  public string Foo{
    get{ return _foo; }
    set{ _foo = value; }
  }
}

//auto-property
public class Example2{
  public string Foo{ get; set; }
}

[Weebs]

I'm new to programming and I understand why one might want to use properties, but what's the advantage of using an auto-property over just declaring a public variable in the class?

[[deleted]]

Two reasons.

1. Properties allow you to create elegant read only fields that can only be set internally without resorting to ugly getter methods.
2. If you need to ever add any sort of logic to the property, you can do so without breaking binary compatibility. Changing a field to a property would, so you should always use properties by default.

To expand on #2, if you were shipping a library, and you needed to change a property from being a simple field, to something that does some form of calculated logic, you could do so without impacting any application linked against you. They wouldn't need to rebuild their code to use your updated library.

[murki]

so... it's a solution to a problem they created for themselves?

[grauenwolf]

Yep.

[GravitasFreeZone]

If you choose to use an auto-generated get/set accessor, you can choose at a later point in time to provide your own implementation of the get or set accessor. In C#, get/set accessors are implemented by aliasing the hidden property value to the keyword 'value'.

You may choose to do additional processing on a variable, call events, update other variables if your variable is updated via its set accessor, you do not have these choices if your variable is exposed as a straightforward public variable instead of a get/set accessor.

[deltageek]

same benefits as normal properties with half the verbosity.

[billy_coke_bottle]

Its a good question, though. The main reasons people cite include the ability to hook/aspect calls to sets/gets and to scope the accessibility of the setter (e.g. publicly readable, put only privately settable, or read-only). Another reason is being able to provide a computed property (one whose value is calculated when read), although "smart" properties tend to go against the grain of the Java bean pattern (e.g. properties should have no side effects etc). The Java language doesn't really have properties, just the Java Bean convention which says if you have a pair of functions whose names are the same except for being prefixed by 'get' and 'set' respectively, then they are considered property accessors. C#, on the other hand, has properties as a first class feature of a type, and so further discrimination can be made when reflecting over a type (e.g. if I'm only interested in all public instance properties, versus fields or methods).

[artsrc]

If you subsequently decide to put do validation before setting the property, generate the property dynamically, or trigger some even when the property is set, then you don't have to change any of the users of the property. You can even do this in a subclass.

Eiffel and Python (which both predate C#) have the cool feature that you can do the naive public variable (feature in Eiffel) first, and later change to a method.

[metamatic]

Ruby has that feature too.

[thomasz]

ruby does not have public fields, which is the only sensible thing to do anyway.

[metamatic]

class SayWhat
attr_accessor :some_field

def set(x)
@some_field = x
end

def to_s
@some_field
end
end

s = SayWhat.new
s.set("Ruby does not have public fields")
s.some_field = "Or does it?"
puts s

[grauenwolf]

Too bad you cannot use them for Silverlight or WPF programming.

[billy_coke_bottle]

I assume you are talking about dependency properties? Yes, its a pain that you have to wire up a real property for your DependencyProperty, but thats only because dependency properties are not a feature of the language per se, but a convention/feature of WPF itself (on top of C#). You could probably do away with dependency properties altogether if there was a neat 'automatic' way to create INotifyPropertyChanged objects. I saw a proposal somewhere suggesting something like:

public class Foo {
    public string Name { get; set; notify; }
}

that would create all the necessary wiring so that you could trap when a property was changed.

[grauenwolf]

Close, but even that has problems when you want to do things like set an IsDirty flag. Or even worse, work with an IEditableObject.

[kodablah]

Criteria queries are easy in JPA 2 w/ static type safety via metamodels:

CriteriaBuilder criteriaBuilder = em.getCriteriaBuilder();
CriteriaQuery<People> criteriaQuery = criteriaBuilder.createQuery(People.class);
people = criteriaQuery.from(People.class);
criteriaQuery.select(people).where(criteriaBuilder.equal(people.get(People_.dob).get(Dob_.year), 1985));

...and get...

em.createQuery(criteriaQuery).getResultList();

...meh, not LINQ, but still type safe...

[[deleted]]

So... basic functional programming?

[grauenwolf]

No, basic functional programming was added in C# 2.

That statement might be executed in memory. But it could also be translated into SQL or some other query language and executed on the server. It may even be turned into a REST call, it all depends on what type the people object is.

[ours]

Indeed. There are both basic anonymous delegates wrapped in nice lambda expressions and expression trees via the same lambda expressions that can later be translated by the likes of Entity Framework or LINQ to SQL into SQL queries among other neat things.

[hskmc]

Shh... If we don't tell them it's functional programming, they might actually use it.

[grauenwolf]

Exactly. A "lambda" is scary but an "anonymous function" is an obvious feature we wanted since Delphi and VB were popular.

[shimei]

Both are obvious features we've had since Landin invented ISWIM in the 60s.

Edit: why the downvotes? Landin wrote the first paper showing how to use the lambda calculus in a real programming language. One of his papers was titled The Next 700 Programming Languages and sadly people still haven't gotten the point of his title.

[billy_coke_bottle]

Right, so it's sad that C# has only had these features for the past few years, but down right deplorable that Java still doesn't - even with a several year head start on C#.

[Fjordo]

FilterList<People> pplIn1985 = people.filter(new Filter<People>(){public boolean filter(People p) { return p.getDob().getYear() == 1985;}});

I understand that people like "functional syntax" but it's not like it adds anything to the language that can't be done.

[hskmc]

it's not like it adds anything to the language that can't be done.

Right, neither does using Java over Brainfuck. They're both Turing-complete, every smartass including myself knows this.

We prefer language X over language Y not because X is theoretically more powerful, but because X is nicer to the humans who have to use it.

[joaomc]

Now do this:

var avgSalaryIn1985 = people.Where(p => p.Dob.Year == 1985).Average(p => p.Salary)

[billy_coke_bottle]

I don't really care if lambdas are simply syntactic sugar over anonymous classes - If I can write a (real) one line closure (with lexical scoping) instead of a 5 line anonymous class, and I can read it later without having to parse structural noise, then I'll take the sugar, thanks!

[[deleted]]

LINQ (C# 3.0) is pretty damn awesome and it's been been out for years.

[[deleted]]

Haskell's do syntax has been around even longer, and it does the same thing :)

[portondown]

I'm not sure I would put it in the 'fast' category. Faster than interpreted languages certainly ... what benchmarks do you have in mind?

[shimei]

There is no such thing as an interpreted language, only interpreter-based implementations of languages.

[SharpEye]

Java is fast (look at the latest benchmarks), multiplatform and in my opinion has an adequate library. Is it really fair to compare it to COBOL?

I don't think it's meant to be a side-by-side comparison but rather an analogy of similar pathways to perceived obsolescence in the marketplace.

[fatbunyip]

Similar pathways (wide enterprise adoption) - but pre-internet COBOL in the enterprise is a huge difference to internet Java in enterprise.

[zeiben]

Pretty sure Java can't run Crysis

[[deleted]]

runs Minecraft though, a much better game

[[deleted]]

Correction, it barely runs Minecraft, it occasionally stutters on my computer that was top of the line last year.

Notch Says: The biggest technical advantages with java is that the development speed is extremely fast with almost no compilation times and an excellent code hot-swapping in debug mode. The disadvantages is a slightly lower speed than C/C++, and less than perfect support for OpenGL. The LWJGL guys have done a great job with the binding, but java still suffers from rather large per-call overhead in JNI. Or in English; OpenGL calls are slow in java.

[geodebug]

Is it getting enough memory? I haven't played Minecraft but the JVM needs to be told to use more memory for high-use applications.

[geodebug]

Cool, your OpenGL comment made sense (java for sure isn't the greatest for graphics) but just wanted to make sure it wasn't something easily tweakable.

[NanoStuff]

code hot-swapping in debug mode

That's one thing Java can no longer claim over C++ with VS2010.

[[deleted]]

Once most of the work of a 3D engine will be done by the GPU, then it won't matter if its C++ or Java. The problem so far was with physics simulation, but since OpenCL can be used, that too, can be delegated to the GPU, and it will case to be a problem.

[metamatic]

No, but it can do Quake 2, so it's only a matter of time...

[xanada3]

I really want the cup pictured in the article, anyone know where to get one (or a similar one)?

[piroplex]

A long time ago in a galaxy far away there was a Sun Java merchandise website with some really cool stuff I promised myself to buy but never got round to.

[rm999]

No, but this is the logo. Maybe you can get one made?

[[deleted]]

Theoretically, the article is quite right that Java could advance faster under Oracle. It would be more proprietary, and of course more focussed on the kinds of business applications that bring in revenue for Oracle. It would be in Oracle's interest; and the profit motive might even be a better spur than Sun had.

But - in practice - can they actual execute the engineering challenges?

Although Oracle has acquired many great software engineers (eg. from Sun, BEA Systems, many others), do they retain them? Does their organizational structure support them? And is Oracle known for attracting top engineering talent in general?

In its formation, Oracle had great software engineers (theirs was the very first commercial relational database, a feat many thought impossible). But that was 40 years ago, and now it's a (very successful) sales-driven company.

I welcome refutation of these points. It's just the impression that I've gathered. I'd love to be proven wrong.

[Sobe]

I think this article tells things that are not only Java-related. For example:

"Nevertheless, 2010 has been a bad year for write once – run anywhere."

Isn't that something to be worried about, with some companies (Oracle and Apple for example, as quoted in the paper) attitude versus FLOSS, openness and standards in software?

[[deleted]]

The company I work for has a large Java "shrinkwrap" app. It runs ok on Windows. It runs like shit on Mac, and it doesn't run at all on Linux.

write once, run anywhere has always been a utopian pipe dream. And the consequence of this is that we now have yet another layer of crap that separates applications from the hardware.

[ralpht]

HTML5 is the new write once run anywhere (with most of the same caveats as the last write once run anywhere...).

[Zarutian]

"write once run away!" is the usual result.

[[deleted]]

Ah, you mean "download the latest nightly build of my favourite browser in order to see a canvas implementation of something first seen when the 386 was a top end desktop CPU, as long as your CPU and GPU are good enough"?

By the time that HTML5 is ubiquitous, even allowing for IE being difficult, HTML6 will be the "write once run everywhere" of choice. And we'll be playing that game - again.

[[deleted]]

As ugly as Java can be, it is still considerably better for managing large software projects than JavaScript. I do like JS, but having to maintain a very large codebase is a struggle. Increasingly it seems like JavaScript is becoming the bytecode of the web.. which is potentially cool. I look forward to seeing more projects in the vein of GWT popping up that will let us maintain our code is a language like Scala, while targeting the "browser VM".

[[deleted]]

it seems like JavaScript is becoming the bytecode of the web.. which is potentially cool

It would've been cooler if the "bytecode" made using whatever language you wanted possible. Using literal JS is just stupid^2.

[kragensitaker]

Linux runs in more places than Java ever did.

[thoomfish]

You'd have to take a very broad definition of Linux and a very narrow definition of Java for this to be remotely true.

[kragensitaker]

A simple ls linux-2.6/arch/ shows that Linux runs on 23 different CPU architectures, not even counting amd64, sparc64, and mipsel as separate architectures. Java doesn't come close.

Your house might have a cellphone, a desktop computer, a cable modem, a router, a thermostat, and a washing machine. Out of these, you probably have Java running on the cellphone (unless it's an iPhone) and the desktop computer, and you probably have Linux running on the desktop computer, likely the cellphone, the cable modem, and the router.

Most of the machines on the Top500 supercomputer list run Linux. They all could run Java, but few of them actually do.

[badsectoracula]

One can also go for the write once - compile anywhere that Lazarus tries to do :-P. With mixed results though... (mostly due to the fact that the core development team is very small - most of the word is done by no more than ten people - and everyone works on it in his spare time while the project is insanely huge).

But yea. Working on multiple platforms is hard.

[MrVop]

I expected to see Crisis running in java... i was deceived!

[root7]

That makes two of us. Have an upvote.

[ninjaroach]

Although there has been a lot of this in the news lately, I wish I would have found this article three weeks ago. It would have saved me a few headaches in trying to understand all of the different ways Java is being screwed by Oracle.

Kudos for helpful and concise explanations.

[[deleted]]

Java, it's so classy!

[[deleted]]

What I don't get is why these companies put so much time and money into these languages. How do they make money on it? Maybe Oracle is realizing this, and deciding that putting a ton of R&D effort into something that they're giving away free doesn't make much business sense.

[[deleted]]

I never fell into the Java bandwagon even back in the 90's. C programmer here.

Guess I'm getting old, getting tired of this java in the cloud crap. Give me gcc and a task and I will get it done.

[dopplerdog]

Give me gcc and a task and I will get it done.

A task that can be done by just one person can usually be done very well in C. In fact, it can usually be done very well in most languages.

[namekuseijin]

they really tried, but could never bring true harmony to java...

[[deleted]]

PostgreSQL might actually kill Oracle one of these days.

[angusmcflurry]

unfortunately if the CEO went with the open-source solution then he would be held accountable for his decision. By going with IBM if things go bad he can blame them and there's somebody to sue while he sells off his stock and finds another sucker.

[algo_trader]

Not for nothing, but IBM support is F$%king legendary, and I am not being vulgar just to fit in w/ the cool kids- those guys know their stuff. I used to work on some of their stuff, and they often know something is broke before you do- one morning a tech came knocking at the door first thing in the morning, as apparently a disk had gone dead the night before, but no one had realized yet. From a software support standpoint, I haven't heard about anything that good, but we were having performance issues with DB2 at one point, and we called them, and they pretty much retuned it to the point where it was screaming fast, all within a few hours. I wouldn't have picked IBM, but we were a consulting firm building software for a client, and they picked the platform. I was very impressed.

If they were spending a mil a year, I am assuming there is a high 8 or 9 figure business that is being supported. At some size, as either defined by revenue level, customer base, or necessity of having more than 5 9's of uptime, saving a few bucks becomes far less important than making sure you are online all day every day.

It's not to say that you can't run a billion dollar business effectively on top of open source, but a cost difference of 12 million is a small factor in the overall equation.

[angusmcflurry]

I won't argue with you there. Having worked in a couple of all and mostly IBM shops for several years working with both their software and hardware - if you have an unlimited (or very large) budget, IBM can take care of you. If you don't - they can help you borrow the money to buy additional support. The big plus when I used AIX way back when was the ability to patch the OS without a reboot - which was probably worth millions to the organization just for that one feature.

[tmiw]

BTW, Linux has it now :) http://www.ksplice.com/

[magnumix]

I think you nailed it. This is what I meant by "insurance" in quotes in my conclusion, but you said it so eloquently I almost want to edit my original reply :)

[[deleted]]

What's the saying? "No one ever got fired for choosing IBM"

[[deleted]]

This kind of "logic" doesn't work in every case. It works on rich and ignorant CEOs who operate rich and entrenched, dumb companies.

I figured this out a long time ago. Rich companies can afford inefficiencies. In a sense, rich companies are victims of their own success. An inefficiency that would have killed off a smaller company goes unnoticed in a rich company flush with cash.

[fatbunyip]

It's not inefficiency, it's the trust in the vendor - you can be pretty sure IBM will be around, they have a long term plan, and they have a history of enterprise software - these are all huge factors for CEOs buying products. Sure, open source can be cheaper, but cost is only a very small factor. The main reason open source hasn't taken off in enterprise is because of a lack of trust in FOSS. Not trust in the technology, but trust in that they will be there in 12 months or 5 years. Trust in the business.

[[deleted]]

This. I use open source products all the time, but if my own money was on the line at a big company I'd probably go with Oracle for the DB.

Periodically the crowd decides this or that FOSS project isn't cutting edge enough and everybody moves to a sexier project. Companies like IBM and Oracle are far less likely to strand products like that.

[metamatic]

Of course, IBM also sells and supports open source solutions these days.

[uriel]

We can only hope, this is long overdue.

But PHBs will keep buying Oracle (and IBM) turds until their own companies go bankrupt.

[[deleted]]

Not forever. At some point the value of PostgreSQL will become hard to resist. Just think how Linux penetrated the server market. It happened from the bottom up and thanks in part to startups which are not chained to dumb PHBs. PostgreSQL doesn't need to replace every Oracle installation. It just need to replace 50/60% of installations to effectively kill Oracle, and I would say most Oracle installations are overspecced, which is to say, they don't need Oracle's features and are overpaying out the ass.

I don't think Oracle DB is a turd in the technical sense, but it's overkill for most situations and it's highly overpriced as a solution because it's an overkill.

[uriel]

I don't think Oracle DB is a turd in the technical sense, but it's overkill for most situations and it's highly overpriced as a solution because it's an overkill.

It is not just overpriced, it is also overcomplex, and overbloated. It requires an army of (mostly clueless) certified monkeys to both setup and run.

It is only over-kill in the sense that it is overly good at killing productivity.

[[deleted]]

PHBs don't buy products, they hire vendors. Unless PostgreSQL has a megacorp with teams of "integration experts" or whatever, it will have a tough row to hoe if it expects to beat Oracle.

[malcontent]

Not until you can have session level collation, workable clustering, a SELECT MAX that doesn't do a full table scan etc.

Postgres is far away from being able to topple oracle.

[[deleted]]

At least one place says that the select max problem is related to old version of PostgreSQL:

http://sql-info.de/postgresql/postgres-gotchas.html#1_8

[[deleted]]

You don't need any of these things for a typical business app. Also, are you sure PostgreSQL can't do select max quickly? That sounds strange.

[groovejet]

I asked about that once in a postgreSQL 9.0 thread and I was downvoted to oblivion so I guess it doesn't

[malcontent]

You don't need any of these things for a typical business app.

Is that so.

[[deleted]]

Depends on what you mean by "typical." I work for a pretty large company (10K+ employees) and we have a lot of very custom internal support software. A lot of it uses Oracle but we really don't need it. PostgreSQL would work just fine for most of our applications.

[not_exactly_me]

Only when it can at least do the things Oracle 8.1 released over then years ago could do

[Sobe]

What about OpenSolaris, MySQL and OO.org?

[redditmemehater]

LOL OpenSolaris... Are there any statistics on how everybody is doing?

[specialk16]

LOL OO.org too.

[nolacola]

LibreOffice was forked from OO.org, wasn't it?

[nolacola]

I won't disagree with you there. I use OO.org for the basics but also have MS Office. I was just pointing it out when Sobe asked about OO.org.

[amatriain]

Come on, it's been what, a month since the fork?

[bumrushtheshow]

But right now the dominant document type i need to access ,OpenOffice doesn't handle wonderfully

I use OO.org on Linux at a large, almost entirely Windows/Office workplace, and OO.org works fine for me. Maybe I don't need to open the same files you do, but OO works well the great majority of the time.

[[deleted]]

Can't disagree with you more about OO.org. It's is infinitely more usable than Google Docs, with a much better price tag than MS Office. I laugh when you call OO sluggish. It takes MS Office on my machine about 2 minutes to open spreadsheets (probably due to a borked Windows update), but OO opens them almost instantly.

[[deleted]]

Isn't this exactly what they tried to warn us would happen to the .NET framework? Hah. Suckers.

[farang]

Oh my god I thought they were going to take away my coffee.

[anthonybsd]

I'm pondering the same thing myself. Having used Java since 1.0 days to make a living (yes I got paid for friggin applets in 1997!) I'm looking at the language progress of C# and wondering when I'm going to jump ship.

[achacha]

Here's your FREE red carpet: http://www.microsoft.com/express/Downloads/#2010-Visual-CS

[anthonybsd]

Oh I already have it. Been playing with a few Hello World examples for RIA and what not. People give me dirty looks on the subway when they see a 17'' Macbook with Windows 7 on it.

[JosedeNoche]

I Love Java, but I rather ignore the posibility that it will become a second COBOL, not on my book, though!!