Now that Java has a fully open sourced implementation in RedHat's IcedTea, Neil McAllister questions whether an open Java even matters: "Even as Java has stretched outward to embrace more concepts and technologies - adding APIs and language features as it goes - newer, more lightweight tools have appeared that do most of what Java aims to do. And they often do it better."
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Member since:
2005-11-18
- Performance that is (in most situations) acceptable compared to natively compiled C/C++ code: check.
- Comprehensive class library, proven third party libraries and application server platforms: check.
- Hosts of well-trained programmers available: check.
- Taught in most education institutions: check.
From the article:
Imagine if Java were released today, brand-new, as is. That's almost how it is for the Free Software community. Java is now an option for Free Software development, for the very first time.
No it's not, Red Hat-ish (and other distributions) had provided Eclipse, Tomcat, and others running on top of gcj for a while. It's just that OpenJDK is complete, has a fast VM, and verifies against the TCK. So, for most it is a better alternative than gcj now.
Now ask yourself this: If Java really were released today, brand-new, would it be a tool you'd choose?
But that is not the situation. Java was released more than a decade ago, has a high-performance virtual machine. There are good frameworks, and programmers are in high demand. Like C, C++, and Cobol, it's not going away, and even if it doesn't become more popular on free software platforms, it will continue to form a chunk of widely used infrastructure (e.g. J2EE, Eclipse).
To be honest, I think Java (as a platform) will only grow. There is a lot of movement to have dynamic languages run better on Java (e.g. JRuby, Groovy), which will make it more attractive to some programmers. Additionally, it's currently the only serious free software competitor to .NET.
Edited 2008-06-26 19:49 UTC