OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/21926/Tech_Chat_Rich_Sharples_on_OpenJDK Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2013, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Sat, 25 May 2013 08:18:02 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com irrelevant past question? http://www.osnews.com/thread?376421 http://www.osnews.com/thread?376421
the question remains whether Java would've been more ubiquitous throughout the Linux universe had Sun open sourced Java much sooner than it actually did.


Does this actually matter now? Seriously? Everyone can discuss what ifs all they want to but it doesn't change the past. Instead of wondering if Java would have been more ubiquitous on Linux if it had been open sourced sooner, perhaps they should be wondering what they can do now to make Java more ubiquitous on Linux now that it is open source. Hint: Java bindings for a lot of major libraries might go a long way... oh, and a native widget toolkit that is simple and straight forward would go a long way as well. Currently SWT is the only option in that area, and it is anything but simple and straight forward.
The other issues discussed, however, are quite interesting. Fri, 31 Jul 2009 22:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (darknexus) Comments RE: irrelevant past question? http://www.osnews.com/thread?376431 http://www.osnews.com/thread?376431 I could not agree more. Java still could turn the negative trend around, but they have to act rather fast. Fri, 31 Jul 2009 22:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (J.R.) Comments RE[2]: irrelevant past question? http://www.osnews.com/thread?376434 http://www.osnews.com/thread?376434
Java still could turn the negative trend around, but they have to act rather fast.

Not that either one is wildly popular. But I have to wonder how Microsoft .Net of all things managed to get the jump on Java for FOSS development under Linux. Miguel de Novella, I guess... Fri, 31 Jul 2009 23:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sbergman27) Comments RE[3]: irrelevant past question? http://www.osnews.com/thread?376449 http://www.osnews.com/thread?376449 Simple answer to that actually, it made development of native-seeming apps very simple, at least for GNOME. Bindings to all the major GNOME libraries were provided and are quite extensive, and their C# API is extremely straight forward. Java has the language, but nothing really native around it--very few bindings to native libraries, no native toolkits other than the overly complex swt (not even part of Java itself in any case). Java apps just don't integrate well with most of the native environments--they don't act quite the same, they look out of place, and a lot of functionality is not available to them. That's why Mono got the drop on Java, a very unfortunate thing imho. It seems rather typical of Sun (pre-Oracle at least)products in recent years... huge potential, thrown away by a string of bad decisions. Java on the desktop needs a massive improvement before most will seriously consider it for desktop apps, and unfortunately is confined for the most part to backends of enterprise applications. Great language, not so great libraries for the desktop. Sat, 01 Aug 2009 01:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (darknexus) Comments RE[4]: irrelevant past question? http://www.osnews.com/thread?376478 http://www.osnews.com/thread?376478 I don't dislike Java and I don't mind apps looking different - I may even like it.

However, one interesting thing about .Net and Mono that sets it apart is the plethora of languages available for use. I don't think this played any role in its adoption on Linux, but at least the feature is there for people wanting to experiment with different languages. Being in scientific computing now, I'm not really among this crew anymore (its either Python and its wrappers, C/C++, and if I can't avoid it Fortran & Perl). Java in my area tends to be reserved for big projects where you need a nice GUI. Sat, 01 Aug 2009 06:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Jondice) Comments RE[5]: irrelevant past question? http://www.osnews.com/thread?376499 http://www.osnews.com/thread?376499
Java....nice GUI.

Must resist... urge...
:)Edited 2009-08-01 13:28 UTC Sat, 01 Aug 2009 13:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Bending Unit) Comments RE[6]: irrelevant past question? http://www.osnews.com/thread?376511 http://www.osnews.com/thread?376511 There are certainly some bad examples out there, usually older projects. Here is a good example of a nice GUI (IMO):

http://www.cytoscape.org/screenshots.php Sat, 01 Aug 2009 16:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Jondice) Comments RE: irrelevant past question? http://www.osnews.com/thread?376625 http://www.osnews.com/thread?376625 Regarding bindings for native libraries, I've recently had the pleasure of trying out JNA (https://jna.dev.java.net/) which makes it really easy to call native libraries. Instead of writing heaps of ugly c/jni code you only need to define an ordinary java interface that matches (a subset of) the library's header file. All the stuff like pointers, structures, function pointers, etc is handled quite naturally. I haven't tried it on anything very complex though (or anything c++). Sun, 02 Aug 2009 19:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (boofar) Comments RE[7]: irrelevant past question? http://www.osnews.com/thread?376692 http://www.osnews.com/thread?376692 They seem a bit cluttered, but most of it uses native toolkit. Which takes away the worst eye-sore.

Edit: typoEdited 2009-08-03 07:21 UTC Mon, 03 Aug 2009 07:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Lennie) Comments RE[2]: irrelevant past question? http://www.osnews.com/thread?376832 http://www.osnews.com/thread?376832 That looks quite cool - will have to take it for a spin some day ;) Tue, 04 Aug 2009 06:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Malakim) Comments