Sun Microsystems on Wednesday released the second beta of Java 6, the company's next-generation development language targeted at so-called Web 2.0 programmers. Perhaps most enticing for those new to Java, the update adds a framework for supporting popular scripting languages such as PHP.
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Member since:2005-06-30
I keep hearing how fast and cross platform java is and I have even seen benchmarks showing its speed, but for some reason all the java applications I use are still god awful slow.
My other pet peeve is that much of the software I have used seems to have specific JVM version requirements which pretty much offsets any gain from being "cross platform".
I don't know exactly where to put the blame for all the poor java software I have used, maybe the problem is in poor implementation rather than in the language used.
Either way the end result seems to be that I have used so much bad java software I have a distaste for the language even if the marketing material and benchmarks tell me I am wrong.
Member since:2005-10-13
I keep hearing how fast and cross platform java is and I have even seen benchmarks showing its speed, but for some reason all the java applications I use are still god awful slow.
I think java GUI toolkits could use some optimizations, and it is getting them in 1.6. It seems as though responsiveness is often an issue with java programs, which gives the user an impression of being slow even though the actual work is being done quickly - maybe there are also some GC issues impacting this? Java is quite fast if you just run console apps with little interaction. Some java apps are quite good, so it is clear developers can work around any performance issues if they try hard enough. Netbeans, for example, is built entirely on Swing and runs quite well in Windows, at least on my computer (which has tons of ram and a fast cpu - maybe on older systems I could see a problem).
My other pet peeve is that much of the software I have used seems to have specific JVM version requirements which pretty much offsets any gain from being "cross platform".
I'll admit that "cross platform" is a bit of wishful thinking, but I haven't had too many issues - pretty much everything will run on Sun's 1.4 or 1.5.
Member since:2006-05-10
"I don't know exactly where to put the blame for all the poor java software I have used, maybe the problem is in poor implementation rather than in the language used. "
Most certainly.
For instance, I know lots of programmers who concatenates string (with the "+" symbol) instead of using StringBuffer.
Sometimes, it is justified. But for instance, I managed to make a colleague's program run FIVE TIME FASTER than with the original code by using StringBuffer.
IMHO, lots of people make the error to think they do not have to manage the memory. They are wrong. The garbage collector is a helper mechanism, but not the panacea. And sometimes, lots of objects are instanciated unusefuly, which cause lots of delay.
In fact, people should code in Java like they would code in C - and even if we have to think in C, it is more pleasant to code in JAVA IMHO. If not... it is quite logical that programs are slow.
Edited 2006-06-22 06:33
Member since:
2005-07-06
It amazes me even today, how People thinks java is slow. It seems even with the faster versions comming out, people are still same.