Oracle and Sun yesterday renewed their vows of collaboration and detailed their plans to give Microsoft .NET a Java-based run for its money.
Oracle and Sun Tie the Knot
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Should be interesting. As a Java user I think .NET has an advantage since they saw the mistakes of Java and they circumvented them using Sun’s hindsight. .NET is a great product I am sure and its popularity is a testament to it but these Oracle and Sun tying the knot articles seem sensationalist dont they? I mean what is Oracle going to do? Reduce the overengineering of the APIs?!
I agree more hype about nothing kinda like the Google Toolbar deal SUN hyped up. Nothing to see here move along.
I wouldn’t called Java over engineering, I would call it a great API with a shithouse IDE – sure, Creator is a *good start*, but its only a start – it still can’t compete with the easy, quick ‘n dirty solutions one can pump up in a few minutes work using Visual Studio.
If there is one thing lacking in the Java world, its an IDE catered for just those occasions, when you need a solution and don’t give a toss how it is achieved.
A good software should not built Quick’n’Dirty….
Yes, and we should do all hand written process diagrams and flow charts and so forth – yes, thats nice in the ACADEMIC world, where time is measures in MONTHS and sometimes YEARS, but the reality is, the CIO wants a dinky front end to the database, and he wants it by the end of the day – to him, he doesn’t *care* how you do it, just get the damn thing done.
I’m sorry, but my time shouldn’t be spent trying to hand code widget code to a damn file when it should be a matter of dragging some swing widget to a form, double clicking, assigning some code, and voila, 4 hours later, problem solve – Happy CIO, happy me, and a jug a beer for all concerned.
Oh yes I totally agree. We do need good IDEs. There is no doubt about it. My point is out of all IDEs I have worked with so far….besides IDEA Netbeans has shown the most amount of improvement. Now it is probably because the previous versions were so horrendous! But nevertheless. My only gripe is startup speed with large Java apps like Netbeans. I hope Mustang takes care of that.
Hopefully, or they take the idea of Creator further, and provide more pre-coded stuff – make it so easy that one only needs to know the very basics of Java and still get something up and running.
Agreed that the older IDEs and I mean pre Netbeans 5.0 were nice but not as impressive. But I have been using the beta builds of 5.0 and if Sun Creator is built off of that platform then we have a lot of good things to look forward to. sure it will have a long time to go before it becomes popular like Eclipse if that is what you are wanting to compare it to but it will get there. NB comes with great stuff right away out of the box whereas in Eclipse you have to go hunting for plugins.
Java does have a great API though I admit it. And I also agree that VS is a better IDE. But Sun has not been in the IDE game for that long have they? They are working hard and they are doing it for free…whereas MS is chargin for their copies arent they?
Well, true, SUN hasn’t been in the IDE game for long, but if you look at what is out there, its enough to bring a man to tears – there hasn’t been one company who has mastered the art of IDE design as Microsoft has.
Microsoft, unlike the rest of them have realised these things:
1) The world runs on quick and dirty solutions; analyse the problem, code it, test it, and pump it out – sort out the niceness of the code later.
2) Software companies like it when they can keep costs low – they do this by making sure they have the best tools on hand, Microsoft provides those tools which make programmers more efficient, meaning, developing for the Windows platform, as ugly as win32 is, is still not as painful as trying to develop a Java application, or god forbid, trying to understand the crap-o-la documented GTK and Glade which would make anyone nuts.
Build an framework AND a good IDE and the developers will come – it seems that no-one has yet given the Java camp that hint yet unfortunately.
I think Microsoft was forced to provide an IDE because of the convoluted way you have to write code to develop Windows software.
Other OSes haven’t really needed a VS.NET style IDE because developing software on other platforms is infinitely easier than it is on Windows.
At least that’s my opinion.
Oh pulease, you need and IDE once your project gets beyond “Hello World’, when you have hundreds of programmers working on many difference modules at the same time – all located in various parts of the globe – India working on the code behind the driver API, China working on the AGP driver etc. etc.
Its about creating a tool that allows large projects to scale, not only in share numbers but in terms of the locality of the various contributors to the software development.
And yes, Linux WILL need those, and right now, KDevelop comes VERY close to it, but when compared to Glade, its light years ahead of anything on GNOME.
Have you developed for both platforms?
I have, and I strongly disagree with that. Windows is not hard to program for at all. There are quite a few quirks, but there are so many resources out there for it, that it doesn’t even matter that much.
The only way to give .NET a run for its money is to hit it in the only place it is remotely useful; its development tools.
.NET is bloated and slow and can be outrun by a geriatric bash CGI script. The only place that .NET really shines (for some) is in the development tools associated with it.
Java simply sucks at certain tasks (like file IO) and Oracle simply sucks in its admin tools and especially its command line tools. If Oracle and Java want to team up and “give .NET a run for its money” they need to make their development/admin tools as shiney as Microsoft has their VS.NET and SQL Server tools.