Here is an 8-part editorial on Java’s problems and suggested fixes.
Saving Private Java: TheTechnolyst Fixes Java’s Problems
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
am I the only person here who had difficulty navigating this link?
No you are not, but you missed nothing important. This is in every aspect a weak article not worth reading at all.
Blablablablablabla … You’re not gonna teach Sun how to make business. They do it for years, and there are still there.
Summary:
* Nothing in software is new.
* Everything in software is now easy.
* Apple r0x0rz.
* Avalon is gonna get us if we don’ act quick!!!
* we gotta do sumpin’ about it!
In short, it’s a three-in-one package of the proprietary software is dead troll, the Mac rules OK! troll, and the Longhorn is gonna kill us troll.
I’ve seen these before in isolation, and even in pairs; but this may be the first time I’ve seen them all rolled into one. Can’t say I’m impressed with the results.
Okay, I just found the link to parts 2-5 (click on the Technolyst banner at the top). It get weirder. He’s all in favor of open-source Java so that Sun can devote more time to NetBeans. NetBeans is dead, folks. Move on.
But then he’s also all about the JCP. It would seem to me that open-sourcing Java would mean a very different way for the JCP to work.
Finally, he wants multilanguage support. Which is a good idea. But only three languages: Java, a Perl/Python-alike, and a Basic-alike. I may be nuts, but I don’t think there’s demand for a Basic-alike. But while we’re at it, why only 3? A real Free Java might make a good backend for a whole lot of languages.
Or are constantly java hate articles posted on osnews…?
..are on the right bottom.
Anyway this article make no sense at all, in most parts.
Except for WebObjects. WO rox
actually sun has welcomed suggestions as to how they should proceed with solaris/java. suggestions is the key word though coz its obvious that they have a plan – probably just lookin out for that one “needle in the haystack” that COULD come along. i mean, after all this IS one of the advantages of OSS – you get diverse point of view from in and outside the box.
as to starchild, what would you have people do – not say anything. because theoretically most things that need to be said have already been said in some cases 1000s of years ago. and the so called “TROLL” about Longhorn is NOT about Longhorn as you put it, it is about one part of Longhorn i.e. Avalon.
now that we have established that can you tell me what about Avalon/XAML everyone outside microsoft should not fear. Miguel of Novell definitely seems to think that this is the most damaging part of all of .Net. would you have accepted it if it had come directly from him or if someone else like Linus had said this?
if yes then that shows that you have not analysed/read the technical merit (or lack of it) os what is being suggested. just so we on the same page in relation to Avalon+XAML:
1.) All abilities of XUL? CHECK
2.) All abilities of PDF? CHECK
3.) Electronic forms abilities? CHECK
4.) Substitutes for HTML/CSS/SVG, etc.)? CHECK
5.) Abilities of Quartz (OS X)? CHECK
6.) Abilities of Looking Glass? CHECK + more++…
Now if you can enghlight us as to how SWT competes with the above-mentioned technologies then may see what exactly we are missing.
Also, I do not get the doomsday feeling you describe, rather a warning that if dot net gets a good chunk of the marketshare/mindshare of developers then the Java market will shrink with the Java companies fighting over the few developers that are left. this is far from doomsday but would be sufficient for executives to lose sleep over.
the language support is not “multilanguage” in the way you are putting it. what you talking about is something like dot net has, however what i get from this article(s) is that the 3 would be (1.) done through the JCP. two already are – Java and the scripting language Groovy.
what the author is suggesting is that scripting languages are inherently so different from a language like basic and yet you continuously here the claim that the scripting language is going to make it as easy to program as VB java.
so the suggestion seems to be to make the scripting language 100% script-like (Perl/Python/Ruby) and not worry the ability of novices to pick it up which IS one of the worries now – that Groovy is taking on too many features that would confuse beginers. why not skip that hassle and just make a 3rd language for the beginners.
3rd parties can always handle support for other languages as is already being done now.
I am interested in knowing how the article is weak. is it for the same reasons as stated by starchild you got the impression that it was a longhorn troll. as you can tell from my response above i did not think so.
re:ac
ac, you’ve got me even more worried. you see this as a hate article. i am wondering which part gave that opinion??? it seems like a standard high school critical analysis – identify negative or positive aspect, possible comment on reason why, suggest a solution.
the person even “stinks” of being a sun sympathiser, saying that it should only open source Java after they have etsablished the short-to-medium term direction of Java to prevent “renegade” from taking over.
by this (renegade)i think he/she refers to the current politics going on in the JCP where it seems that some vendors are looking out fot themselves with no respect for technical merit in some cases – just preservation of their product-line. some examples, you say…
1.)db vendors coming out against JDO coz it makes their products less needed in the majority of data solutions
2.)IBMs hijacking and producing SWT on the down low
3.) JBOSSs war of words before they became aprt of the community
4.) JBOSS is also constantly boasting about how they are going to own “professional open source” because of the increasing number of deveopers it has that are on the committees of various boards and expert committees whilst being on their payroll
I happen to suffer from working with WO. WO sucks unless you are building a small webapp for 1 user and you need it fast. It’s like RAD for webapps. It encourages awful unreadable and unmantainable HTML code, whenever you fetch any data it first loads *all* inside an array in memory (yeah, as if any of my tables fitted in RAM), the windows port of the tools are worse than win16 apps from 1993 and the API is a bad port from objective C where you can’t use List, Map or any other regular java API object, you have to use NSArray, NADictionary and NSwhatever that of course have never been retrofitted to implement List or Map or any standard hava interface.
I wish OSNews would stop elevating random blog entries to the status of news. Most blog entries are overly opinionated, one-sided, self-serving rants full of grand, sweeping predictions. There are only a few blogs are genuinely interesting and insightful. (Joel on Software for example.)
another stupid empty blog entry handpicked by Os news. congrats.
It is my understanding that eBay uses JAVA. If that remains true then one of the largest JAVA deployments out there is a disaster.
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jsp?forum=87&thread=410092573&sta…
Since this implementation has been ongoing for months it would appear there are serious problems with the entire code package for the entire deployment as reading many of the threads under ‘my eBay’ at the discussion board will show it affects many areas and the deployment is nowhere near complete.
This article gives eBay a bit of a lashing.
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y04/m06/i30/s01
And the implementation is described here.
http://www-306.ibm.com/software/success/cssdb.nsf/CS/SCHS-5ZXVGK?Op…
Next question would be is this inhouse or outsouced ??
To me JAVA has always been JUNK.
I dont normally feed trolls but here goes.
First, how do you know there account system which handles all the transactions is written in java? Even if it IS why are you blaming the languge?
Are you really that blind, to think because a piece of software is written badly then the language must be ‘JUNK’. So to follow up with that, because windows crashes and doesn’t always work the way I want it to then c/c++/assembler/vb/.net are also JUNK. Hmm…great thought process you got going on there.
Should have spent more time running around IBM’s site. And yes its the Junk2ErrorEdition.
http://www-306.ibm.com/software/success/cssdb.nsf/CS/NAVO-5DFURA?Op…
Maybe this is just a great example that JAVA is NOT scaleable. And its ‘Open Source’ to boot.
Ahhhh Nick,
Go read the links first then go read all the results of an ‘eBay’ search at IBM. For those like Nick who are too lazey here is the link for the IBM search.
http://www.ibm.com/search?v=11&lang=en&cc=us&q=ebay&Search.x=0&Sear…
Nick….JAVA DONT SCALE.
Jeeesss…..amazing how many people have been blinded by the BS from SUN on the abilities of JAVA. The damn stuff doesn’t run properly on their own hardware and OS for petes sake.
After having watched this debate http://jboss.org/jbossBlog/blog/mfleury/?permalink=Response+to+JBos…
go on and on with the character known as Outsider ckaiming to be an “ousider” despite showing bias that sticks out like a sore thumb I am convinced that there are zealots who have either gone over the edge or paid by companies to trash oher products or divert usefull discussion on those products.
AAA and Laurens say my post is of no relevance so I ask them this, that’s if they even bothered to read it:
==>How is this post one-sided? Its about fixing Java from the point of of someone in the Java community. What is there to compare against? WebObjects? Are you offended that I mentioned Apple in positive light? Well tell that to the people that awarded WO best application server several times over a handful of years.
It is only recently (last 1.5-3 years) that other application servers have surpassed or equalled it – and only beacuse Apple has not upgraded it in a long time which usually means a shift in product strategy or major overhaul.
The person in this forum that said that they have had a bad experience with it is actually the first that I have come across (and no, this is not equivalent to saying WO is a god-send or bullet-proof) who has stated bad experiences publicly.
Even on TSS when WO came up in discussions all contributions were positive and none of the other members were ever able to knock down the stated abilities that made it superior to other implmentations at the time (2002 – 2003 time period) – during the whole Java PetStore vs. .Net PetStore saga.
Or are you an Eclipse fanatic and you are offended by the suggestion to use Netbeans. 2 things: first, on the title of that section “Everything Netbeans (Eclipse?)” notice the question mark? I do no care what gets used in the end and my tone does not convey that. I am concerned about the health of the Java community/platform and its future that’s all.
So once again I am led to believe that you either did not read the article; did not understand it; you are anti-Java/JCP/OSS/Sun (take your pick) and are disguising it with a “moderate” tone that tries to sound objective yet comes off as juvenile; or english is not your first language so picking up on implied entities such as tone, etc. which is more understandable. Or are you Outsider from JBoss ;-).
The second thing is this article is toned in a way that if one said it was an open letter to Sun that would be a valid perspective. In fact I talk of Sun needing to fix things explicitly in several places. What are you not ubderstanding? Do you wnat me to retitle it “Open Letter To Sun” like the dozens of people have done in the last 12 months and show my “creativity”? Come on! If every sci-fi flick was called the Matrix the world would commit suicide from boredom. If you are needing someone to hold your hand to show that this is an open letter to Sun then maybe you should just skip responding to the article and this post.
To Eugenia, I encourage you to read the link to JBoss I provided. Keep doing a good job and please don not succumb to the wants of people who have no ability to see technical merit or a good debate. Continue to eveluate the submissions yourself and post what you deem relevant and eventually those that are here to troll will simply move on to weaker targets.
I’m more of a fan of C/C++, as well as non-proprietary standards. So I’m not a J2EE apologist/fan, nor a fan of MS .Net.
However, I fail to see how any of the links provided make it look like J2EE is junk, or is not scalable.
Just because there were glitches in the early implemenation of a new, incredibly large billing system, does not make the platform/language it was implemented in junk. Coming to such a conclusion (that it is junk) is illogic and stupidity beyond description. I’ve got news for you: All large (and small) scale systems have early glitches. It’s called human error.
Also, eBay is probably about as scaled of an implementation as you can get, with millions of users, and likely terabytes of data. J2EE is being implemented here, with success, despite the early glitches. Therefore J2EE is scalable.
That said, I find J2EE to be over complicated and a big resource hog. But it does have it’s advantages, and it’s successes. There’s a reason that J2EE is so widely implemented in the enterprise, regardless of vendor hype. It does what it was designed to do.
Sorry if I offended you, my remark was not targeted at you personally or your particular blog entry. It’s just that I don’t think that blog entries are worthy of being mentioned on OSNews.
There are so many Java blogs out there, everyone has an opinion on what direction Sun should take. There’s nothing special about yet another “open letter” from some blogger who thinks he knows best what Sun should do, how .NET is threatening Java, Swing versus SWT, etc. Your blog entry, like any other blogger’s, just doesn’t carry any real weight. If Bill Gates or Steve Jobs wrote an open letter to Sun, then, yes, that would be news.
Sorry to come off as mean-spirited. Please don’t take it personal. Again, my remark is not targeted at you specifically.
And no, I’m not “astroturfing” here. Actually, I love Java and I’ve worked with it for years, both on the server and client side. (See for example: http://jpluck.sf.net/)
I personally liked this entry. One of the best I have read. Much better than opinion pieces by many publishers. Some nice fresh insights.
One thing I like about OSNews is that these kinds of articles are be posted. It is also purely voluntary to read it. So please stop trying to take the little guys voice away.
i owe you an apology. Although, i do not agree with some of your ideas to “Save” java , my message was unnecessary, and wrong.
After reading it “completely” i say it has some pretty good points, but like centrlizing the issue over the netBeans i guess is not correct. i am no Eclipse zealot (i use it time to time, but mainly i am a idea user..) Netbeans is a decent IDE and lately it become better.
i mostly agree with you on open source java issue,by myself, i disagree with making java GPL like open source and if one day it will be open source it shoul still be controlled by an authority.
Not so agree with scripting subject, because there are already more then enough java scriptiong libraries, and they are now doing a good job if needed (Rubby, BeanShell, Jython, Groovy). i do not think a CLI like structure or standardization is really needed over it. Also, lately groovy was accepted as a JSR..
on JDC, agree, and it is a good idea.
So, sorry for the useless message. i confess, i did it really with influence of some oter messages not really reading the whole article (it was a pain to read it all aftr all, page links.)
On the other hand, i still believe OSnews has a tendancy on picking worst, useless or hatefull java related articles. I guess The author has some preconceptions about Java and supporter of .net-Mono like environments -i do not know tough- . i cannot question his judgement, after all this can be considered as a personal site, but it sometimes pisses me off people talks with great ignorance.
fotn,
Thanks for your response.
now that we have established that can you tell me what about Avalon/XAML everyone outside microsoft should not fear. Miguel of Novell definitely seems to think that this is the most damaging part of all of .Net. would you have accepted it if it had come directly from him or if someone else like Linus had said this?
I’ve heard Miguel’s doomsday scenario. I’m glad he’s making it easier for MS programmers to transition to Linux; and he’s one of the smartest coders out there.
But I do not believe the doomsday scenario.
Why? Because I remember the same things being said about Windows NT in the early 90’s. The platform had some success, but adoption was slow (very slow at first) and it emphatically did not kill off Unix as promised.
Ever see the Big Lebowski? You know that scene where Quintana is telling them how he’s gonna beat them at the bowling match? Quintana is the Longhorn/Avalon/XAML/.NET hype brigade. I’m Walter, sitting there stone-faced an unimpressed.
There’s two things you can have in life: ubiquity and control. You can’t have both of them. .Net will get wide adoption, but it will not take over the world as planned. Something more open will have greater success. If Sun wants to open Java up, it will be Java. If not, it’ll be Mono or something that’s not even on the market yet.
To return to multilanguage support: yes, I know you only want three languages, but why stop there? Open-sourcing Java (as you want to do) is going to make it much easier to port other languages to it. Okay, maybe you get just three languages with the official benediction of the JCP. Could be.
because osnews is run by eugenia and some others who are friend of mono team. since java is not a very nice topic for .net people, osnews is posting negative java news for the past 3 years.
(eugenia, the last time i have read osnews (was it last year? anyway.), you were accusing me of being a computer program since i post from prague and istanbul and i don’t sleep much. you probably know already, but i just wanted to reply: you are right eugenia. everybody, including me and you are computer programs. –: )))).
cheers beauty.
denizkaan.
I put some thought into some of the things I mentioned in the article and I did concider them to be different from many of the other opinions that ARE portraying a dooms day scenario.
Starchild I like that you elaborated in response to the other post. However, while I do understand where you are coming from and kinda side with you somewhat, this is different.
It is different first of all because Avalon+XAML is not hype. Well… it is not in the technical aspect (PDF + XUL + QUARTZ + CSS + SVG + HTML + XML + eForms + Flash). Yes it does have all these abilities and they do exist, albeit in pre-Release Candidate state.
And this IS something to be worried about. Is a there a good reason why MS is duplicating basically the whole of the used parts of W3C standards. Remember the standard body thet MS had a spat with due to the fact that they were refused a RAND provision on web standards – W3C.
This is the same RAND provision that Ximian/Novell is betting their future on. While I do not claim to be a legal expert there must be a reason why the W3C refused the same thing Novell is so sure of, but I am digressing…
I will accept however that Avalon may not cause as much harm as it possibly can – so in this sense some of what is said IS hype. But, this does not take away from the fact that it has this ability; that MS in one swoop could possibly make the W3C redundant – especially if they standardise everything AFTER the release of their implementations.
Remember, a standard is just a spec. and the time it will take others to implement the newly standardised XAML MS will be basically eating their clients for breakfast, lunch and supper. And the icing on the cake would be the fact that WILL be using open standards, an aspect I am sure they would capitalise on in the PR.
Oh, almost forgot. The other reason why this is different is the fact that many web desingers are still coding for IE instead of the Web. So what happens when they recieve the updated tools from MS that have this technology in them but, in classic MS strategy, ar the best on the market? Continue to develop for IE.
Also deploying this is so easy and cost efficient as they can sneek it in on an OS update; release it through the web; or bundle it with new versions of the OS which it will as this is the same technology that will be used for the desktop.
Whew… long post – I am slow typer.
Once again, thanx everyone for the constrcutive criticism – lets try to keep it this way so that Eugenia does not disown us ;-).
I believe one of the primary reasons Windows NT never replaced Unix, as predicted in the early NT days, is that while it is technically superior in many ways, it has not been revolutionary better, making many people not waste money and effort into porting already working applications to a new platform.
The very slow adoption of NT was caused by this, and in the end Windows NT moved mainly the PC world (dos+windows) to their system, instead of unix.
There is a Joel on Software article about this subject, which illustrate that even many pro-MS people find it hard to justify moving existing codebases to this entirely new platform (.net+Avalon+XAML). This will make the adoption to longhorn as slow, if not even slower, than Windows NT back in the days.
The arguement about people coding up against IE is rather weak, since any remotely serious website would have to function on versions of Windows older than longhorn. This means that the Mono project and other competition will have at least 5 years (from release date of longhorn) to fight this new development platform.