The Artima Developer Community
Sponsored Link

Weblogs Forum
Java 7: Too Little, Too Late?

64 replies on 5 pages. Most recent reply: Jan 30, 2012 10:07 AM by Steve Carmeli

Welcome Guest
  Sign In

Go back to the topic listing  Back to Topic List Click to reply to this topic  Reply to this Topic Click to search messages in this forum  Search Forum Click for a threaded view of the topic  Threaded View   
Previous Topic   Next Topic
Flat View: This topic has 64 replies on 5 pages [ « | 1 2 3 4 5 | » ]
robert young

Posts: 361
Nickname: funbunny
Registered: Sep, 2003

Re: Java 7: Too Little, Too Late? Posted: Aug 20, 2011 6:45 PM
Reply to this message Reply
Advertisement
> >> By and large, java's success is due to tomcat/jasper
> >> /websphere/jsp/struts/etc. IOW, Big Corp intranet
> apps.
> >> It's the current COBOL, and treats data just like
> COBOL
> >> has since the 60s. sad, sad, sad.
>
>
> what do you mean by: treats data like COBOL?

Because it's used to recreate old COBOL applications, which ignore the utility of databases, both in doing the ACID in the code and, not coincidentally, treating said data as gatewayed by one and only one application. IOW, as in the 60s COBOL fashion, java coders insist that their code is king. Modern builders understand that data is the real king. Data outlasts any language and any program. This is a hard lesson, most often learned hard.

George Sakkis

Posts: 14
Nickname: gsakkis
Registered: Jun, 2007

Re: Java 7: Too Little, Too Late? Posted: Aug 21, 2011 5:50 AM
Reply to this message Reply
> I personally think it's fun writing java code and don't feel sad. Great standard library, tons of useful java code/libraries online, huge community..

Out of curiosity, what platforms and languages other than Java have you used, if any?

Fred Finkelstein

Posts: 48
Nickname: marsilya
Registered: Jun, 2008

Re: Java 7: Too Little, Too Late? Posted: Aug 21, 2011 9:10 AM
Reply to this message Reply
>> Out of curiosity, what platforms and languages
>> other than Java have you used, if any?

C, C++, a little bit of python, a little bit of scala, but no dot net. I think python and scala are also fun. But I haven't discovered all aspects of the latter two yet.

Cameron Purdy

Posts: 186
Nickname: cpurdy
Registered: Dec, 2004

Re: Java 7: Too Little, Too Late? Posted: Aug 23, 2011 6:35 AM
Reply to this message Reply
Max -

> But Java did not advance the state of the art in any way.
...
> langauges like Perl, Tcl and Python already existed and had many of these features

Yes, in a pedantic sense, Java did not advance the state of the art in the software industry.

Neither did the iPhone in the mobile phone industry, since all of its "features" had shown up in other companies' devices.

Or maybe a product is more than the sum of its features? ;-)

Peace,

Cameron Purdy | Oracle

Cameron Purdy

Posts: 186
Nickname: cpurdy
Registered: Dec, 2004

Re: Java 7: Too Little, Too Late? Posted: Aug 23, 2011 6:51 AM
Reply to this message Reply
> given that those programmers can't be trusted with pointer
> arithmetic, I'm not sure I trust those libraries to do
> what they're designed for.

Wow. Enjoy your pointer arithmetic. It's even more fun to do it with punch cards. ;-)

> Another thing that rankles me is that, although Java was
> marketed as "the successor to C++" it did not solve a
> number of standing issues in C++ and it repeated a number
> of mistakes that C++ had already learned from by the time
> Java was released. In other words, Gosling doesn't appear
> to have actually spent the time to read the 200 page book
> The Design & Evolution of C++. If he had, I would
> have taken his work more seriously.

I've read it. And I've done plenty of pointer arithmetic too (much of it in C++). Based on my experience with C++ (which unfortunately continues even today), Bjarne is not someone whose advice I would consider when designing a language.

Having used both C++ and Java quite extensively, I would never choose to use C++ when Java would be capable of doing the job. While there are many languages that have appeared since Java, and many remarkable advances in those languages, none of them makes me feel about Java the way that Java makes me feel about C++.

> I believe that Java's main success stems from mundane
> things, such as offering a cross-platform networking
> library.

Now you're talking! Yes, those little mundane things, like a String type and the ability to program TCP/IP clients and servers, turned out to be rather valuable :-)

Here's a (humorous? ;-) little presentation I did on why C++ didn't make the leap to the Internet age, and Java took off instead: http://vimeo.com/8235227

Peace,

Cameron Purdy | Oracle

Achilleas Margaritis

Posts: 674
Nickname: achilleas
Registered: Feb, 2005

Re: Java 7: Too Little, Too Late? Posted: Aug 24, 2011 5:00 AM
Reply to this message Reply
> none of them makes me feel about Java the way
> that Java makes me feel about C++.

Indeed. Each time I am dealing with Java code, I feel that I miss C++ so much :-).

Cameron Purdy

Posts: 186
Nickname: cpurdy
Registered: Dec, 2004

Re: Java 7: Too Little, Too Late? Posted: Aug 24, 2011 6:47 AM
Reply to this message Reply
> Each time I am dealing with Java code, I feel that
> I miss C++ so much :-).

That does amaze me. By "dealing with", I assume that means someone else's code?

I am very curious: What are you building? i.e. what is it that you are finding C++ to be a good fit for?

Nemanja Trifunovic

Posts: 172
Nickname: ntrif
Registered: Jun, 2004

Re: Java 7: Too Little, Too Late? Posted: Aug 24, 2011 8:24 AM
Reply to this message Reply
This describes one of the biggest problems I had with Java (when I last used 10 years ago):

http://www.klocwork.com/blog/2011/08/squeezing-max-from-the-tryfinally-blocks/

But in reality, I don't think anything will replace Java no matter how better it is. The world is running on software built with bad languages: COBOL, C, C++, Perl, JavaScript, Java, C#/VB... I've never used anything built with Haskell or SML or Dylan.

Achilleas Margaritis

Posts: 674
Nickname: achilleas
Registered: Feb, 2005

Re: Java 7: Too Little, Too Late? Posted: Aug 25, 2011 5:06 AM
Reply to this message Reply
> > Each time I am dealing with Java code, I feel that
> > I miss C++ so much :-).
>
> That does amaze me. By "dealing with", I assume that means
> someone else's code?

Both my own and someone else's code.

>
> I am very curious: What are you building? i.e. what is it
> that you are finding C++ to be a good fit for?

Desktop applications.

Krisztian Sinka

Posts: 30
Nickname: skrisz
Registered: Mar, 2009

Re: Java 7: Too Little, Too Late? Posted: Aug 26, 2011 6:27 AM
Reply to this message Reply
> Here's a (humorous? ;-) little presentation I did on why
> C++ didn't make the leap to the Internet age, and Java
> took off instead: http://vimeo.com/8235227

One of the slides read there: "Some unnamed major vendors have horrid support for the C++".

I had some bad experience with Sun Studio's STL support. So it is a strange to hear such statement from Oracle people... ;-)

Cameron Purdy

Posts: 186
Nickname: cpurdy
Registered: Dec, 2004

Re: Java 7: Too Little, Too Late? Posted: Aug 26, 2011 7:05 AM
Reply to this message Reply
> One of the slides read there: "Some unnamed major
> vendors have horrid support for the C++".
>
> I had some bad experience with Sun Studio's STL support.
> So it is a strange to hear such statement from Oracle
> people... ;-)

Like I said, "unnamed" ;-)

Peace,

Cameron Purdy | Oracle

Haug Bürger

Posts: 1
Nickname: pinus
Registered: Aug, 2011

Re: Java 7: Too Little, Too Late? Posted: Aug 27, 2011 11:43 AM
Reply to this message Reply
Why blaming Java for slow improvements? The question is, what's the alternative? And no, I don't think Scala is an alternative. It's not the language, Scala really is an improvement, it's the tooling. Starting with UML designers which generate Java code and end up with Sonar improving the code quality. The whole software life-cycle is very well supported with tools. As far as I know Scala doesn't even have an IDE that allows refactoring.

And yes, it is fun to do some toys with Scala but if the software grows or is bigger than a couple of thousand lines I still prefer to use Java.

robert young

Posts: 361
Nickname: funbunny
Registered: Sep, 2003

Re: Java 7: Too Little, Too Late? Posted: Aug 28, 2011 11:31 AM
Reply to this message Reply
> Starting with UML designers
> which generate Java code and end up with Sonar improving
> the code quality. ... I still prefer to use Java.

As I've said about framework programmers not really writing java, this approach is even more extreme. The code may be java, but the coder isn't. There's the story of the Mercury astronauts having to be nearly ordered into the program. They were largely pilots, and didn't see the point to just riding as a passenger in a tin can. The whole point of a language (including, may be particularly, DSLs) is that the semantics and syntax of the language are the guts of the code. With java these days, it's all about tools and frameworks. How is a java coder supposed to understand the S&S if s/he doesn't actually write in them?

How many job listings do you see that don't specify a framework or tool (or both or multiple of both) as mandatory? It's legitimate to ask, what is java, anyway? The Scala movement, among others, is a reaction.

Dick Ford

Posts: 149
Nickname: roybatty
Registered: Sep, 2003

Re: Java 7: Too Little, Too Late? Posted: Aug 28, 2011 7:04 PM
Reply to this message Reply
> Why blaming Java for slow improvements? The question is,
> what's the alternative? And no, I don't think Scala is an
> alternative. It's not the language, Scala really is an
> improvement, it's the tooling. Starting with UML designers
> which generate Java code and end up with Sonar improving
> the code quality. The whole software life-cycle is very
> well supported with tools. As far as I know Scala doesn't
> even have an IDE that allows refactoring.
>
> And yes, it is fun to do some toys with Scala but if the
> software grows or is bigger than a couple of thousand
> lines I still prefer to use Java.

Even though Kotlin is still pretty much vaporware at this point, I expect it to have a significant impact for 3 main reasons.

(1) It's statically-typed.
(2) It'll have awesome IDE integration unlike most other alternative JVM languages
(3) It's not Scala ;)

Max Lybbert

Posts: 314
Nickname: mlybbert
Registered: Apr, 2005

Re: Java 7: Too Little, Too Late? Posted: Aug 29, 2011 12:38 PM
Reply to this message Reply
> Starting with UML designers which generate Java code and
> end up with Sonar improving the code quality. The whole
> software life-cycle is very well supported with tools.

"Use Java, and you, too, can ship projects that rely on thousands of lines of code that you didn't write, but that you will be responsible for finding bugs in!" Sorry, doesn't inspire confidence.

> Why blaming Java for slow improvements? The question is,
> what's the alternative? And no, I don't think Scala is an
> alternative. It's not the language, Scala really is an
> improvement, it's the tooling. As far as I know Scala
> doesn't even have an IDE that allows refactoring.

To the extent that IDEs, frameworks and other tools succeed in making it possible to work on a larger codebases than a team could otherwise manage, they often also hide significant bugs. As Dijkstra said about language features, many times these tools belong in the problem set, not the solution set.

Scala's promise is that the language improvements make it easier for a team of programmers to solve larger problems without hiding significant bugs. Scala may well lack tools to allow mediocre programmers to vomit out thousands of lines of code without actually understanding any of it, but I would consider that an improvement.

Flat View: This topic has 64 replies on 5 pages [ « | 1  2  3  4  5 | » ]
Topic: WebSockets: A Glimpse of the Future Previous Topic   Next Topic Topic: First Impression: Scala Goodies

Sponsored Links



Google
  Web Artima.com   

Copyright © 1996-2019 Artima, Inc. All Rights Reserved. - Privacy Policy - Terms of Use