Comments on: Java Culture Update

By: Cote'

Cote' — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 16:56:39 +0000

Dave: I like it. Dynamic languages on-top of the VM. Money!

By: Dave Saaro

Dave Saaro — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 08:56:05 +0000

Friend,

Grow up. You guys need to learn something from the Ruby and Pythin guys. I used build custom web sites and web applications in Java taking couple of months to build those. Now I do it in less than 10 days, after moviung to Django and RoR.

Java sucks in big way, C# is worser. It is a losing battle. Trust me in 3 years time you will still work on Java platform, but will code in Jython, JRuby or Groovie.

Mark my words

By: Joel Meyer

Joel Meyer — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 01:11:40 +0000

I worked in the Java world for a few years right out of college (at IBM, on the WebSphere App Server Perf team) then switched to the ASP.NET/C# world (at Xanga.com). One of the things that surprised me the most is the different mentality between the two camps. This is a (probably weak) generalization, but the J2EE camp seems to be very devoted to patterns, frameworks, and the like, while the ASP.Net camp isn’t so much. After making the switch I spent some time trying to figure out what the ASP.Net equivalent of Struts & Tiles was, or what other frameworks were available for developing enterprise apps. The idea of getting a DataSet from SQLServer (using a stored procedure, not a prepared statement, no less) and slamming it right into an aspx page with a few formatting instructions was (and still is) abhorrent to me.

This makes me wonder if the Java/J2EE mentality is perhaps a little anti-mashup. J2EE people tend not to ‘mash’ things up, they prefer to architect them. The idea of throwing something together using PHP (which seems to be what a lot of mashups are) is just not appealing, mostly because of the language. However, I wouldn’t be surprised to see J2EE devs using Ruby-on-Rails for ‘mashup’ like projects because it provides a clean OO language and a MVC framework that can be hosted cheaper than a JVM.

Anyway, great entry.

By: Werner Keil

Werner Keil — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 15:04:08 +0000

Well, to be more precise, C# itself is copying or reusing features that have been around in languages like C++ (or Microsoft’s VC++) and Visual Basic (including VBA) for quite a while.

Just taking the dynamic typed for loop, or the varargs as 2 examples. Other features like strong typing, boxing, etc. were also around in those languages.

By: james governor

james governor — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 10:48:26 +0000

Zimbra is Java

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 01:12:24 +0000

Then why does Sun keep on copying C# features?

LISP! Both are copying LISP features. LISP is to programming languages as UNIX is to operating systems: all others eventually gravitate to the ONE TRUE WAY :-)

Joke ranting asside, I feel that the recent trend in dynamic languages can only be a good thing, and I’m pleased to see some of the features slowly but surely make their way into the mainstream OO/Procedural culture. It all looks good to me.

By: Dave Lopez

Dave Lopez — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 04:31:15 +0000

I have looked at C#. It is a bad Java clone.

Then why does Sun keep on copying C# features?

By: Vinay Soni

Vinay Soni — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 17:37:33 +0000

Hey, I have been doing Java for 8 years. I have been coming home every day and doing more of it. I am still happy doing this.

I have looked at C#. It is a bad Java clone. No open source libraries to add so much power that just is not there in .Net yet…

By: Scott Mark

Scott Mark — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 15:14:21 +0000

Well done, Cote’ - I think you answered my questions. The digging holes comment resonates, and was my first suspicion (not quite so elegantly thought out, though).

But I think this is the telling comment: “Java simply isn’t available in most affordable hosting plans”. That is not a cause, but rather the symptom of an underlying disease. Why isn’t Java offered? I think this really hints at the underlying platform issues that have led to the other effects you mentioned. Java is robust, but I wouldn’t call it easy.

Thanks!

By: Dave G

Dave G — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 18:23:20 +0000

I think your comments about Java are on the money. I do Java for work, but if I want to do something for fun, I rarely turn to Java because I want to learn something new that I can run on my web host easily. Also, I think Java has evolved into something that is great for easily maintained large-scale systems, which things like PHP are not as good at, and PHP is good at quick results without the maintainability. Sure, there are probably some counter examples (if you have motivated developers, anything is possible!) but the overall feel is different. (Is Ruby a good trade-off? Only time, and the community, will tell.) I think Sun has not helped Java overcome this because of its (justified, to me) fear of upsetting enterprise developers, like in its design of generics - which is sad since upgrades to the new platform are already slow in most enterprises. Pushing Groovy through the JCP isn’t the answer, either, although encouraging more JVM-based languages is a nice idea to shake up the overall Java community. Getting back to the point, though - I think the Java community views a lot of the mashup stuff as toys at this point, and “real Java developers” don’t build toys. They build heavy-duty, scalable systems! And their employers only support heavy-duty conferences, too, I’m sure. :)