Java being superceded

Void

They're always saying **** like that.
He's probably referring to M$s new C# (pronounced C sharp) which is supposed to take the best of Java and the best of C and blah blah etc who knows. They said Java would kill C++ and it hasn't.
Bear in mind that if this lecturer in college was any good as a programmer he'd be off programming, and not lecturing where you only get a salary of about IR£20,000.

Java is SO nineties....

Excelsior

and lecturers dont ever have time to consult industry. and therefore earn more than programmers ever do.

java thing reeks of bs to me though.

Otak

Yes. I'm not a porgrammer but it's being suggested that XML will supercede Java, or (more specifically) a collection of XMl stylesheets (when they're developed)

Originally posted by Baz_:
Well I've heard a rumour that java is on the way out, and although I know that some of you would prefer to see this on the webmaster board I happen to think it is more of a programming topic. What I heard is that one of the guys in my college was told by one of his lecturers that java is on the way out and is about to be superceded, has anyone else heard this, and if so what is it being superceded by???

I'm off to www.w3.org to try and find out.

Hobbes

Last time I looked XML and Java are two completly different things.

XML is just a coding structure for documents, where as Java is a programming language.

The only way a new language will supercede another is portability. Ease of use is all well and good but if you can't port your scripts to the new language easily people are going to stick with what they have (hence the reason COBOL is still around).

Baz_

Well I've heard a rumour that java is on the way out, and although I know that some of you would prefer to see this on the webmaster board I happen to think it is more of a programming topic. What I heard is that one of the guys in my college was told by one of his lecturers that java is on the way out and is about to be superceded, has anyone else heard this, and if so what is it being superceded by???

I'm off to www.w3.org to try and find out.

El_Presidente

I say NO to you all and claim quite foolishlessly that Java will be around until the sun goes Supernova.

ButcherOfNog

Originally posted by Otak:
Yes. I'm not a porgrammer but it's being suggested that XML will supercede Java, or (more specifically) a collection of XMl stylesheets (when they're developed)

this post made me smile on a dirty wet monday morning, thanks

ecksor

Originally posted by El_Presidente:
I say NO to you all and claim quite foolishlessly that Java will be around until the sun goes Supernova.

http://www.boards.ie/bulletin/Forum19/HTML/000047.html
You obviously speak with great authority on the subject.

El_Presidente

touche

Draco

Originally posted by Void:
Bear in mind that if this lecturer in college was any good as a programmer he'd be off programming, and not lecturing where you only get a salary of about IR£20,000.

...or maybe they like teaching? A mate of mine quit a £100K a year job to do lecturing, I've just started a job in Maynooth college that pays less 'cause I'll get the chance to do a small bit of teaching. Money is nice, but it is not everything.

Draco

LoLth

OMG!!! YOU are going to be given access to unsullied minds??? What the F*** is the world coming to!!

nah, seriously though, a good point. Not everyone is in it just for the money. Some lecturers actually like teaching, some just want to have the time and grant for their research, some just don't want the ****e that comes with most other jobs. And don't forget teh extended holiday time!

Draco

Originally posted by LoLth:
And don't forget teh extended holiday time!

I'm entiled to something like 35 days holidays. Bad part is that most have to be taken at particular times, but fu<k it, a month off in the summer? Great!

Draco

Bard

Originally posted by El_Presidente:
I say NO to you all and claim quite foolishlessly that Java will be around until the sun goes Supernova.

It may just, but that doesn't mean that it will achieve widespread use. Frankly I don't see the ideals of a year or two ago happening - those of a Java powered everything... from washing machine to wristwatch...

I would still avoid using Java on any web site I write.

---

Bard
_____
-me-

Excelsior

maybe i'll see you around here draco.
are you doing anything with csse2 by any chance?

ecksor

Originally posted by Bard:
It may just, but that doesn't mean that it will achieve widespread use. Frankly I don't see the ideals of a year or two ago happening - those of a Java powered everything... from washing machine to wristwatch...

Who knows? The language was originally developed for that purpose, and with the advent of jini, they're a hell of a lot closer to making it happen.

I would still avoid using Java on any web site I write.

I'd disagree there. Use of servlets or jsp for front end combined with the Java Enterprise API is a pretty decent platform for n-tier development imho.

Bard

Originally posted by X_OR:
I'd disagree there. Use of servlets or jsp for front end combined with the Java Enterprise API is a pretty decent platform for n-tier development imho.

Well that'd be where you and I disagree then, - and that's fine. I'd still think Java is a little too slow, and there's little or nothing you can do on the web that you'd NEED Java for- i.e.: little or nothing you can do in Java that you couldn't do without it.

JSP has it's possibilities alright, but isn't it still a tad slower than pure ASP?

---

Bard
_____
-me-

ecksor

Originally posted by Bard:
Well that'd be where you and I disagree then, - and that's fine. I'd still think Java is a little too slow,

Slow for what exactly? Is this speaking from experience, or benchmarks or what?
Interpreting Java bytecode is not, and never will be, as fast as executing natively compiled code. However, People are starting to cop on to the fact that online compilers can produce code that is much more specifically optimized for the platform that it will be running on than a traditional offline native compiler, which can lead to your java code running as fast as (or, in theory, faster then) native code. So, the biggest remaining bottleneck is starting your JVM, which isn't an issue in a proper servlet setup ...

and there's little or nothing you can do on the web that you'd NEED Java for- i.e.: little or nothing you can do in Java that you couldn't do without it.

And to counter that brilliant argument, I could say "Well, there's little or nothing you can do with java's alternatives that you couldn't do with java", but it wouldn't be very convincing. I will point you again to the Enterprise APIs, and of course, Java's portability.

JSP has it's possibilities alright, but isn't it still a tad slower than pure ASP?

Recent comparisons I have seen show JSP to be faster. (not independent comparisons I must add, I'll look for something unbiased).

Draco

Originally posted by Excelsior:
maybe i'll see you around here draco.
are you doing anything with csse2 by any chance?

Only if there are cute girlies in the class

I seriously doubt it - I'd say the only thing I'll be doing is kicking you lot out of my lab (the lab is SMA is now the EE lab)

Draco

Void

As for Java and speed...
IBM's Visual Age for Java has a big selling point that lets you compile your Java to native code for x86 and Alpha.
Haven't tried it out though....

Bard

Originally posted by X_OR:
Slow for what exactly? Is this speaking from experience, or benchmarks or what?

Speaking from experience, and completely from a web developers point of view, java applets embedded in a web page are just too slow to render and execute through a browser to be completely viable.

Interpreting Java bytecode is not, and never will be, as fast as executing natively compiled code.

I'm not arguing with that, and I'm not drawing comparisons, I'm saying it's unacceptably slow- I didn't say anything is necessarily faster - like I said I'm talking from a web developers standpoint, so it's java on the web that concerns me, be it applets or servlets. Applets are too slow, servlets require extra training for our existing developers (and that training is unnecessary as theres nothing we can do with servlets that we cant do with existing ASP technology), so I'm saying I won't be implementing Java on any web sites soon - theres simply no call for it.

If JSP is faster then ASP then sure! it has potential!... but our developers know ASP inside out and there is little or no point in them wasting time learning JSP when there's little or nothing extra they can do in it that they couldn't previously do.

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El_Presidente

Supernova I say!

Hobbes

Originally posted by Bard:
Applets are too slow

Bwaaah? You might want to get yourself a better machine.

I only find badly written applets slow. But that's just me. At least they tend to work under all browsers too. Remember when the net actually meant having a choice?

ecksor

Bard. Just a couple of points:
1) As I pointed out, Java can in fact be quite fast, and badly written java is the main reason for java being slow. I did say that interpreting java bytecode is inherently slow, but that is not the only way that java is executed ...
2) Your business reasons for not using Java weren't really what I was discussing (this is the programming board after all), I was more interested in discussing the it from a technology point of view. I use technologies all the time that I wouldn't if business reasons weren't an overriding factor.

As for why use java when you can use asp, and you know it/are experienced in it? Well, I use asp quite a bit, but I think that investigating the alternatives is a good idea in general, and as I've pointed out a few times already, the Enterprise APIs are actually very good (or the Java APIs in general for that matter) and worth investigating for a large scale web project.

Bard

Originally posted by Hobbes:
Bwaaah? You might want to get yourself a better machine.

What? I need something better than a PIII-500 with 128MB RAM, WinNT4.0 and IE5.1 to run Java applets smoothly?

I only find badly written applets slow. But that's just me. At least they tend to work under all browsers too. Remember when the net actually meant having a choice?

"all browsers"?

HotJava, Netscape, IE and the new version of Opera. That may be 90-odd percent of the market but its not "all browsers". Besides that, a lot of people will turn support for Java off (as well as javascript/jscript). If you want to write a site that can be viewed and viewed easily by all potential viewers, it's simple - keep client side scripting to a minimum and don't use java applets.

But that's just my opinion of course.

---

Baz_

And what a good opinion too, just last year here in the college, java support was switched off, which meant I couldn't get into any goood chat rooms. That ****ed me off, I'm not saying java is ****, I'm just saying Bard made a good point there.

Talliesin

Java will continue to be superceeded in some of the things it is currenly used for. It is already superceeded in some things (i.e. who in their right mings would use it for things that can now be done by dHTML, or perhaps Flash), but not others. More uses for Java will appear also (e.g. when it first came out you couldn't use it to write ActiveX controls like you can now).

Bard

I thought most web designers would know that you really have to design for (at least) last years browser, - last years technology (if not further back) to hit the widest and biggest target audience, and that this CAN be done without sacrificing functionality OR good design.

As well as that, it's naturally best to do as many things server-side as possible and avoid relying on the client's browser capabilities or those of its plugins, if any. This is not, therefore, a comment on JSP, but on Java applets.

My comment on JSP is that if we have a room full of developers who all know ASP inside out, (which is quite common in web design companies, including the one which I am employed in), and if and there's very little or nothing that JSP can do that ASP can't, I can see no reason to reccommend that time and money should go into training these developers to learn Java or JSP.

Sure, X_OR, I agree that investigating alternative avenues and technologies is always a good idea, but Java as a technology just doesn't look as appealing to me, these days, as it used to. I'd love to be able to explain why in more detail, but I can't really- it's just a non-starter as far as I'm concerned. I've read up on it, - believe me! - and yes, it is an excellent technology with a lot of promise, but until the penetration is such that the likelihood of a person viewing my web page being able to view any java applets I want to throw at them, and view them sufficiently quickly, increases significantly, I won't be using this technology.

I think I've said my piece

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[This message has been edited by Bard (edited 13-10-2000).]

Talliesin

"This is not, therefore, a comment on JSP, but on Java applets"

Who said anything about applets?

This isn't a thread about applets.
This isn't a thread about JSP.

This is a thread about Java.

Bard

Originally posted by Talliesin:
"This is not, therefore, a comment on JSP, but on Java applets"

Who said anything about applets?

This isn't a thread about applets.
This isn't a thread about JSP.

This is a thread about Java.

If the thread concerns Java, then discussion on applets IS relevant as far as I'm concerned. I'm a web developer, and the only way I've ever used Java thus far is naturally in an applet embedded in a web page, so I stand over my words.

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ecksor

Originally posted by Bard:
Sure, X_OR, I agree that investigating alternative avenues and technologies is always a good idea, but Java as a technology just doesn't look as appealing to me, these days, as it used to. I'd love to be able to explain why in more detail, but I can't really-

Well, thats one convincing argument you got there.

it's just a non-starter as far as I'm concerned. I've read up on it, - believe me!

I'll send you a medal.

- and yes, it is an excellent technology with a lot of promise, but until the penetration is such that the likelihood of a person viewing my web page being able to view any java applets I want to throw at them, and view them sufficiently quickly, increases significantly, I won't be using this technology.

Well, that's fair enough, but I agree with what Talliesin said on that issue.

I think I've said my piece

As have I, probably nothing more for either of us to say here.

ecksor

Originally posted by Bard:
If the thread concerns Java, then discussion on applets IS relevant as far as I'm concerned. I'm a web developer, and the only way I've ever used Java thus far is naturally in an applet embedded in a web page, so I stand over my words.

You haven't been paying attention. All of my talk on Java and web development was focused on server side technologies. Fair enough, you use asp, so do I for most things but to say "I'm a web developer, and the only way I've ever used Java thus far is naturally in an applet embedded in a web page" is ignoring all of it's other uses in the area you claim to be expert in.

Talliesin

If the thread concerns Java, then discussion on applets IS relevant as far as I'm concerned.

It's a valid part of the discussion, but you are giving it far more importance than it deserves. Maybe a couple of years ago this amount of importance could be applied to applets. Not nowadays.

I'm a web developer, and the only way I've ever used Java thus far is naturally in an applet embedded in a web page, so I stand over my words.

How is that natural?

Applets aren't the only way a web developer can use Java. In the vast majority of cases it's the last way a web developer would want to use java. There are very few applets worth their salt. There are lots of java applications, ActiveX controls (I'm thinking primarily for server side use) etc. of use in web development.

Bard

Originally posted by Talliesin:


How is that natural?

Applets aren't the only way a web developer can use Java. In the vast majority of cases it's the last way a web developer would want to use java. There are very few applets worth their salt. There are lots of java applications, ActiveX controls (I'm thinking primarily for server side use) etc. of use in web development.

Let me clarify - as a web developer, my first introduction to Java was through applets which needed client side support to run correctly, and were, in general, slow and clunky and not worth the wait. This put me off Java a bit, naturally enough, and I haven't (unfortunately, I guess) since had the opportunity or the inclination to explore Java further.

I'm only speaking, as I only can, from my own limited experience. And, X_OR - I never claimed to be an expert in Java OR it's use in web development.

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Excelsior

this is a dinger of a conversation.

keep on you titans of wit!

Greenbean

Java can be very usefull for making something extremely portable except for the whole commerical bs that surrounds it. This is me coming from a programming background - not a webdev one.

During the summer I did a project where by someone could make a webpage, include my applet and they would essentially have computer-architecture/operating-system independent interface to a remote mp3-encoder. The cool thing was the applet was only there to serve the code from your computer and receive it back again (java/sockets essentially gaining me the independence). The encoder was on a fast computer and done in c/c++.

I spend two weeks working my way around not buying £300 software authentication certificates just to let me write to the local harddrive and connect to a server which the applet wasn't downloaded from. Netscape kindly provided their security classes in source code - microsoft wouldn't; hence it works in netscape and not in IExplorer.

My conclusion was - java would be great if only it wasn't victim to power struggles. Its got really good file/network code (12 lines of c network code turns into 3 in java), its got a good set of standard classes. The main reason to use Java is for its OO ideals and independence. In that respect we find microsoft doesn't support java properly and messes it around. In the end, for a programmer its a sh;t start to any project to know that you're gonna run into tons of problems before you get going - so thats why I'm using c++ for my current project.

Derek Bell

Originally posted by Otak:
Yes. I'm not a porgrammer but it's being suggested that XML will supercede Java, or (more specifically) a collection of XMl stylesheets (when they're developed)

XML is a markup language - it's for defining other markup languages, like HTML, so I very much doubt that XML will replace Java.

Derek Bell

Originally posted by Bard:
If the thread concerns Java, then discussion on applets IS relevant as far as I'm concerned. I'm a web developer, and the only way I've ever used Java thus far is naturally in an applet embedded in a web page, so I stand over my words.

Java applications run independently of browsers, which is my main interest. I'm writing the front end of a project that uses Java for the GUI. The parts that really need high speed are written in C and C++ and linked to the Java executable via Java Native Interface (JNI).

The C++ code is also legacy code from a previous project, which is another reason for using JNI.

The GUI seems fast enough on my work machine:
650Mhz 256Meg RAM, running NT4.0

Derek Bell

Originally posted by Baz_:
What I heard is that one of the guys in my college was told by one of his lecturers that java is on the way out and is about to be superceded, has anyone else heard this, and if so what is it being superceded by???

I'd be a bit more skeptical until I got details - rumours are going around the place all the time.

If it concerns C#, I wouldn't be too certain - Microsoft tried with ActiveX, but Java was too well entrenched for it to have much of an
impact.

Bard

Originally posted by Derek Bell:
XML is a markup language - it's for defining other markup languages, like HTML, so I very much doubt that XML will replace Java.

Obviously XML is a different technology to Java. It won't replace it but it's certainly going to be in massive use over the coming months and years. Microsoft themselves literally said at their Enterprise 2000 Launch that they're 'betting the shop on XML'.

Nice one.

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Hobbes

I find Java in windows is kack, although it is no were as clunky as everyone makes it out to be.

On the mac it works like a dream and linux not too bad either.

As for what it's used for? A lot of web server developers I know prefer writing servlets to using MS based coding.

Derek Bell

Originally posted by Bard:
Obviously XML is a different technology to Java. It won't replace it but it's certainly going to be in massive use over the coming months and years. Microsoft themselves literally said at their Enterprise 2000 Launch that they're 'betting the shop on XML'.

Nice one.

Larry Wall (AKA "Mr. Perl") is working on XML projects for Perl, IIRC. Looks like it's going to be big - the latest edition of O'Reillys' Nutshell book on HTML is about HTML and XHTML