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Wanted to vote down at first because:

You take the Bile Blog too seriously. Lighten up!
I don't agree that Java is a failure. Sure, the language is not perfect. I would say that some of the annotation stuff that seems to be coming in 7 is scary though.

But I agree with some of your comments on Sun's track record on evolving specifications. I would like to hear responses to your comments from Sun but I guess that is asking for too much :)

The thing is, Sun is late in a lot of things (have a look at JavaFX) and frankly, haven't pushed the technology envelope since the initial inception of Java. They seem to have all the good intentions, but that will only get you so far - certainly I can not thrive on "open source" as a religion but want true innovation to remain passionate about my job.

I think it's an exposure thing. If you've seen "other sides" you clearly miss some innovation in Java. If you have never tried edit-n-continue (Visual Studio vs. NetBeans) or writing type-safe queries directly in your language (LINQ vs. JPA), then you would not know what you're missing. And if you do not know what you are missing or is at least interested in it, there's no point in discussing with you.

The current trend of (mis)using annotations sadly seems to be on the rise. Toothed as a facilitator, but looking more and more like a workaround. What will the next workaround layering mechanism be. A pre-processor?

Pfft. You basically seem to have taken my anti *people of type X* rant as jumping point and a segue-way into 'Sun sucks' (which most people agree with), and 'I love .net' (which is your personal choice).

Either way, you seem to have completely missed the point, and have just chosen my ranting as a catchy title to do some of your own. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's not exactly a response.

Hani

Java is that it is trying to be a solution for all things and thats probably complicating things. That may not always work. It's about using the right tool for the job.

.NET/C# have their issues too. Many disliked ASP.NET as not following an MVC (they are getting the MVC now anyway). In Java if you disliked something you could create frameworks and do a pretty good job, get to run the stuff in any platform you need not so with MS .NET.

There are issues everywhere but my opinion is : Java solves more problems and wider range of problems across wider range of platforms that anything else.


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I like that entertainment has returned to Java Blogging.

Wow. This was perhaps the best blog entry I've ever read anywhere ever. Seriously. I, too, am a developer -- not a Java developer. But I use Java daily and I do indeed love it. Much of what the author says resonates with me.

However... I would like to point out that Java's core is still fantastic (not that it couldn't use a kick in the pants) and that the author's primary gripes appear to be with J2EE which no developer in their right mind would use because it sucks absolute sh*t. If Spring/Hibernate/etc. works well for you, use it! I love Spring... Rod Johnson was brilliant. Hope they don't f**k it up :-)

I enjoyed this article. You mention near the end that you have thoughts on where ruby is going. Based upon the quality of this post, I would like to hear your thoughts on ruby.
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Why do posts like this one always come from people that have no business-sense?

Do you understand the reasons behind slow evolution of Java?

Do you understand that .Net is controlled by only vendor that can break backward compatibility at any time?

Do you understand how much money, on the global level has been invested in Java tooling and human know how?

Do you understand what impact on global IT economy would have some changes you closures/non-erasure generics/[add you feature wish list time] dudes propose in terms of protecting already made investments?

Please, go visit basic economy class and then post on public forums. Java is serious platform for serious business, you script kids go use RoR or whatevar.
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Omg, I just saw this guy used to work for Thoughtworks. That explains it pretty much, I though we had a chance to save this soul until I saw it.

Omg, I just saw this guy used to work for Thoughtworks. That explains it pretty much, I though we had a chance to save this soul until I saw it.

So lets take a look at some of his comments:

"Anyone else tired of chasing Sun's tail?" Sun offers the most open platform in the world, you get entire stack for free. Plus, all changes are cooperated between multiple big vendors, like IBM, Oracle et al. In that way changes are slow, but correct. You compare with C#, where single vendor controls EVERYTHING.

"All this while waiving the flag of "backward compatibility" that they also ended up failing at anyway". This guy obviously hasn't heard about Neal Gafter and his explanation why generics were implemented the way they were.

"Sun does not understand short-term sacrifice for long term gain." No, quite opposite, Sun understands that priority is to make sure risk surrounding Java investments from big companies is low, and does not care what some script kids think.

"but the C# team and their leadership. " No , .Net has monopoly where one single vendor can do as pleased.

"would fail in Java even if the strings were equal due to the Java's lack of an overloaded == operator"
Someone obviously needs to get laid, since you get so pissed off because of very timy and small syntax flavor in language.

"Because I'm Sun's customer too, " Yes you are, but you are so insignificant customer, just like me or any other developer out there. Sun is protecting BIG investments from BIG players.

and so on..

The bottom line here is that all Java haters do not realize that Java is shaping global economy, and imagine how much money, on the global level, would require to educate average Java developers to new syntax and perhaps semantic rules.

Please continue the QQ, definitely fun to read posts from people who dont understand how their opinion is irrelevant to global economy and principles that drive it.


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Also, you people are never satisfied, you QQ-ed at early EJB times, you QQ-ed at Struts times, you QQ at pretty much everything, and finally when Java has reached stability period, a.k.a. 10 year magic marker, you QQ even more now than ever.

Current times are good for Java developers more than ever since we now have stability on almost every aspect of software development, on any domain and layer, and in high majority of cases we have it for free (GridGain and similar much?).

ninja-ninja-

I'm not sure you understand who Clinton, the poster, is. If you knew who he was you probably wouldn't be questioning whether he "gets it" or not.

Hani-

Trying to write off what is being said in the post about C# as "I love .net" is a cheap shot and not at all what he was saying.

@jk49991

From the blog post he made it is obvious he does not get it. That blog post was not factual but rather emotional in nature, he did not post facts, including benefits and drawbacks of any of things he wrote about, but rather some random stuff.

Moreover he does not understand that it was good thing industry had to go through bad times like early EJB days, because if there were no EJB we would not have for example Spring. That is evolution, learning from mistakes and continuing to innovate without affecting global IT industry.
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ninja_ninja-

Again I am pretty sure you have no idea of Clinton's history with Java and J2EE based on what youre saying. Please read his blog and look at http://ibatis.apache.org

I think those things speak well of Clinton's understanding of the Java market.

ninja_ninja -- I respect your passion here, because I used to be the exact same way. I was Java Zealot #1. You really should click the other links in the blog post for a bit of my history: http://www.clintonbegin.com/2008/02/party-like-its-2002.html (read the PDF).

For Sun to fall from my favor is a bloody amazing achievement on their part.

Given that you created an account specifically to respond to this ( http://www.dzone.com/links/users/profile/287694.html ), I can tell that you really do care about Java and its future. I can only hope that Sun and the JCP can continue to make you as happy with the platform as you currently are.

Cheers,
Clinton

Well thanks for good wishes. I certainly hope Sun stays on the current track, especially in non-UI department, since backend development in Java is now rock solid. UI tools need some polishing/innovation though.

And to repeat it again, you can not talk factually about Java and its shortcomings without taking into the consideration business context/global IT market.

Have fun

ninja_ninja, do you have any idea how many people have still not upgraded past 1.4.2? Why keep flawed/bad code around in the name of 'backwards compatibility' when people aren't upgrading anyway? Make some breaking changes and clean up the language, rethink some of the bigger issues that have plagued Java, and make a clean break. VB did it, Python is doing it and Java can do it too. People that don't upgrade from 1.4 won't upgrade no matter what, so keeping bad ideas around in Java 7 is just holding everyone else back. There's a balance to be struck re: new features vs backwards compatibility, and Sun needs to rethink that balance.

@mgkimsal

Hm yeah, how many FIX, FpML, UBL, EDIFACT, UNIFI, Swift brokers and systems consuming those brokers are written in Python? None, yeah thought so.

How many production grid solutions, and in general distributed computing platforms are written in Python? Yeah thought so, none.

You gotta understand my friend how much money on daily basis is exchanged over java implementations of FIX, FpML, UBL, EDIFACT, UNIFI, Swift, et al. Those standards are driving global economy, and as such, we dont have luxury to break backward compatibility.

Python and VB are mickey mouse languages, no offense. If they bring anything to the table where people could make more money, some venture capitalist would invest in it. And now you know why noone is using VB and Python for any serious business.

VB, toy or not, drove and still drives (via 'legacy' installations) a lot of transactions and money. And guess what? The old systems still work even though the language has gone through upgrades. People running the legacy systems simply don't upgrade to the latest platform.

How many of those 'java implementations of UNIFI, Swift, FIX, FpML, UBL, EDIFACT, etc' systems running critical infrastructure to 'drive the global economy' are actually running on Java 1.6? Few to none is my hunch. Please correct me, and I know you will, if I'm wrong (or even if I'm right).

*Most* people I know doing Java at all levels are not using 1.6, and many still aren't using 1.5. 'Critical' infrastructure that still hasn't upgraded to 1.5 never will. Let those projects continue to run on 1.4 forever. It doesn't matter how backwards compatible 1.5, 1.6 or 1.7 are - those projects will never experience it.

It is really disturbing when some fool in the technology industry makes claims that nobody is using a given technology simply on the grounds that they haven't personally read about it or seen it with their own eyes.

Google seems to be doing quite well with Python (and Java for that matter). You might have heard of them. Its this search engine thing a few people seem to be using on the intertubes. But they're not a serious business right?

Clinton Begin doesn't get it. Hani's rant wasn't about technologies or companies, except in the most peripheral way. It was about people. Obnoxious people. People who need to be noticed. People who are insecure. People who are upset by the fact that most Java developers don't give a shit about them or their pet language/framework du jour. People who should, in Hani's words, "get the fuck out of [his] world, and go try and get a job doing what [they] actually WANT to do."

What the hell does Sun have to do with any of that?

@dglasser and @Hani

Let me quote the top level structure of Hani's post for you, and outline exactly how I addressed every point (minus the rambling attacks on certain demographics).

"Why are so many people angry at Java?" -- I answered. The reason is Sun. It's like adultery. You generally wouldn't look elsewhere if your partner was still making you happy. If Sun was as hot as the day I married her, I'd have never left. ;-)

"The first glaringly obvious point of commonality is that their new language is something with low adoption" -- this was a point I contested. Not all ex-Java developers move to Ruby, Haskell and Erlang. MOST of my friends hate Ruby as much as the next Hani, but have moved to C# -- mostly because the majority of Calgary, Alberta has bulldozed Java out of their IT departments. Here's the job list from one of the largest headhunting firms in Calgary: http://sisystems.com/mp/opp/index.cfm/city.3/si.html -- I don't see Ruby or Java mentioned there, but I see a lot of .NET (advanced search of Java, J2EE, C# and .NET yields about 2.5x - 3x the number of jobs in favor of .NET).

"The second point is ... It can’t be something that ... you can hire easily" -- A point which I directly contest both with C# and LAMP/R. The enterprise where I live is generally moving toward .NET at a wildfire pace (check that job list again). Meanwhile, the startup and .COM space is filled with PHP, Python, Ruby, and even Erlang (mostly because they follow suit with whatever the Facebooks, Googles and Yahoo! use). I really wonder how long Java will last at Amazon and ebay? My prediction is that in 5 years you'd have to cross an ocean to get a job doing anything with Java other than maintenance. Start the countdown. Tell me I'm wrong in 5 years.

And finally... "Here’s a novel idea, how about getting a job and shutting the fuck up about it?" -- to which I suggested that perhaps we have the right as customers to demand more out of the people responsible for our software platform. Why is it easier to learn a new language than to understand the decision making process and ultimate implementations of something that sucks as hard as Java Annotations or Generics?

Is complacency the future of the Java platform? Is "good enough" the future of the Java platform?

"When someone asks: 'How's your day?', who ever responds with 'Average'?" ~ Tom Peters

Clinton

Clinton, you still don't get it, I'm afraid. If you don't fit the description, then he wasn't talking about you. There are lots of people who fit the description perfectly, however.

BTW, Clinton, if you search monster.ca for jobs in the Calgary area, you'll see that Java gets more hits than both .NET and C#.

@dglasser

That is how they try to impose their opinion, by stating false data. They will do anything to try to make their opinion valid.
Both Dice and Monster return way more Java jobs than .Net jobs.

And to all you anti-java people, qq some more.
http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html

For a guy that claims to know a lot about numbers and trends, and to state facts. You sure do know how to misinterpret and/or misrepresent numbers. You can't look at one month of the tiobe index. You have to look at the big picture trends, this picture on the link you posted:

http://www.tiobe.com/content/paperinfo/tpci/images/tpci_trends.png

Java, C, C++ and Perl all have long-term downward trends.
C#, Ruby, Visual Basic(!), PHP and Delphi(?) all have upward trends.

Of course in a down economy, the downward trends will be sharper than the upward trends, which is exactly what we see here. It's also a very long fall from the dot-com bubble, which fueled a lot of Java's success, and is something we won't see again for a while.

They're your numbers man. ;-)

.Net has made some impressive progress in course of 5 years, from 1% to 5%, impressive.

Yeah, I better start search for new job cause in 15 years .Net will have 20% if the same trend continues.

Quote from TIOBE Q&A:

# Q: What happened to Java in April 2004? Did you change your methodology?

A: No, we did not change our methodology at that time. Google changed its methodology. They performed a general sweep action to get rid of all kinds of web sites that had been pushed up. As a consequence, there was a huge drop for languages such as Java and C++. In order to minimize such fluctuations in the future, we added two more search engines (MSN and Yahoo) a few months after this incident.

That's not at all what I found... Searched for each individual term: Java (46) + J2EE (18) == 64; .NET(45) + C#(34) == 79. Searched together: "java j2ee" == 13; "c# .net" == 22. I'm not sure how else to mangle the search to make it different. Incidentally, "VB" or "visual basic" also turned up another 38 hits, but I'm not sure how best to roll all that up to make it a fair comparison.

But there's a far more important thing to know about the Calgary market....

* Net new projects are built by decent sized teams of contract consultants.
* Long term maintenance is done by a handful full time employees.

Perhaps it's different elsewhere, but that's my experience. So for the Calgary area, the Monster jobs are full-time Java maintenance and support. If you want to know about the new stuff being built, you have to look at the consulting contract availability. SI Systems is the largest, has most of the exclusive or preferred contracts and incidentally the lowest rates... which attracts pretty much every enterprise customer to them.

Cheers,
Clinton

So you are saying we should trust to ONE recruitment vendor when like all other return more Java jobs?

Also, statement that majority of Java jobs is "maintenance and support" is false. Please conduct more research before posting like this. I really havent ever seen job posting that said "maintenance and support" only, it can be seen in cases where they state employee has to cover all aspects of development, including design, architecture, development, testing AND maintenance and support.

Individually, Java beats both .NET and C#. You have to throw in an obsolete term (J2EE) to get the results you want.

But whatever the case, I JUST DON'T GIVE A SHIT, AND THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT OF HANI'S RANT. CAN YOU UNDERSTAND THAT?

GTFO!
GTFO!
GTFO!

QFT

I have to admit I really enjoy reading it. Nice one guys. :-)
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Does Hani actually do any work? Can someone verify as to he's actually any good at anything apart from (and that's debatable also) "comedic" ranting. Which is ironic because he isn't even funny.

Java philosophy for reasoning about everything is "You are wrong! Because I am right!".
This holds back Java; and yet they can not distinguish that this wide range of problems that got solved is not because of Java but the platform!
Java (as it is going yet) will remain under the rock until someone discover it again: Once tis language was used on our platform!

No, quite opposite. People defending Java realize Java needs some polishing here and there, and we are ready to find some solution which will satisfy all parties involved, but you anti-Java people do NOT want to listen to valid comments coming from our side. I was trying to explain business reasons behind slow evolution of Java, and trust me its business what counts, we all developers exists cause of business, but you all skip those lines.

For those who dont want to read TIOBE index, lets paste some statistics:

Ratings in May 2008

Java: 20.176%
.Net: 3.963%
Ruby: 2.851%

Quote from TIOBE about their index: The index can be used to check whether your programming skills are still up to date or to make a strategic decision about what programming language should be adopted when starting to build a new software system.

This is soooo fun. Take a look at these apples:

Smalltalk: 0.138%
Scala:0.073%

No offense ninja_ninja. You're welcome to your opinion, but I recommend you do two things:

* Introduce yourself to us. It's very hard to take you seriously.

* Get a blog, wiki, website and post your opinion in one lump form that we can read and more easily comprehend.

Your anonymity and posting pattern here is simply typical of a troll. I'm happy to have this conversation, but not this way.

Clinton

"Introduce yourself to us"
I don't see why this is important, but trust me I am so insignificant in this world that mentioning my name would have neither benefit nor drawback. I can say though that you have accomplished much more than me, I am still relatively young fella.

"It's very hard to take you seriously."
This is not on you or me to decide, since this is your blog and your and my opinions are subjective at that matter.

"Get a blog, wiki, website and post your opinion in one lump form that we can read and more easily comprehend."
I don't have a need. I had to respond here because this is public place and as such has certain potential impact on global level since your posts can affect young and unexperienced people that don't have ability yet to form the opinion on their own, and it would be shame for them to venture away from best platform on the world, Java.

"simply typical of a troll"
Well I apologize if it sounded troll-like, it was definitely not my intent.

>> I don't see why this is important, but trust me I am so insignificant in this world

That's the complacent attitude I was talking about. Nobody is insignificant here. The "significant" ones got us into this mess... ;-)

Cheers,
Clinton

Hmm... I saw a weird comment in the bile blog thread from Larry Marshall claiming that Hani is dead...WTF?

http://www.bileblog.org/2008/05/java-haters-gtfo/#comments

"You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!"

It is an interesting take on java as a whole and a good discussion on why java is "broken". I have been burned a few different times on the operator overloading issues among others. To be honest I am sure that there were a number of "stick to your guns" issues that sun felt they needed to stand pat on - but in all honesty they would not be learning from history when sticking to their guns.

- SGI Sticking to their guns about certain software got them put out of business
- Sybase sticking to their guns about row level locking let oracle take over

There are of course other examples. There are a number of very smart people out there that have been asking for new features that would actually make the language easier and cleaner, but I don't see any of those things getting traction in the Java JCP process. There are a number of REALLY good things getting into c# that would be very useful in java (extension methods for one). There are also a number of really good things in the dynamic world that would be amazingly useful and bring more simplicity (better first class function support, etc), but these are going 'unheeded'.

I feel like cbegin does to an extent - WHEN I saw the annotation extensions being added to java 7 I just about fell over dead... how more backward can java go? There is very very little benefit in JSR 308 but its a language feature... http://ponderousprog.blogspot.com/2008/05/over-complication.html - This just smacks of a precious few people / companies being involved in the JSR/JCP process, people with agendas or people with a narrow view of the community being serviced by the java platform. Java 7 looks like ungodly rubbish to me in comparison to other languages.,

Geez, sometimes I really wonder if you people use Java to conduct business. Java should not add none of the features you propose because it is bad for the business, both at local and at global level. All those features you mention can be emulated in Java in one way or another, you are just too lazy to learn Eclipse templates or keybindings.

Interesting implication.

The answer to the first part is "Yes" I use java to conduct business (banking mostly these days).
Your response to the first one seems short sighted. Your implication is that those items are no good for business, I simply beg to differ. Those items can bring about flexibility, readability, maintainability to a codebase that is not there now. Like most things that is not to say if they were there that you would either

1) Have to use them
2) Make good use of them

But I think that it is fair to say in the programming world there are many examples of how the features I mention can bring about code that is simpler to read and maintain. Emulation is a poor substitute if you are always having to 'emulate' anew everywhere you move to (i.e. every new job you get).

Having a good IDE or knowing its features does not and should not ever substitute for the language having features that are fully baked and available. It should also not take the place of having knowledge of what those features do and what they are good for. One should not use what they do not fully understand without being willing to accept the consequences of having their beliefs or understandings challenged and overturned from time to time.

You also right in saying that some people may actually need the features I point out in my blog entry, I just happen to personally feel that those people are in the 20% of the 80/20 rule. What the java feature is intending to address seems a little niche (to me, i.e. my opinion). See para above. You might choose not to use the feature, like I would not currently, but if the majority choose not to use it - whats the point?

Here is the thing my friend:

Very high majority of Java developers, I would say around 70%-80%, are not interesed in IT, do not care if language is perfect and definitely are not gifted (talented, call it how you want) enough to understand lets say closures in 5 minutes. Those people simply never wrote compilers in their spare time, they do not read blogs, nor they spend their free time to expand their knowledge.

This is the basic law of economy and human evolution, not all people are equal, and it is very high probability that people reading this blog are in that 20% group. (This does not imply that 20% group is smarter, people from 80% group usually have better career development cause they have much better social skills and so on)

Now, if we add closures please do the math: you have to either train that 80% of people, which will be loads and loads of money on global level, and even worse, those companies wont even invest in training and costs will be even higher when bug-fixing stage cause by non-understading of closures comes around.

Now, if we could have approx. number how much money in development phase will closures save and compare it to number from above, we could conclude if "investement" is ok, a.k.a whether closures were worth being implemented at all.

I really believe that money spent on re-education would be much higher that money saved in dev mode by closures.

Quote "WHEN I saw the annotation extensions being added to java 7 I just about fell over dead"

So, if I got this right, if some features which you personally don't need are added to Java its OMG end of the world, though some other people might actually need them.

Clinton's blog entry is coherent and well-reasoned. However, he's not the sort of person that Hani is making fun of. He's making fun of the people that cheer on the 37signals guys. See http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/16-03/mf_signals
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This comment from that blog pretty much summarizes what RoR is all about.

"37Signals knows a Truth. Chase the big customers, and they own you. Chase little customers, and even if you piss one off totally, the other 9,999 still love you. I'm with them. Big customers are a big pain. The only trick is to find a market"

Pwned

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/16-03/mf_signals

,I believe every language has its issues. Some parts are poorly written and others are excellent. When you have a huge amount of code base, it's difficult to clean it all, it might be complicated to add some specific features, etc. Any major programming language is great but sucks at the same time. You can tolerate some issues or bugs if they're not critical, or if you have a way to deal with them.

Writing a programming language is not a simple matter. Making it evolve can/cannot be complicated depending on :
- the features you're trying to add (really necessary, wish, caprice, etc.)
- the vision of the platform you're trying to preserve
- the compatibility you might break because you forgot something when designing the API originally
- Adding some features could imply rewriting a huge part of the platform which you can't do right now
- probably lots of other reasons

When new features are wanted or seem necessary to make the language evolve or survive, one has to decide what to add or not. It's not because lots of people want closures that it's necessarily a good thing. I could live without closures, but if they are available I know in which situations I would like to use them. Adding more features make a programming language great but more complicated too.

Some says Java is portable and .Net isn't. Well, to those thinking that, maybe Microsoft saw no reason to do it. Personally, if I have to target multiple platforms I would go with Java or another language, according to the situation or the problem I need to solve. 5 years ago, I would have went with .Net as most users(even developers) are likely to use Windows.

Please see one reply above.

Also, it is important to note that TCO in Java for small and mid-size companies is like, 0, nada, nothing. You have ALL the tools, in dev, test, runtime phases for free. You only have to invest in know-how (how to use open source tools, which you would have to invest in COTS cases too).

Last time I checked this was not doable in Msft stack.

One of things that I think you need to make clear sooner Clinton is that your main beef seems to be with "Sun's implementations of things" - not necessarily with the language of Java itself (although you do have your Java strap-on comments - which although possibly valid were they 'that bad' ?) I read your rant on Java5 http://www.clintonbegin.com/2008/05/re-java-haters-gtfo.html and didn't find most of your beefs 'that big a deal.' Sure I'd love to see the things you mention addressed, but I just don't see the issues as being serious enough to warrant the "Java sucks" attitude you seem to have.

You really think MS is going to dominate that much in the development space within the next 5 years? You don't think it'll be Ruby, so I'm assuming you think it's C#/.NET. No way I see it changing over that quickly - if it all. Companies have huge investments in Java already and the stuff works - and maybe I'm naive but don't see it as sucking that badly. You think they're going to scrap everything and go with .NET? Possibly it'll happen, but I find it highly unlikely.

,