Jan Erik Moström wrote:
> On 99-10-04 at 11:41, Brooks, Ruven <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Well, Java is argued to have two types of benefits: cross platform
> > portability and improved syntax/semantics (usability?). We're
> > developing for only one platform, so that cross platform aspect was
> > not interesting. The syntax/semantics improvements would be the only
> > benefit. Again these benefits must be traded the costs of dealing with
> > a newer implementation of the compiler, environment, etc.
>
> Well, personally I couldn't agree more. Java is nice as a language but it's not
> a language that it's easy to make anything useful ... yet (I hope)
This all surprises me. Whilst the experience of Ruven is a real one,
they evaluated Java with respect to their domain and found it wanting,
this is just one data point. It is unsafe to extrapolate to "Java is
not useful in the real world" since this is patently not true.
>From my (anecdotal) evidence all the banks in the Lodnon are using Java
almost exclusively for all their new developments in the business arms
(as opposed to their IT departments and data centres).
> Personally, I belive that we'll see more use of end user programming
> environments and here research needs to be done to find out how to do these
> languages.
A lot of people have been saying this for a long time and it has yet to
happen. Clearly as with home improvements we have professional system
developers and amateur system developers and there is nothing wrong with
that. Organizations for whom software systems are organizational assets
will continue to use professional systems developers and eschew totally
end-user programming. For example, traders are never going to be
developers of the systems they use for trading. They have neither the
skill nor the inclination to get involved in developing the systems they
use.
> This is exactly what I mean: UML is a language, so how should languages be
> designed to fit different tasks ... like for example modelling of system,
> authoring of multimedia documents, etc.
This is definitely an area to work on (one day Gilbert, Sue and I will
get the EPSRC proposal written and submitted). UML is almost certain to
be the design documentation notation for the next few years. However,
it is damn near impossible to construct UI designs with it. Also it is
damn near impossible to understand non-trivial designs quickly looking
at UML diagrams. UML is better than code (usually) for understanding
designs and architectures but it is still not that good.
Russel.
========================================================================
Prof Russel Winder Professor of Computing Science
Editor-in-Chief, Object Oriented Systems
Series Editor, Practitioner Series
Head of Department
Department of Computer Science Phone: +44 20 7848 2679
King's College London Fax: +44 20 7848 2851/+44 20 7848 2913
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