A valid categorization, I believe. I clearly belong best to #4, but a
difference is that I believe that Linux will be overtaken by something else.
Hurd, for instance, when it gets more stable (but we're looking at years
here).
Java has serious problems with speed, bloat, licensing and open-ness. Its
cross-platform nature prevents it from being useful for certain types of
programming that are best done in C; for instance, high-usage web servers or
NFS. I also believe that applets are a fairly odd idea, and are not done in
a good manner. Most that I've seen have very little use.
On the other hand, I believe Java is almost ideal for GUI design, especially
for the client in client-server programming. A GUI interface is sitting
idle over 99% of the time, so speed is not so vital here. Cross-platform
capabilities are a big win; a universal network client can be a big time
saver for people that need clients on lots of platforms. I, for one, much
prefer the Unix development environment, and this allows programs to run in
Win32 platforms while we wait for Windows to finish dying :-)
> 4. Linux evangelists : Linux is the future. Java is a fad that will
> probably be overtaken by something else eventually. Think that Java
> does not have the best licensing model (it's not GPL). Java is slow
> because Perl kicks ass in CGI (have never heard of servlets). Can't
> understand why we don't just have a Java to native compiler,
> especially
> one to Linux.
I would certainly not use Java for CGI. libapache-mod-perl, FastCGI, etc.
if necessary.
