> Google is not as dumb as Microsoft and they know they woulda been > scrutiny of Sun's lawyers .. so they never claimed it to be 'Java' and > the phrasing Dick uses is as you think legalistic weasaling around the > real issue. It's not Java but it's close enough to Java to be > confusing to the marketplace and making people think it is Java. I've > heard tech industry leaders who should know better describe Android as > a Java phone platform. Sigh. You're right, of course, and I think that my first blog post, a few years ago, was precisely about Android not being Java-the-trademarked-thing.But things have to be put in perspective. If I am required to give an official, precise and accurate communication I'll be careful not to say Android is Java. In a colloquial context, and focusing on a specific perspective, I don't find it wrong to be less picky about that. As an architect / developer, I'm more concerned about the practical consequences of Android being / not being Java. Some are very annoying - stupid thing, and unneeded complication, not to make available some basic classes of AWT/Swing, such as BufferedImage or Icon, since they are pretty decoupled from the component system. Some are not annoying, as my previous email said, as you can easily mix Java code, that runs in Java-the-trademarked-thing environments _and_ in Dalvik. From a technical point of view this is relevant, as well as the capability of reusing my whole best practices for the software factory. In the end, I myself I was saying a few days ago in the mailing list of Apache River (former Jini) that Android has got high chances of being the Java mobile platform of future. I reckon that from now on I could just put quotes (the "Java" mobile platform...) as they cost nothing, but I stress the fact that my statement has some points. As well as up to now JME has been the Java mobile platform where I could work reusing my Java skills, Android could become. Honestly, I'm reusing much more stuff - both knowledge and practice - in Android than I did in JME, because of the Java 5 compatibility. > My opinion is it is acting to fracture the market. It goes > completely against the one language/stack to rule them all model. > Even though you're using the Java language there are significant > differences in the classes being used. That makes it hard to take an > Android app and run it elsewhere. But in theory Java's purpose is to > erase that sort of fragmentation. Unfortunately the 'Mobile' market > is now just as highly fractured as ever. iPhone's model, Android, > JavaME, HTML5, BREW, etc ... when will the disunity stop? I completely agree. I've argued against and I still argue against people who detracted about the fragmentation of JME: a 90% JMEfied world could have been a much better and less fragmented world than today, where we unfortunately have unbreakable walls built on purpose. Unfortunately, Sun was not good enough in keeping the technology up-tp-date and Oracle is frankly sleeping on the job. A few years already passed (I think it was 2007) since when I heard Gosling at a keynote at J1 saying that JME would have slowly evolved into a full-fledged Java, but after years not only it didn't, but you don't even see a sign of it moving in that direction.Said this, I don't think that JME is going away. I've still got it in my portfolio and I'm still targetting it for my stuff - this might be not understandable from the USA perspective, but in Europe Nokia and the like are still the bigger players and will stay among the bigger players, so I can't ignore them. -- Fabrizio Giudici, Ph.D. - Java Architect, Project Manager Tidalwave s.a.s. - "We make Java work. Everywhere." weblogs.java.net/blog/fabriziogiudici - www.tidalwave.it/blog [email protected] - mobile: +39 348.150.6941
-- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
