On Jun 30, 1:38 pm, Fabrizio Giudici <[email protected]> wrote: > On 06/30/2011 01:08 PM, Phil wrote:> I think this (albeit lightweight) > article on The Register adds some > > food for > > thought:http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/30/java_misses_the_point_under_o... > > > I think the article's premise is right. Java has fallen too far > > behind. Freeze the language spec at Java 7 and focus on the JVM and > > functional languages. > > Sorry if I'm going to be really harsh, but it's my character. I must say > I have a strong prejudice against general media, as I don't trust them > when they talk about the Big Bang, the Shuttle, or the latest fuel-cell > technology. Figure it out when they talk about software. But I think I > can work against my prejudices and I admit I could find a good article > about software, after all. But when I find an inception such as: > > "Oracle's roadmap for Javas 7 and 8 shows it recognizes the world is > pulling away and leaving Java with last-century concepts and ideals. > Java 7 is meant to set the foundation for a cloud-friendly platform, but > the real cloud-ready features won't make an appearance until Java 8 in > 2013 at the earliest. > > While Larry and company can't be blamed for the years of stagnation > suffered by both the platform and language under Sun Microsystems, the > problem faced isn't that Java lacks the technology to work nicely in the > cloud: the problem is, as ever, one of perception. > > Java is either not "enterprise" enough for cloud computing apparently > lacking the required widgets or it's too enterprisey and therefore not > cool enough to join the likes of Ruby and Python." > > "The world is pulling away?" Yeah, look at Tiobe. And what the heck is > saying about the cloud? What's a "widget" for the cloud? Sorry, I won't > read it further.
Indeed, the article is pretty poor. What has the language to do with the cloud to begin with? Cloud-friendly is a matter of libraries, not language. Anyway, for example, Google App Engine supports only Python and Java - not Ruby nor PHP nor Perl, etc. - does it mean that Python and Java are cloud-friendly while Ruby and PHP are not? Or just that they are popular enough? > So, back to us. Ruby and Python and Groovy and all the dynamic languages > are where they were a few years ago and the respective communities was > claiming that they were going to take the world by storm. Scala is > definitely the most interesting stuff (not by chance, is statically > typed), but it's still 0.xx% of share. Let's see whether it grows. Of course Java is not dead, it won't be for a long time, that's a good thing and most importantly it's foolish to believe that if everyone suddenly stopped using Java and turned to Clojure all problems would magically go away. But recognizing that there's not only Java is important. The shift of perspective from the language to the platform is important. Granted, only very few people will use Scala or Clojure or Groovy [1] in the next few years - the mainstream is, almost by definition, slow to adapt - but those people will hopefully bring innovation to the whole community. Would Java get closures if it weren't for JavaScript, Scala, Clojure and all the other languages with closures that run on the JVM? Would invokedynamic have happened if it weren't for dynamic languages? Would DSLs get so much attention? And so on... Consider C (= Java) and Unix (= JVM): a lot of Unix software still gets written in C, but a lot is also written in Perl, Python, Ruby etc. and part of the strength of the main implementations of those "scripting" languages is the ability to interoperate well with C. No- one will ever propose to abandon C altogether, not even a C-hater like myself. No-one will ever propose to write a Linux driver in Python. Yet, the strength of Unix-like systems comes at least in part from software written in those languages. I expect the same thing will slowly happen with Java and the JVM, too. [1] not speaking of, shameless plug, ABCL! > So, what are we talking about? > > And, pardon me, why a supposedly objective and scientifically-attituded > community should still comment Gosling's points as he's a sort of prophet? > > Coming to Groovy, since we're talking about personal experience. It has > been the first language I started seriously studying and practicing a > couple of years ago, not for replacing Java but because I was curious to > see whether it could solve some DSL-like tasks. For me it has been a > total delusion. Useless even in parts that it was supposed to be > helpful. At present time only a few lines of Groovy survive in a Maven > plugin for building an Android project, but just because I didn't find > the time to replace it with a simpler solution. I know this is OT, but can you comment on what deluded you the most about Groovy? I never used it, mind you, but it's interesting to hear opinions. Alessio -- 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.
