Has Java lost its way?

[alexj44]

Hello. I'm new to this forum.

I used to be a Java developer back in the late 90s. Java has always been a frustrating enigma for me. Allow me to explain.

Several times I've browsed in and out of the latest Java books and forums, and I cannot believe how *complex* it has all become. Quite simply, does there have to be a new API and a new 3rd party framework for every little thing a developer wants to do?

My understanding is that Java was meant to take the complexity out of previous development platforms, yet in my eyes it has become exactly what it was meant to replace, albeit in different ways.

Who can keep up with this dizzying array of acronyms and libraries? Who has the time to? Is it even worth it to do so? Who has time to research the frameworks to find out even what is worthwhile to invest more time in?

My feelings are that developer expertise is diluted every time a new framework comes out- especially a framework that addresses a need that has already been addressed.

So my question to you all is threefold:

1. What do you think the original purpose of Java was?
2. Is Java on the right path today? Can it continue in its current direction?
3. Is Java itself embracing or alienating the developer community?

[Nicholas Jordan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by alexj44

1. What do you think the original purpose of Java was?

This is gonna be a little dicey, but really and truly what the original motivation was is that cousin clyde or eager elle would want to program the machine. Though not totally insupportable, an insulating layer so that system damage would not be done would be desirable. Now, with that said, one engineer at Sun wrote a paper one day. A "what if?" paper describing some desirable features of a programming language. That came to pass and was named Oak after a tree. It is now java.

Quote:

Originally Posted by alexj44

2. Is Java on the right path today? Can it continue in its current direction?

There are fundmental design issues, and as well designing a programming language is done every day in third-fourth year cs classes - but what direction? what design? what capabilities? Java is on the right path, but I think they have gone too far - missed the exit - and should seek new direction vectors. We are mildly entrenched, mostly by established paradigms in cs that should not be shed with abandon.

One issue that will not go away is strong typing, I would rather use what we have than go to an un-typed convention. Another is refusal to have a datatype that is consistent with todays databus size. I would like to see a 2048-bit raw datablock with intrinsics focused and centered on things like XOR and bitshift - I already code my programs this way and just work within the limitations of Java as I am not capable of putting to utility a datatype that has neither size nor arithmetic. In paticular, I would like to have a opto-dermal reader that hashes to a 2048 bit HMAC. We have some brave hearts on the open wire who will do anything to keep us all buffaloed, your question suggests one precepting basis for building a catalog of concepts that could be used to begin a core-camp of students and hardcoders who recognize the Impending Nightmare of PDA_Banking: we already have Ed The Fed settling in on Fannie Mae ~ what happens when folks leave their cellphone on the pay phone at campus bookstore or at the mall?

If we don't have a new paradigm, we're screwed. Just ten minutes ago I saw the the biometric frontier is asking for taxing authority. ( for real ) - we have signal processing rouitines that could be put to use for security - we have data and business cross-controls that could be used to model new code concepts or programming paradigm using a wide-buss or para-block ( like a block but goes all at once )

Quote:

Originally Posted by alexj44

3. Is Java itself embracing or alienating the developer community?

Many supporters, the few critics amount to un-informed pleas of something from the deep - an unknown lifeform below the newbie.

{ message edit: oops, yes - set top boxes }

[fishtoprecords]

Quote:

Originally Posted by alexj44

1. What do you think the original purpose of Java was?
2. Is Java on the right path today? Can it continue in its current direction?
3. Is Java itself embracing or alienating the developer community?

The answer to #1 is well known, to control set top boxes.

The second and third are tied together, and I think are really the same. Here is my opinion, IMHO, YMMV, etc.

Java the language has not changed much. It still has crutches from C, and while the improvements in the first revisions were good, the low hanging fruit was done.

Generics are good, but can get really ugly and hard to follow because they were hacked into 1.5, and backward compatibility forced some really ugly choices.

Annotations are evil, and make the code unreadible. Way too meta, and not enough meat.

But most of what you are complaining about is not Java, its the frameworks and additional libraries/APIs that have grown up around Java. J2EE is an abomination. Its an attempt to cram universal feature creep on the world, just to make us forget about toplink and other bloated middleware "products" that no one needs.

Lighter, faster, better java is needed, not all this stuff that takes 10 feet of manuals to begin to use.

[Silentstormz]

So, being a complete noob here:

I'd say that Java was made because someone was really upset with the current code he was using, and created a "melting pot" language for all computers.

The other questions I'm pretty uneducated to even try to take an opinion on.

Something interesting I've been pondering though, If I could draw a mad-scientist paralell of a computer language to an MMORPG, I'd say this much:

An MMORPG reaches out to a very diversed-talent of gamers. It also reaches out to obsessive compulsive gamers. The game developers theory is, make a game big enough with tons of diverse avenues for gamers to take in both time and skill. This approach will draw many gamers with views on how gaming revolves around their life (vice versa in some cases).

Game Devs will make easier/harder skilled tasks that take a short amount time to fulfill, and easier/harder skilled tasks that take AWHILE to complete. In the end of it all, a sector of the player base will reap greater rewards based of their time investment, or just raw talent (maybe both?). The fact remains that no matter the quality of the rewards, the enjoyment folks get out of a game will all be at their time/skill investment.

I wonder if Java takes a similiar approach? Maybe they make all these side frameworks, and libraries (etc. etc.) to appease those who have the extra time and wisdom to learn? After all the rewards of such investment would be a vaster knowledge in a popular language, bragging rights for a resume? More flashy-dashing programs? Who knows? As long as the old-school programmers can still apply what they learned from the language a decade ago, as long as there's a backbone minimum that's needed to know the language, I'd say Java is maybe embracing the community. Giving them more to learn and more to try out at the option of the user.

A pretty unorthodox and uneducated reply. I am refunding minutes of your life for reading this in the form of beer. Just email me and the beer will be in the mail!

[satu]

it is growing in market and i think this is good for big projects now.
open source communities are increasing day by day for java and this is the reason for popularity. within very short time java got it's fame and j2ee is a good alternate within IT market.
new companies are interested to use java because of it's unique features.