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is java evergreen language?

 
Greenhorn
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At present Java is the most popular programming language at all over the world .. Recently, Apple announced tat they wont use java for iOS coding... Likewise , will java wipe off in future ?


 
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Recently, Apple announced tat they wont use java for iOS coding...


Um, is that a joke? Apple's stance on "no Java on iOS" has been consistent for years. But yes, Java is going to die, or at least become too insignificant to bother with for all practical purposes - it's just a matter of time.
 
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sriman roop wrote: Likewise , will java wipe off in future ?


That is a difficult to answer question, I'll just share my views.
Java has been around for say more than 15 years. It is platform independent and device independent. I mean there are no restrictions on the type of device it can go on, anything from huge servers to cell phones.
That gives us a huge number of applications running currently on all those systems.
So even if Java were to be replaced by some language, it would take another few years to replace each and every app.
So the future in question is not near than 10 years. I am saying this as a least possible estimate as I have seen applications which were written in late 80's still running around. It is a mess to maintain such legacy systems, but then no one is really keen on replacing them.

Again, I don't make technology so something new might already be on its way, only thing is I haven't seen it yet
 
sriman roop
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Amit Ghorpade wrote:
I have seen applications which were written in late 80's still running around.

Which applications written in 1980's still running ?
 
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Everthing has a life span and so does java ... eventually some day or another a more advanced language and superior coding practices will replace java. But any guess would be a wild one to determine when that might happen. Even Android, the OS running on almost half of the mobile devices uses java. cheers.

 
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Java is the most successful programming language ever. It's not going to suddenly disappear anytime soon. Hundreds of thousands of companies are using software written in Java every day and will be using it for decades to come.

sriman roop wrote:Which applications written in 1980's still running ?


Have you ever heard of COBOL? It's an old programming language that has been very popular since the 1960's. My dad used to be a COBOL programmer in the 1970's. There are still many systems running today, for example systems used by big banks, that have been written in COBOL. Many businesses don't upgrade their systems, throw away and rewrite all their software whenever something new comes along.
 
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Jesper de Jong wrote: . . . There are still many systems running today, for example systems used by big banks, that have been written in COBOL. . . .

And there are fewer and fewer people who can maintain those old banking systems. The few people who can still write COBOL can earn good salaries.
 
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Ulf Dittmer wrote:Java is going to die, or at least become too insignificant to bother with for all practical purposes - it's just a matter of time.



Agreed.

Sun will become a red giant some day, Milky Way will collapse (actually merge) with Andromeda, protons will decay, even black holes will evaporate.
 
Ivan Jozsef Balazs
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Jesper de Jong wrote:My dad used to be a COBOL programmer in the 1970's.



My son's dad (khm, khm) used to be a COBOL programmer in the 1980's. Some commercial computer systems had COBOL as the mainly supported programming language and environment.

 
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Lalit Mehra wrote:Everthing has a life span and so does java ... eventually some day or another a more advanced language and superior coding practices will replace java.


Yup, and would it were ever so. I suspect also that any prophecy we might make is doomed to failure, since programmers (even good ones) are rarely good arbiters of what makes a good programming language.

IMO, successful languages are a product of an odd combination of pure maths, market forces and "familiarity". There have been many fine languages that have tried and failed (and believe me; I've worked with a few ).

Java's success was based on simplifying the C/C++ syntax (already familiar to many), and was founded on the idea of a "JVM" that was cross-platform and could run your source code; and it's interesting to me that the ".NET suite" doesn't seem to have gained much acceptance outside the Windows world (possibly for that reason).

Where does the next one come from? No idea.

I will say this though (at the risk of my previous comment being proved totally right):
1. It's syntax will have to be familiar.
2. It will have to solve complex issues (like closures and dependency injection) that Java doesn't.
3. It will have to be fast.
4. It will have to be cross-platform - or so good that people will buy the platform simply to run it.
5. It will need to incorporate some form of "configuration" (especially, dynamic configuration), since this seems to be an increasing part of our "Webby" world, and the division between Java programs and the increasingly complex configs that run them hasn't been sorted out yet.

So: new language, or new, easy to use "hybrid"? Take your chooice.

I think Java has a few more miles in it yet. At least, I bloody well hope so.

My 2 cents.

Winston
 
Amit Ghorpade
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sriman roop wrote:Which applications written in 1980's still running ?


Sadly I cannot tell the name of the applications I know of, but since you asked, this Slashdot article has a number of such applications mentioned.
 
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HTML5 can be the next big thing IMO, it can run on multiple platform like java.
 
Jesper de Jong
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Davinderpro java wrote:HTML5 can be the next big thing IMO, it can run on multiple platform like java.


HTML5 is not a programming language. It's a markup language. It is not going to replace Java, because it's not the same kind of thing as Java.
 
Davinderpro java
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what about about 'Scala' programming language? Can this be the next big thing after java?
 
Jesper de Jong
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Scala is a very interesting programming language that gets a lot of attention from developers, and it's being used for serious business by some companies, but it has its own problems too - some parts of it are quite complex, and the syntax is so flexible that it's maybe too flexible. You can program in it in wildly different styles, which make it harder to stick to one consistent style if you're working with a team of developers, or if you're using libraries from different sources (one library might have been written in a functional style, another one in an object oriented style). It might become big, but that's far from certain at the moment.
 
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I don't see Scala replacing Java anytime soon. Functional programming is very different to the common practices in use today. I work with a few people who rave about Scala but I firmly believe it will be quite sometime before it becomes a main stream language and adopted ahead of Java.
 
Jesper de Jong
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But you're not required to do functional programming in Scala; you can just as well write object oriented code in Scala. Also, if you see what's planned for Java 8, you'll see that there are also a number of functional programming features planned for Java (lambdas and everything that comes with it, such as filter, map, flatMap, streams etc.) - although Java will not really become a functional programming language.
 
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Davinderpro java wrote:HTML5 can be the next big thing IMO, it can run on multiple platform like java.



That's like saying that a cool paint job can replace a car's engine.

If you mean that the web platform can replace desktop apps, well that boat sailed long ago. Java is used to power webs apps much more than to create desktop apps.

Might the combination of HTML5, CSS and JavaScript one day be the primary application platform? Perhaps. Recently, Mozilla ported the Unreal gaming engine to JavaScript. It's quite possible that the role of server-side code may wane -- I'd argue that to some extent, it already has waned.

But, by itself, HTML5 is just a part of any platform.
 
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James Boswell wrote:I don't see Scala replacing Java anytime soon. Functional programming is very different to the common practices in use today. I work with a few people who rave about Scala but I firmly believe it will be quite sometime before it becomes a main stream language and adopted ahead of Java.



That brings up another aspect of this discussion. Scala is meant ot be compiled to Java bytecode to run in a JVM. So if Scala becomes more popular, that bolsters the Java platform which theoretically could in turn breathe extra life into the Java language when it does begin to flag. I don't know what the next big language will be, but if the cross-platform-ness that Winston mentioned is in fact important, then a language that is meant to run on the Java platform will have a big boost in that area from day 1.
 
Bear Bibeault
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I do hear of organizations that are adopting Scala. But it's far from on a massive scale.

My primary issue with Scala, something that was alluded to by Jesper, is what I call Obfuscation through Brevity.

You can write a Scala statement that makes perfect sense and whose semantics are clear. Then you apply a shortcut to make it smaller. And another, and another, and another. And you end up with a powerful and concise statement whose semantics are known only to those that wrote it, or have been using Scala for a long time.

And of course, those people pride themselves on in how few characters they can code something.

This makes Scala a hard wall to scale for novices, and hinders its adoption.

Until the Scala community changes its attitude (at least an attitude that I'm perceiving) from "See how clever I can be with this language" to "See how clearly I can express something in this language", I think that adoption will be stymied.
 
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Bear Bibeault wrote: JavaScript one day be the primary application platform? Perhaps. Recently, Mozilla ported the Unreal gaming engine to JavaScript.


I am not a fan of javascript . but yes I come this when i worked OpenVXML(openmethod), i was quite surprised that i was able to do what i do in java..(even able to call a java method from a jar) confusing still how it is possible? .... unfortunately i was no longer there to dig
 
Jeff Verdegan
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Bear Bibeault wrote:
You can write a Scala statement that makes perfect sense and whose semantics are clear. Then you apply a shortcut to make it smaller. And another, and another, and another. And you end up with a powerful and concise statement whose semantics are known only to those that wrote it, or have been using Scala for a long time.

And of course, those people pride themselves on in how few characters they can code something.



Sounds Perl-ish. One random keyboard mashing produces the greatest MMORPG ever, and another launches all the nukes.
 
James Boswell
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Until the Scala community changes its attitude (at least an attitude that I'm perceiving) from "See how clever I can be with this language" to "See how clearly I can express something in this language"


I couldn't agree more Bear. Perfectly describes the pro-Scala developers I know.
 
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On the question about "which applications from the 1980's are still running?". I work for a very large corporation and probably half of our applications that handle billing, inventory, etc, were developed in the 60's, 70's and 80's. Many are written in a home-grown language that few people know anymore. I have been here for 30 year and still see the applications that existed when I was hired. There is a lot off work going on to replace these systems but it takes time given the complexity and number of applications. It's funny because we are a technology company selling the latest products to customers and we use a lot of that latest technology. But a lot of the core applications that just keep running year after year, are not always upgraded so quickly.
 
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@sriman roop : Its a question that generated interest to all the important people of Javaranch ;-) Why did you ask this question? Were you just curious?

If that's a cause for concern to you, don't worry.
I don't believe java is going anywhere in the near future.

And even if a new language has to come on to the stage, it will probably be based on java itself ... LOL

And just because Apple says its not going to use java doesn't kill Java. Probably Apple itself will die facing lawsuits from others.
 
sriman roop
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Shravan Payasam wrote:@sriman roop : Its a question that generated interest to all the important people of Javaranch ;-) Why did you ask this question? Were you just curious?


Just a month before, i started preparing for OCJA SE7. The question asked by me is the debate between me and my bro. Tats I asked.

Thanks to coderanch members for debating my question in this forum :-)
 
Don't get me started about those stupid light bulbs.
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