Java seems like a technology no one wants to use

I don't know much about the new features, but I do know one thing. Java seems like a technology no one wants to use as many people make fun of it constantly. I do hear some of their complaints. The main thing I would want from Java is to release working features fast, that improve performance of the JVM (hence I like the self tuning JVM feature). Java seems to be playing catch up with the other programming technologies. Don't get me wrong, I love Java and I use it to build all my programs and apps, but I feel that Java is lagging behind. I am not bashing Java, but this is what I hear from people. I ask regular users about generified things and they can't name any products that use Java, and as such I feel it is mostly used for servers and such. I do know that Java is in top demand in the job market, but that is for the "Business Java" and not Java SE. Java needs to develop faster and increase performance before they start worrying about extra features.

John Price

john price wrote: Java seems like a technology no one wants to use

You need to get out more.

Bear Bibeault wrote:

john price wrote: Java seems like a technology no one wants to use

You need to get out more.

All my coding friends do not use Java. Could you tell me some main technologies that use Java? I'm not asking for the basic ones on Java.com or anything. I'm talking about major corporations like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Twitter etc. I do know that Twitters servers are partly/all Java servers. I would like to see client examples, not server examples. Again, I'm not trying to bag on Java. I love Java, but there are a few things that I don't like (as no language is perfect) and people seem to not like it all that much - even users... Most users complain about it's slowness, which will be improved as years go by...

John Price

john price wrote:All my coding friends do not use Java.

Unlikely a representative sample of the entire development community.

I would like to see client examples, not server examples.

Well, there's your problem. If you are mostly Applet focused as you indicated in another post, well, 1995 called... The use of Java to power the server side of web applications is wide-spread and thriving.

and people seem to not like it all that much

Correction: people that you know may not seem to like it. Sure, it's not perfect. I have a long laundry list too. But to say "people don't like it" is rather myopic.

- even users

Users usually have little knowledge what is powering an application. Especially on the web. And if they do, well, then the app isn't well written.

... Most users complain about it's slowness, which will be improved as years go by...

Again, 1995 called. Modern Java can hardly be called slow by anyone who knows what they are talking about. Poorly written applications can be slow, but Java itself is not the problem.

You say it's mostly server side which strengthens my point - people don't use Java for client programs. If I am misunderstanding, please correct me. Sorry to start a debate on your thread Wouter Oet. I am naive on this topic as you see here.

EDIT : I do agree with your points on the last post.

john price wrote:which strengthens my point - people don't use Java for client programs.

You said "people don't like Java". If you meant "for writing client apps" then you should have said that. It's like saying "People don't like hammers" instead of "People don't like hitting themselves with hammers".

This is what I meant sorry. I implied it earlier with "the business Java", but I didn't make it clear enough. That is my fault. I think we are at agreement now and I hope to continue the original thread. Thanks for setting me straight, Bear. I laughed when I saw your last sentence on your last post because it is true but a funny example.

EDIT : I read my first post over again and I see now that my "implying" wasn't clear/there at all.

Glad you saw the humor: I think humor is one of the best teachers.

I don't know how popular they are anymore, but there's Minecraft which is a game I believe is built on Java; Vuze/Azureus, a BitTorrent client, and I think Limewire was made in Java as well. And then there of course IDEs like NetBeans and Eclipse, but that may be a bit of a chicken and the egg story.

Java is doing well. It's just more widely used in big companies/projects because of its strong and static typing system, among other reasons. Younger companies tend to use more dynamic languages because it's easier to get something on the shelf fast.

I stopped writing client-side java years ago, we all moved to web apps. I wrote some demo apps that ran client side maybe as recently as 2005, but that was just until we could get all the server side, and JSP/Javascript stuff working.

I am willing to bet that your buddies, who are using PHP or Ruby On Rails or some other tool, think that they are writing code in the language. We don't. We write a little bit of code that connects to libraries. Java gets much of its reputation from the huge numbers of huge libraries.

I do agree that Java is not the hot new toy it used to be. And I believe, IMHO, that in ten years we won't be using Java. We might be using Java++ or Scala or some other new language that used the JVM. Java concurrency is too hard for normal programs to write, and we are moving to 64 core systems and beyond.

There is a large and lively community around Java. It's not at all dead as some people want to make others believe. And fortunately Java is moving again with the release of Java 7 a few months ago and lots of new plans for Java 8 and beyond. It's still one of the most used programming languages and it will continue to be for years to come.

john price wrote:Java seems to be playing catch up with the other programming technologies.

The goal of the Java programming language is to be a stable, practical, useful programming language, and not to be a frontrunner with new and experimental features. Sun and now Oracle take backward compatibility with regard to Java very seriously, because thousands of companies rely on this for their business software. Adding new features has to be done very carefully, to not break backward compatibility. Also, before adding a new feature to a programming language you'd better be very sure that it is a useful and necessary feature, because once it's in there it is impossible to take it out again. And the more features a language has, the more people will have to learn. So there are lots of good reasons to be extremely careful with adding new language features.

There are lots of other programming languages (many which run on the JVM) in which there are lots of brand new and experimental features. I'd highly recommend learning for example Scala if you're interested in this.

Here are just two random facts for client side Java usage:

Almost all ATM machines use Java SE clients. Also many devices that do any financial transaction, like paying with your credit card in a restaurant use some Java on their devices.

That Java is still one of the leading technologies for enterprise software doesn't have to be said. And I would think that every second dev-type IT job is in enterprise software development.

loooool.... i didnt really think i would hear this lol...

hahaha .. the world is going to end then, its true after all..

I think either you were teleported by my *ahem * Java based time machine accidentally to this era from 1995 ( i would need to fix that glitch then) or you just started coding.

the last post about ATM machines and credit cards is a good proof as well, but if you mean really big enterprise apps even you dont do client side apps. I worked in a trucking company in US and they had a whole client side app at that time 2005 to monitor and give the truck drivers on call support with their payload and all. I even worked on their smart phone ( a swing app not the handheld, they didnt have that in 2005). Remedy, Amdocs, calrify ( they must have all moved to intranet webapp style from desktop applications by now, 2004) were in Java. You dont see any client side cos well they moved into web app methodology, which is where every big app is going to go. like MS Office is going to be on the web soon (should be) when your PC or laptop will be like a USB you plug in into a screen terminal.

SAP has their own ABAP but they also have the ability to do composite applications with Java in their IDE. (Business Java ???).

"You need to get out more" hahaha ... lol..

john price wrote:I'm talking about major corporations like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Twitter etc. I do know that Twitters servers are partly/all Java servers. I would like to see client examples, not server examples.

Thousands of devices have software running on them that are programmed in Java.... Blu ray players, smart tvs, smartphones, printers, cameras, medical devices (for monitoring, charting, tracking, billing, et cetera).... on and on. Java is in a lot of sneaky places. Programming isn't just for computer users... it's also for these companies that want fancy ui's and features for their stuff.

Java has no problem as a client. Look at Android phones.

I use java based desktop applications such as IntelliJ Idea and DBVisualizer every day and they are very robust. Stephan van Hulst mentioned Minecraft. Every kid at my son's school is nutso about Minecraft (as am I)

Also, Java is more than just the language. It is also a JVM that supports what many people are calling the next generation of computer languages (Clojure, Scala, etc.)

At my workplace, we find that intermediate level java programmers are hard to find at an affordable price in spite of the economy. We can't seem to hire one to save our lives! Same goes for many java shops in this region.

Tim McGuire wrote:At my workplace, we find that intermediate level java programmers are hard to find at an affordable price in spite of the economy. We can't seem to hire one to save our lives! Same goes for many java shops in this region.

Does this mean that its easy to hire expert Java folks? Or that you only hire rookies and intermediates?

john price wrote:You say it's mostly server side which strengthens my point - people don't use Java for client programs. If I am misunderstanding, please correct me. Sorry to start a debate on your thread Wouter Oet. I am naive on this topic as you see here.

EDIT : I do agree with your points on the last post.

Better to have a look at companies around the world, not the companies companies you are familiar with and you know

And I am pretty sure this is because of your personal likenesses. You might not like JAVA, PERSONALLY. It is completely OK, but it doesn't mean what you don't like is bad, in my opinion.

Pat Farrell wrote:

Tim McGuire wrote:At my workplace, we find that intermediate level java programmers are hard to find at an affordable price in spite of the economy. We can't seem to hire one to save our lives! Same goes for many java shops in this region.

Does this mean that its easy to hire expert Java folks? Or that you only hire rookies and intermediates?

I only mean that we've been trying to hire intermediates lately. I guess I'm using intermediate very broadly. When I think "expert", I think, "re-engineer hibernate to make it more efficient" .

Limewire is in Java Swing.

.. all I can say is .. long live JAVA!

I use Java extensively for both server side and client side coding. The client side are usually simple applications that automate manual functions, such as pulling files from FTP servers, parsing files and loading them into a database, etc. Could I use Ruby or Python for that? Sure, but I would much rather have Java on my side when I have to trudge through a 1.5 gig file and get it loaded into MySQL in the next hour.

Enough has been said already - but can't resist myself putting few dots ..

On desktop - yes - MS technologies might be more dominating - but on the server side - what I feel is mostly java.
Millions of web apps (of significant size & traffic) are built over Struts, running successfully. For smaller biz apps - Yes we have things like RubyOnRails which was a hit sometime back & I feel that even today are doing great.
But when we talk of large applications/projects - those with huge set of functionality & complex logic (communicating with multiple host/mainframe systems) - we see mostly Struts, Spring or Seam in action.

Having worked on java for BFSI domain for around 5 yrs for multiple financial clients - I can say that most of the financial websites, banking apps use java due to its security & robustness.

Tim McGuire wrote:

Pat Farrell wrote:

Tim McGuire wrote:At my workplace, we find that intermediate level java programmers are hard to find at an affordable price in spite of the economy. We can't seem to hire one to save our lives! Same goes for many java shops in this region.

Does this mean that its easy to hire expert Java folks? Or that you only hire rookies and intermediates?

I only mean that we've been trying to hire intermediates lately. I guess I'm using intermediate very broadly. When I think "expert", I think, "re-engineer hibernate to make it more efficient" .

to bastardize my favourite book
well I am suprised at your knowing so many experts, not that you know so few.

I am from India and have working experience of around 4.5 years mostly in java. Recently I thought of switching job and got almost 8 different offers because I had worked on java and allied technologies in the past. People in India love it and use it in almost every other application. Java is soul and body of IT industry here.

Dheeraj Bansal wrote:I am from India and have working experience of around 4.5 years mostly in java. Recently I thought of switching job and got almost 8 different offers because I had worked on java and allied technologies in the past. People in India love it and use it in almost every other application. Java is soul and body of IT industry here.

I am totally agree with you :-) But still i want few more news from new JAVA front

Define "Java" in that example. I've been looking for a new job recently as well, and I definitely had enough interest. However, most of that was JEE, with a bit of mobile here and there. For JSE there are mostly junior / starter positions where they are willing to teach you JEE etc. That's at least how it is in The Netherlands.