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Java on the web is a reference to applets running in the browser. Yes, Oracle, the company that sues people for breathing the same air owning Java is an issue.

Java on the web is a reference to applets running in the browser. Yes, Oracle, the company that sues people for breathing the same air owning Java is an issue. Maybe I am uninformed, but you haven't made a good case that there's any truth to that.

jm4 8y ago
Do you know anything about Java? I'm not trying to be insulting. Java has its problems, but your points are so far off the mark. Applets haven't been a thing for 20 years and I'm not sure they were a thing then either. Do you know people make web apps in Java and there's a ton of quality open source libraries out there?
- ilovecaching 8y ago
  I developed Java (Swing, Spring, JavaFX), managed tomcat deployments, good stuff. I think my question is, do most Java developers really know what goes outside of their window? Every language has a good story for web apps these days. The web is ubiquitous. You can write in Phoenix, Cowboy, Rails, Sinatra, Express, "net/http", Django, Laravel, Flask, Rocket... Java is literally middle of the pack at best. So that's not a compelling reason to use Java. So then we have to look at the rest of Java. Is there anything else in there that would make it better for web dev than a simple Go/Ruby/Python/Javascript/Rust/Elixir app? No? Ok, then let's not use Java. Java excels at being mediocre at everything, but the best at nothing.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    We rather enjoy the state of the art IDEs, JIT and GC compilers from Java and .NET, while slowly enjoying watching hipster startups rewrite their stacks when customers come flooding in. Ask Twitter how their Rails apps is holding on.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - jacques_chester 8y ago
    > Java is literally middle of the pack at best A warm JVM is faster than a greased millenium falcon.
- james_s_tayler 8y ago
  Worked on a project to replace all Applets in a large enterprise product just a couple of years ago. There is a lot of software running in this world. Some of it is very long lived.
threeseed 8y ago
Oracle owns the Java name and its implementation. Other open implementations exist from Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, Zuul etc. And they are all using the JDK name which isn't owned by Oracle. If Oracle were to die or become aggressive the Java ecosystem would just move on and not skip a beat.
hkolk 8y ago
Our company (on the scale of running it's own private cloud) has switched over to OpenJDK. Oracle is a non-issue for us For people actually working with JVM and the languages on top of it, nobody really is worried about Oracle. The way the licensing is set up, they just don't have enough power to coerce people to use their version. It would kind of be like the SCO case if they came after it. I think they went after Google for Android simply to protect their IP, and that one they even "lost" (which detracts also from their possible future lawsuit on enforcing Java licensing)
- ilovecaching 8y ago
  As a believe in free and open source software, I think this is a very head in the sand approach. Any portion of Java, even if it's just a certification being open source is enough to run away from it when there are so many alternatives that are better languages and completely open source.
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    OpenJDK is GPLv2. I know of only a handful of other, popular languages with a license as copyleft as that.

jm4 8y ago

Do you know anything about Java? I'm not trying to be insulting. Java has its problems, but your points are so far off the mark. Applets haven't been a thing for 20 years and I'm not sure they were a thing then either. Do you know people make web apps in Java and there's a ton of quality open source libraries out there?

ilovecaching 8y ago
I developed Java (Swing, Spring, JavaFX), managed tomcat deployments, good stuff. I think my question is, do most Java developers really know what goes outside of their window? Every language has a good story for web apps these days. The web is ubiquitous. You can write in Phoenix, Cowboy, Rails, Sinatra, Express, "net/http", Django, Laravel, Flask, Rocket... Java is literally middle of the pack at best. So that's not a compelling reason to use Java. So then we have to look at the rest of Java. Is there anything else in there that would make it better for web dev than a simple Go/Ruby/Python/Javascript/Rust/Elixir app? No? Ok, then let's not use Java. Java excels at being mediocre at everything, but the best at nothing.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  We rather enjoy the state of the art IDEs, JIT and GC compilers from Java and .NET, while slowly enjoying watching hipster startups rewrite their stacks when customers come flooding in. Ask Twitter how their Rails apps is holding on.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- jacques_chester 8y ago
  > Java is literally middle of the pack at best A warm JVM is faster than a greased millenium falcon.
james_s_tayler 8y ago
Worked on a project to replace all Applets in a large enterprise product just a couple of years ago. There is a lot of software running in this world. Some of it is very long lived.

threeseed 8y ago

Oracle owns the Java name and its implementation. Other open implementations exist from Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, Zuul etc. And they are all using the JDK name which isn't owned by Oracle. If Oracle were to die or become aggressive the Java ecosystem would just move on and not skip a beat.

hkolk 8y ago

Our company (on the scale of running it's own private cloud) has switched over to OpenJDK. Oracle is a non-issue for us For people actually working with JVM and the languages on top of it, nobody really is worried about Oracle. The way the licensing is set up, they just don't have enough power to coerce people to use their version. It would kind of be like the SCO case if they came after it. I think they went after Google for Android simply to protect their IP, and that one they even "lost" (which detracts also from their possible future lawsuit on enforcing Java licensing)

ilovecaching 8y ago
As a believe in free and open source software, I think this is a very head in the sand approach. Any portion of Java, even if it's just a certification being open source is enough to run away from it when there are so many alternatives that are better languages and completely open source.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  OpenJDK is GPLv2. I know of only a handful of other, popular languages with a license as copyleft as that.