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News: Java is dead? 9 million devs disagree

11 points by seminatore 15y ago

Sandman 15y ago
Link to the original article: http://zeroturnaround.com/blog/java-is-dead-9-million-devs-disagree/ http://zeroturnaround.com/blog/java-is-dead-9-million-devs-d... BTW, I recommend reading not only the article,but also the comments (on the original article page). Personally, I really loved Peter Ashford's and Mateo Bengualid's responses to Florian Boesch's comment.
electic 15y ago
The 9 million number seems a bit inflated to me. Either way, Java is widely used in many major open source projects so I doubt calling it "dead" is appropriate. That being said, Java is a bit heavy on the resources. It takes 20 percent more hardware to run a Java product than it does C++. Wish it could be far more performance driven.
- EiZei 15y ago
  Seeing that language platforms that perform way worse than Java are the currently the hot stuff I fail to see how a mere 20% performance penalty is the thing that is holding Java back.
Scriptor 15y ago
Is anyone noteworthy saying that Java is dead, anyone providing good arguments for it? Otherwise this seems to be arguing against a straw man.
overgard 15y ago
Java isn't dead, it's just widely considered to be uncool. I realize "cool" might not be a good metric for evaluating languages; but that's where mindshare comes from. Java is a boring language often used in boring contexts mostly by people trying to make a safe choice. This is not the kind of thing that appeals to hackers.
AdrianRossouw 15y ago
Java isn't remotely dead, but oracle being it's new corporate steward doesn't really bode well for it's reputation among hackers. A lot of points in the original article reference java IDEs to mitigate the verbosity of the language. The fact that the only practical way to write java code requires the use of eclipse and it's ilk is one of the language's biggest failings in my opinion. I don't think the web would be nearly as accessible to develop for if necessitated the use of dreamweaver (or whatever) to be able to build anything.
lightblade 15y ago
"...creating a “Hello Guestbook” type of application in Java is a simple, 10-minute affair." Lol, no.. 10 is the time it takes to configure your develop environment before you even start. Java isnt dead. While this is true, it is also an incredibly unproductive language. There are tons of boilerplate code that needs to be generated. But it another way, the JVM ecosystem is alive and thriving through varies other dynamic language built to run on JVM. But the language itself is on the decline.
- Sandman 15y ago
  Could you elaborate on what you mean by "configuring the IDE"? I never had to configure Eclipse in any way to start a new project. I don't have much experience with NetBeans or IDEA, but I sincerely doubt that you need to do any special configuration before you can start a new project there either. If you're talking about workspace preferences, then you should know that these can be imported, so again, no complicated configuration is really needed.
  - lightblade 15y ago
    By configuring, I don't just mean the IDE. Generally, it's about setting up the project structure, writing your configuration XML, and fetching all the dependencies libraries. Usually, this involves the writing of Maven or Ant XML files, and generating the project from it. Sometimes, the IDE chokes and you have do it all be hand. Eclipse is notorious for having their plugins conflicting with each other. I switched from Eclipse to IntelliJ for that very reason. A lot of the modern programming languages offers package managers that dramatically improves this process. The only thing that Java has is Maven..and Maven pom files aren't just simple dependency management.
jzoidberg 15y ago
The JVM is a absolute dream to work with. We run it on a multi node Cassandra EC2 cluster and on tiny embedded devices. And develop for both those platforms on OS X. Java the language is optional - it is simply the lowest common denominator on the JVM.

11 points by seminatore 15y ago

Link to the original article: http://zeroturnaround.com/blog/java-is-dead-9-million-devs-disagree/ http://zeroturnaround.com/blog/java-is-dead-9-million-devs-d... BTW, I recommend reading not only the article,but also the comments (on the original article page). Personally, I really loved Peter Ashford's and Mateo Bengualid's responses to Florian Boesch's comment.

electic 15y ago

The 9 million number seems a bit inflated to me. Either way, Java is widely used in many major open source projects so I doubt calling it "dead" is appropriate. That being said, Java is a bit heavy on the resources. It takes 20 percent more hardware to run a Java product than it does C++. Wish it could be far more performance driven.

EiZei 15y ago
Seeing that language platforms that perform way worse than Java are the currently the hot stuff I fail to see how a mere 20% performance penalty is the thing that is holding Java back.

Scriptor 15y ago

Is anyone noteworthy saying that Java is dead, anyone providing good arguments for it? Otherwise this seems to be arguing against a straw man.

overgard 15y ago

Java isn't dead, it's just widely considered to be uncool. I realize "cool" might not be a good metric for evaluating languages; but that's where mindshare comes from. Java is a boring language often used in boring contexts mostly by people trying to make a safe choice. This is not the kind of thing that appeals to hackers.

AdrianRossouw 15y ago

Java isn't remotely dead, but oracle being it's new corporate steward doesn't really bode well for it's reputation among hackers. A lot of points in the original article reference java IDEs to mitigate the verbosity of the language. The fact that the only practical way to write java code requires the use of eclipse and it's ilk is one of the language's biggest failings in my opinion. I don't think the web would be nearly as accessible to develop for if necessitated the use of dreamweaver (or whatever) to be able to build anything.

lightblade 15y ago

"...creating a “Hello Guestbook” type of application in Java is a simple, 10-minute affair." Lol, no.. 10 is the time it takes to configure your develop environment before you even start. Java isnt dead. While this is true, it is also an incredibly unproductive language. There are tons of boilerplate code that needs to be generated. But it another way, the JVM ecosystem is alive and thriving through varies other dynamic language built to run on JVM. But the language itself is on the decline.

Sandman 15y ago
Could you elaborate on what you mean by "configuring the IDE"? I never had to configure Eclipse in any way to start a new project. I don't have much experience with NetBeans or IDEA, but I sincerely doubt that you need to do any special configuration before you can start a new project there either. If you're talking about workspace preferences, then you should know that these can be imported, so again, no complicated configuration is really needed.
- lightblade 15y ago
  By configuring, I don't just mean the IDE. Generally, it's about setting up the project structure, writing your configuration XML, and fetching all the dependencies libraries. Usually, this involves the writing of Maven or Ant XML files, and generating the project from it. Sometimes, the IDE chokes and you have do it all be hand. Eclipse is notorious for having their plugins conflicting with each other. I switched from Eclipse to IntelliJ for that very reason. A lot of the modern programming languages offers package managers that dramatically improves this process. The only thing that Java has is Maven..and Maven pom files aren't just simple dependency management.

jzoidberg 15y ago

The JVM is a absolute dream to work with. We run it on a multi node Cassandra EC2 cluster and on tiny embedded devices. And develop for both those platforms on OS X. Java the language is optional - it is simply the lowest common denominator on the JVM.