This should be crashingly obvious, yet not unlike the Java is just a language nonsense, the technical press isn't catching on to this.
Java is just a language, and not a very workable one at that. Almost a year ago you were declaring other languages to be dead; well, in fact, Java as a mainstream language for commercial development is nowhere to be seen. While there is a lot of hype, few are willing to commit to any serious development with it at this time -- and for good reason (to digress for a moment, Corel has put on hold its Java implementation of Office Suite citing performance problems).
It IS just another language -- arguably inferior in syntax and features to c++; and certainly inferior from a performance perspective -- a problem that will plague Java for some time to come. It's principal redeeming characteristic is the capability to run on diverse platforms -- but it fails even at that for the time being.
Even with its limited success to day, it is clear Java will someday be an important language -- but that may be some time down the road. But we need to keep our heads on straight here -- there is very little new science, from a conceptual perspective, in Java. I see the virtual machine as nothing more than a runtime interpreter for pseudo-code. As I've pointed out to you before, Ryan-McFarland was successful with the same structure in the late-70s. Admittedly, there were no GUIs at the time, but the same concept that Java relies on today was in heavy use in the 70s-80s. RMCOBOL and RMFORTRAN were "just languages".
I might point out that Ryan-Mcfarland's languages were important because they brought platform independence to software development -- just as Java has promised to do. RMCOBOL allowed you to compile an application on a VAX and move the compiled pseudocode to a PC or UNIX or proprietary OS and run it -- without modification. (much to my dismay I still have a number of sites running some of this code today -- luckily, it no longer requires support). Of course, these languages were simpler; but they worked. You could count on an app that worked on one platform working the same way on another.
Well, enough about that. But if you've only been watching the software business for a few years it is easy to become overwhelmed with the promise of a new technology. Don't get too excited ... it's only a langauge.... |
