Bad news for SUN//Novell/JAVA: (Warning: Very long article!!!)
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Monday November 10, 8:17 pm Eastern Time
Company Press Release
SOURCE: Market Decisions Corporation
Developers Express Widespread Dissatisfaction With Java
Two-Thirds of Java Developers Losing Faith in 'Write Once, Run Anywhere'
PORTLAND, Ore., Nov. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Market Decisions Corp. today
announced the preliminary results of a new research study that asked developers about
their experiences with Java. The study found that the
majority of developers have a high degree of dissatisfaction with Java and do not feel
that it meets all of their expectations. Two-thirds (67 percent) of the Java developers
surveyed said that having to test on multiple virtual machines and platforms was an
issue affecting their Java development plans. In many cases, survey participants said
that the testing required to make Java work on multiple platforms outweighed any other
benefits provided by Java and, as a result, they have scaled back or, in some cases,
completely halted their use of Java. Only 22 percent of developers surveyed indicated
that they were very satisfied with Java as a cross-platform development language
Java Roadblocks Cited
Several critical issues arose as common causes for concern among developers
surveyed:
Write once, test everywhere. Java developers are most concerned with Java's
inability to deliver on its purported ''write once, run anywhere'' promise. Many
voiced their frustration with the need to test Java code on multiple platforms and virtual
machines in order to ensure that it worked properly. Sixty-seven percent (67 percent)
saw this as an issue. ''The portability is not automatic; you have to investigate,'' said
Craig Toyofuku, a software engineer at one of the largest banks in the United States.
''Sometimes it takes more than just running it on a different machine. Java doesn't run
the same from machine to machine -- you must test it in order to find that out. We
proceed with caution.''
Incompatible versions of Java. The incompatibilities between the JDK 1.02 and
JDK 1.1 versions of Java were the second most commonly cited issue. Fifty-six
percent of Java developers see this as an area of concern. ''There were such dramatic
changes between JDK 1.0 and 1.1 that we have to have lots of programmers writing
everything twice,'' said Jeff Ramsden, senior software engineer at a Fortune 500
company. ''It makes me afraid because the next new version of the JDK might change
too much and cause more work.''
Lack of open standards. Nearly half (47 percent) of the sample pointed to the lack
of open standards for Java as a problem. According to the director of software
research at a global information systems
company, ''I don't trust Sun to handle it correctly; I don't agree with all of their
decisions. They are not focusing on what is important, which is the technical aspect of
Java not the political aspect of Java. It hurts my attempts to sell Java to my
management.'' Poor performance. A common problem, cited many times elsewhere
throughout the industry and echoed by 45 percent of this sample, is the poor
performance of Java compared with programs written in other languages. ''Java's run
times aren't all that spectacular,'' said Kevin Stratton, president of Earobic Digital
Systems. ''We cannot recommend Java highly; we do limited development with Java
because of its poor performance.''
Problems Result in Low Usage Rate
The issues raised by those interviewed corresponded to those raised by a vast majority
of developers, who said that they are not devoting significant development resources to
Java. Of the developers surveyed, the median time spent developing in Java was only 9
percent of their overall development effort. Furthermore, nearly four out of ten (39
percent) said that they are merely experimenting with Java or in the early planning
stages of a project that uses Java.
Only three out of ten developers viewed Java as a cross-platform development
language. More than 87 percent indicated that they were targeting their Java
applications for Windows 95 or Windows NT. Other
platforms that were the principal targets for developers included Solaris/SunOS (36
percent), Macintosh (31 percent), Windows 3.x (18 percent), AIX (17 percent),
NetWare (11 percent) and OS/2 (11 percent). All other platforms were mentioned by
less than 10 percent of the sample.
Developer Comments Reveal Problems
When discussing problems, many developers focused on technical issues, while others
discussed broader issues such as the fragmentation of Java and the ongoing bickering
among vendors. A sampling of these
developer comments follows:
(* NOTE: In many cases (almost two-thirds), the participants were willing to have their
opinions published but asked that their names and/or the name of their company not be
revealed.)
''You can't do large projects; it just doesn't work right. This has restricted us to doing
only small applications with Java. Because Corel has withdrawn its support of Java,
this makes me think that Java is really doing badly, since Corel is so big. We've pulled
back on our plans to use Java.'' -- Development manager at a major
industrial firm
''When I began using Java I was turned off by the performance. Basically, the speed of
running applications was too slow. I don't want to continue until the standards and
performance issues are solved.'' -- Information technology specialist for a major
computer vendor
''It is slow on our Macintosh platform. With the changing versions, it hasn't solidified as
a real 2.0 release; it is very inconsistent. It's unfortunate that Mac development is not
happening on par with the PC side.'' -- Lee Lusk, managing director, Arizona Internet
Assoc.
''The two browser platforms have two different feature abilities; we can't use features
we'd like to on both browsers, so we can only use one of the browsers, MS 3.0.'' --
Fred Langva, network administrator, Logan General Hospital
''I would like to see Java be more mature, with a consistent set of tools on all
platforms. Better support for printing and clipboard and an improved IDE in J++. I
worry about whether Java will fragment into multiple versions.'' -- Joe McDaniel,
manager of applications development, Oxford Molecular Group
''I don't think Java is going anywhere, therefore I'm not going to use it if I can help it.
Some Unix and Macintosh versions work unstably on Netscape versions. MS version
is very stable when it works. Makes me
not want to develop Java -- it doesn't make sense to develop something you can't be
sure will work reliably.'' -- Frank Dziuba, president, Silicon Beach Communications
''We are using both PCs and mainframes and the support environments are different for
each. Incompatibilities create additional labor time to test on both PCs and mainframes
rather than just testing
once. The tools for doing integration are very weak; it takes a lot of low level work to
do the integration.'' -- Edward Stull, principal, Summa Internations Inc.
''Java's performance is very, very, very poor. We had to throw out applications and
rewrite them. We rewrote the applications in Visual Basic 5 and they run 100 times
faster than Java. Because every user wants to maximize functionality available to them,
they want to have all the bells and whistles, and it is too costly to create these with
Java.'' -- Jim Shaw, president, Bergen Shaw International
''There is a great deal of difference between the two versions of the JDK. This requires
a strong look at bringing applications developed from 1 to 1.1, so that adds more time
and effort to our project.'' -- Ryan King, director of new media, ECI
''Java has to be standardized to be truly useful. What looks good on a Mac doesn't
look good on Windows 95 or 3.11. You end up having to build for the lowest
common denominator. It is very difficult to write a user interface and be completely
cross-platform compatible. This is a standardization issue.'' -- Todd Rosene, chief
technical officer, TMR Multimedia
''We have incompatibilities between different virtual machines. What works on one
doesn't work on another. Unfortunately, it is controlled by Sun at this point. They are in
no way a standards body.'' -- Stephen Miller, software developer, V-Systems
''We're finding it difficult to keep up with the changing spec. Increases the risk. We
target software products about two to three months ahead. In the past, we were
relying on Java features promised at the time, and sometimes those features weren't
available when you finish the product. That means the product couldn't be sold.'' --
Peter McGowan, senior consulting engineer, ADM Inc.
''Java is proprietary, controlled by Sun Microsystems. As long as it's controlled by a
single entity it will never be an industry standard. SunSoft wants me to license Java
from them; nothing is open when they have intellectual property rights. By Sun trying to
control the market through restrictive licensing agreements, they have made Java
migrate toward proprietary instead of open solutions. The promise of Java is a lie: It
doesn't run cross platform. Even in the same tool kit there are incompatibilities. Java
reinvents itself every three months; we don't waste time on moving targets.'' -- Jeff
Merkey, CEO, Timpanagos Research Group
''We have to test over and over again on each machine and platform because Java
doesn't work the same from one platform to another.'' -- John Meier, chief operations
technician, Freshwater Software
''Sun cannot control Java and at the same time want it to be an open standards-based
language. Java purports to be standard cross platform language and it's not. Java is not
'write once, run anywhere,' it's 'write once, debug everywhere.' There are no common
tools to create a standard interface, and you cannot exploit the characteristics of a
particular operating system with the middle layer present.'' -- Bill Kennedy, senior
consultant, Minerva Technology, Inc.
''It costs more to write Java applications. The virtual machine reduces performance by
an order of magnitude, so Java runs slow. There is no support for hardware devices
and, worse yet, there is no easy way to extend the language to support hardware
devices. It's difficult to build applications that have an interface that our users are
accustomed to seeing. The establishment of the standards body has not yet been
resolved and even if the body was in place, they would not control Java.'' -- Ken
Miller, chief technology officer, 32X Corp.
''Java is just too slow for a lot of our applications, e.g., we write highly-tuned
applications for large-scale systems. Java just doesn't handle them. Microsoft and Sun
bickering at each other all the time doesn't make life for the rest of us any easier.'' --
Brian Tarbox, project leader, ''Been There, Done That'' Software
''Microsoft is trying to undermine the standard of Java, which is cross- platform
compatibility.'' -- Shih Chiu, developer, Appcomp Technology
''I just want the lawsuit resolved. Not expanding Java development at all until
resolved.'' -- Joseph Healy, president, Systems by Design
''It seems that a lot of energy is wasted by Sun fighting off Microsoft, comparing
themselves to MS. MS is a dog.'' -- Paul Caubet, owner/operator, Caubet &
Associates
''The language changed in a major way, so there are many differences. For example,
the entire event-handling module changed; let's say somebody clicked here -- then they
ask 'What happened?' To take
advantage you have to rewrite your entire code. The impact of that is that one has to
debug everywhere. It simply is immature. The Java tools are brand new. You don't
have a suite of finished components to use.'' -- Nadine Carroll, partner, Business PC
''Stuff doesn't run cross platform so that means I have to write once and debug three
times. Debug once each for Unix, Windows and Mac. This is not as was advertised. I
have to have three different operating systems so that I can debug for each of them.
This means more time spent on a project than planned for. I don't use Java as much,
and it is starting to lose its appeal.'' -- Jim Fallon, owner, Optical Alternatives
Survey Methodology
A total of 151 interviews were conducted as part of this study, drawn from a random
sampling of developers. Only those developers who had experience with Java were
included among the 151 participants. Data
collection was via telephone interview. Maximum sampling error for a sample of n=151
is +/-6.7% at the 90 percent confidence level or +/-8.0% at the 95% confidence level.
The final results of this study are expected to be available in two weeks. |
