[ale] OT: So what about Java?

[Andrew Newton]

>>Is there anything about this Java mini-universe that simply cannot be
>>accomplished through other means that are not tightly tied to one
>>company or any company at all?

No.  It isn't magic.  But it should be noted that Sun isn't the only 
company with a serious investment in the standards of Java.  Companies 
like IBM, BEA, and Borland have contributed significantly over the years 
to the standard.  And Java has the Java Community Process, which is how 
people change or add to the spec.  The people at Apache have used the 
JCP to change the Java spec several times.  So, while Java may not be 
controlled by a "standards body" like the IEEE or ANSI, in some respects 
it is easier to change as the JCP moves faster.

And criticism of Sun with regards to Java is not entirely well placed. 
BEA's Weblogic and IBM's Websphere or much more well used than Sun's 
J2EE app servers.

> No. I think it's just the big, fat, market penetration potential of
> anything that starts with "J" these days. IMO there are few languages
> *worse* than Java, from a language-design standpoint. The libraries
> are OK, though it took until, what, version 1.3 of the API, and eight
> years, for them to figure out that, yeah, some standard means of doing
> REGEXP MATCHING might be nice. Sheesh. The good news is, Java 1.5 is
> getting generics (ala C++ templates) FINALLY, which will make a huge
> amount of stupid code go away.

OROMatcher has been available for Java since atleast the 1.1 days.

> About J2EE et al, I can't say much. I've wet my feet with it using
> JONAS, an open-source EJB server. It's mildly interesting, but doesn't
> seem fundamentally different from, say, CORBA. But then, there's that
> friggin' "J"...

While I personally think EJB is used far more often than necessary, it 
is not an RPC-like mechanism such as CORBA.  That's RMI.

> I think C is about the most portable language I've ever used.

Try taking that little program you wrote to do some simple calculations 
with 'longs' on your P4 and running it an HC11 system.  While C is great 
and gives the programmer a lot of control, it is not that portable. 
I've had programs written for the same platform perform differently 
because I switched out the compiler.

-andy

-- 
Andrew Newton
Act now, before the universe implodes!
http://zak.ecotroph.net/pea

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