[scratt]

I am dissapointed that there is no mention of Calculator Geeks or Punch Card Jockeys though...

[Kickaha]

Infix or RPN calculators?

Only used a punch card system once - it was enough. Quickly went to front panel switches and thought I'd hit nirvana with a Z19 terminal.

[Gargoyle]

I have been programming for years and I don't see why so many people dislike Java so much. I would take Java over .Net any day.

[Kickaha]

Try Smalltalk or, heck, Objective-C, to see why Java gets a lot of disdain from OO folks. Its object model is... odd.

OTOH, it also gets slammed from the C/C++ crowd because it's 'too OO' and doesn't offer a high-speed fallback. (Not as true anymore.)

OTGH, the Lisp folks look at the VM/bytecode system and wonder why anyone would just recreate mistakes they figured out nearly 30 years before.

Basically, it sits in the middle and gets blasted from all sides.

[Banana]

Originally Posted by Gargoyle I have been programming for years and I don't see why so many people dislike Java so much. I would take Java over .Net any day.

I thought .Net isn't a language, but a framework? Did you mean you would prefer Java over C#?

[spikeh]

I think .Net is an umbrella term for all the languages in the framework - for example, ASP.NET, etc.

[billybobsky]

no IDL or maple?

Logo?

Oh. well I will go back to petting my turtle now...

[chucker]

Originally Posted by Banana I thought .Net isn't a language, but a framework? Did you mean you would prefer Java over C#?

Well, Java comes with its own object hierarchy, whereas .NET is one, but allows you to choose from a number of languages.

[AsLan^]

Hey Kickaha, what's the deal with Java bytecode anyway?

You've blasted it a couple of times but I don't really understand why, or how it affects application programming

(if anyone else has the answer I'd be happy to hear from you too)

[spikeh]

Originally Posted by AsLan^ (if anyone else has the answer I'd be happy to hear from you too)

My pokemon bring all the nerds to the yard, and they're like you wanna trade cards? Darn right, I wanna trade cards, I'll trade this but not my charizard.

[AsLan^]

Originally Posted by spikeh My pokemon bring all the nerds to the yard, and they're like you wanna trade cards? Darn right, I wanna trade cards, I'll trade this but not my charizard.

Oh dude, LOL

[spikeh]

It's one of those situations where I know it was the wrong answer, but I wanted to say it anyway

Edit: I didn't invent it, I nicked it from one of my minions.

[Kickaha]

Originally Posted by AsLan^ Hey Kickaha, what's the deal with Java bytecode anyway? You've blasted it a couple of times but I don't really understand why, or how it affects application programming (if anyone else has the answer I'd be happy to hear from you too)

Okay, history time... Java started as a project within Sun called Oak. It was an attempt to make a simple, stripped down programming language for... toasters. Seriously. And refrigerators, microwaves, etc, etc, etc. The idea was to have a simple, tiny language and embeddable runtime for appliances and such. That way an appliance maker could have a suite of smart apps that could be deployed across product lines and not have to be rewritten from scratch in assembler for each one. Nice idea. Part of this was a bytecode model that fit the simplistic, single-app approach that the appliances would need. It destroyed all of the metadata in the abstract syntax tree, and pared everything down to just what a single stack model runtime would need to run the app. So far, so good.

Unfortunately, it got pushed WAY beyond what it was originally intended for, and became Java... but the bytecodes never matured. Modern JVMs are nowhere near the simple single stack model the bytecodes were originally designed for. Bottom line? All that time and effort spent working on JIT compilation, etc, etc? Wasted. See, if you encode the AST directly, you end up with a huge amount of information that the JVM can use to optimize the code for a specific OS or platform. Runtimes end up being more or less on par with 'native' apps in C or C++, and you get to greatly simplify the JVM as well. 'Orange' was an academic research project around 1996 to do this, but it never gained the critical mass traction it needed because, well, it wasn't a buzzword that people could get funding for. Obvious, straightforward, and elegant yes... but those aren't the ideas that generate industries around them.

So, none of the w@y k3wl buzzwords were necessary just to make Java usable in real world situations, just a nice fast approach. Think of it like RISC vs. CISC - AST bytecodes let the JVM be more RISC like, current bytecodes force it to be more CISC like. The complexity has to be somewhere - either in the bytecodes, or how they are handled.

Sun decided to lobotomize the bytecodes, and we've all paid the price since. It's too bad - we would have had native-speed Java apps five to seven years ago, at least, instead of still waiting. It also would have meant that *all* JVM writers could have had those advantages.

Oh, you want to know what the reasoning was for using the braindead bytecodes over the encoded AST? The latter increased the size of the .jar file... by about 8%. It was thought that that would be 'unusable' over the web. Meanwhile, GUI resources exploded and caused a several hundred percent jump in .jar size, but hey... at least they saved that 8%.

So... my opinion is:

Java: eh, okay. Not worthy of the hype, but then, what is? Not bad though. Middle of the road.

Java libraries: All over the map in terms of quality. Some good, some horrible, nothing really stellar. Usable, usually fall flat when they run into a language feature that is a poor fit.

JVM: Great idea, so-so implementation in most cases, but still, a great idea.

Bytecodes: Whoever designed these and decided they should be frozen for all time should be shot, hanged, drawn and quartered. And then stepped on. Grr.

[AsLan^]

Fair enough then, thank you for the historical perspective

I don't agree with you on your opinions though, but hey, it's the internet right :P

Personally, I think Java's greatest strength as a development platform is the wealth and quality of its online documentation.

[chucker]

Originally Posted by AsLan^ Personally, I think Java's greatest strength as a development platform is the wealth and quality of its online documentation.

And how does a user benefit from this?

[billybobsky]

i want to go to bed but the logo turtle keeps bothering me to ask you where he stands...

[AsLan^]

Originally Posted by chucker And how does a user benefit from this?

Well, the users doesn't benefit directly. They do benefit indirectly because it is easier to write and maintain good Java applications, which decreases the time to market for both the initial release and subsequent updates.

[billybobsky]

Immediate benefit, no. Longer term, certainly... Efficiency of code means that legacy software is more likely to be maintained.

[chucker]

Originally Posted by AsLan^ Well, the users doesn't benefit directly. They do benefit indirectly because it is easier to write and maintain good Java applications, which decreases the time to market for both the initial release and subsequent updates.

That is certainly the case. But if you proclaim that to be the biggest advantage, then it is ultimately a very indirect one.

[AsLan^]

I'm not too sure where you're going with this.

Your previous statement...

Originally Posted by chucker I'm obviously and without doubt at the very top, because I use (gasp!) multiple languages, believing in "right tool for the right job".

Applies equally well to Java and...

Originally Posted by chucker And Java sucks.

Is obviously just a humorous jab.

Or do you have some reason for thinking Java sucks?

[chucker]

Originally Posted by AsLan^ Is obviously just a humorous jab. Or do you have some reason for thinking Java sucks?

It's actually quite connected to the previous statement, since I don't see any particular case where Java would be a good choice and another language wouldn't be a better choice.

[hflomberg]

Standing in the corner, facing the wall, the old Programmer mindlessly chants:

COBOL COBOL COBOL COBOL
COBOL COBOL COBOL COBOL
COBOL COBOL COBOL COBOL
COBOL COBOL COBOL COBOL

[hflomberg]

BTW - you missed some great languages - Autocoder, RPG, Mark IV, REGAL

[Kickaha]

Originally Posted by hflomberg Standing in the corner, facing the wall, the old Programmer mindlessly chants: COBOL COBOL COBOL COBOL COBOL COBOL COBOL COBOL COBOL COBOL COBOL COBOL COBOL COBOL COBOL COBOL

Which is positively sane compared to APL. Yup, had to work in it for a class. In 1996. Fred Brooks (yup, that Brooks) was teaching a class on the history of computer architectures (we were guinea pigs for this book). Every machine in the series, from the Zuse Z3 to the Cray Y/MP, is modeled perfectly using APL as a unifying language. We wrote programs for all of the different machines we studied *in* APL so we could compare and contrast the architecture capabilities on a common ground. It was *fascinating*.

It also made me realize that some languages are simply write-only. You can program quickly and elegantly in them, but no one else can figure out what the hell you did without a lot of work.

Kind of like Perl.