Must go faster, must go faster! Oracle lobs Java EE into GitHub, vows rapid Java SE releases Oracle plans to accelerate the pace of Java SE releases – and has moved Java EE's code repository to GitHub in keeping with its avowed desire to step back from managing the beast. Java SE has been on a two-year release cycle. That's no longer fast enough, according to Mark Reinhold, chief architect of Oracle’s Java platform …
Another viewpoint:
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/the-death-of-ruby-developers-should-learn-these-languages-instead/
"The evidence is in the jobs: Java, JavaScript, .Net, HTML, and Python topped the list of languages found most often in tech job postings in the past year, according to Indeed, while Ruby came in far down the list, at No. 9. "
""For Java to remain competitive it must not just continue to move forward — it must move forward faster," he said in a note posted to his blog on Wednesday."
Which begs the question: why?
This sounds horribly stupid and worse: I have no doubt it has more potential to hurt the project than move it forward. Sure, other environments may have quicker release cycles, but with every new release you also introduce risks and overhead. Risks comes in the form of the risk of bugs. Now, that risk is of course always there, but will increase the very moment you start adding new stuff.
The other, much more important in my opinion, is overhead. A new release usually also means that people will need to check what changes and optionally may need to adapt to that. That's time spend on study / overhead instead of active development.
Now, quick releases don't have to be bad, but the way they present this I can't help get the uncomfortable feeling that to them "faster = better". So the release frequency has become a goal of its own, while that goal should be mainly focused around providing stable updates and adding stuff which actually makes sense.
Most of all.... Why do there always have to be updates in the first place? I don't understand that mindset at all. When a product is ready, when it does what it is supposed to do, then why can't it simply be left to do what it does without updates for a while? Nope! In this modern day and age your project apparently doesn't count unless you have at least several updates every once in a while.
Take Nethack.... That game hadn't been updated for years, and when a new version finally game out it was immediately big news. But after that... It's back to the usual release cycle where you don't get to see it in your list of updated software, and most likely for many more years to go. And why not? I play it on a regular basis and... it works, it does what I expect of it, why would I need more?
Just so we're clear: I base this comment not just on what we've seen here, I see it happening all around me. I'm a pretty vivid Minecraft player, I love that game, and for sure: when we haven't seen a new update for a while you can rest assured that plenty of people are going whine about "is it dying, why hasn't there been a new update, etc, etc.". So stupid... It's not as if you can't enjoy the game anymore without any updates coming in. I like new stuff just as the other guy, but I'm also happy with the stuff I already got. Anything on top of that is icing on the cake, not something which "should" be there.
I am not speaking for Java - have not used the thing for many years. However, regarding the question "why hasn't there been a new update" - updates are seen as a sign of commitment from developers.
This is a good thing, sometimes necessary, because there is no such thing as "software without bugs". Well, maybe in fables or on nice-looking "software development cycle" charts (which is the same thing as fables). In reality software development is messy and entirely dependent on human ability to comprehend both the means (i.e. code) and the goal (i.e. domain) and also to communicate both with other humans (team and users) and with compilers (i.e. writing code).
This is sometimes very tricky and the results are never perfect. Demanding that there be a constant stream of updates is simply a very human way of dealing with it, demonstrated by the users who (at least intuitively) understand these things, for example because they are used to seeing multiple "fixed ..." items on release notes, every one of them.
Oracle's Java is dead to many developers since Oracle's lawyers decreed that even the Java APIs are copyrighted and that made many open source developers avoid it like the plague.
Even with a court decision to contradict Oracle, with such a minefield of a company, why risk it? You'll only be able to get all the justice you can afford - and this is quite expensive and impossible if you're not Google.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_America,_Inc._v._Google,_Inc.
I doubt that Oracle's courtroom drama had any significant impact on Java developers. Far more important has been their stewardship of the project. For businesses to invest in any ecosystem then they need clarity over its development for the foreseeable future and Oracle has failed in this area repeatedly.
Meanwhile alternatives for more and situations (there are some where removing Java would be considered a disaster) are arising and getting adopted.
In all fairness I'd far prefer that Java updates were better rather than faster. As it stands so much software written off the bacj of java only supports a specific version or update. You can upgrade if there's a security concern and it might work, but of course, you'll be voiding your support...
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