Reactive? Serverless? Put to bed? What's next for Java. Speak up, Oracle

If they put as much effort into their own Java as they do into suing over APIs...

... we'd have God's own programming language by now.

What's next for Java?

Death?

{because of the way Oracle has behaved since it got ownership}

Hasn't Java EE been long dead?

From where I am sitting Java EE has been dead for a long time. The principle of a monolithic spec has lost out to just bringing along the frameworks you need. Maven has made managing that practical. A spec written by committee can't keep up with the vast ecosystem of frameworks and libraries. Which rightly or wrongly, rise and fall in the time it takes them to agree a single draft of the spec.

The big question now is the Java language dead as well? Oracle has been far too slow to evolve it. Compared to Scala and Kotlin, Java looks archaic. Its the productivity that is killing it. Everything is just far more keystrokes than in Scala or Kotlin. Java 8 was a step in the right direction. Unfortunately that productivity horse seems to have long since bolted.

The JVM and the vast ecosystem of libraries are worth hanging on to. So I am sure the Java platform will still live on. Oracle just needs to recognise that. After all its the platform that it cares about, not what you write the source in.

She is pretty!

Gartner nonsense

It's a bit poor of the author linking to a report you can't read unless you're a corporate IT-by-magazine manager of paper clips with an account. While I understand many have ambivalent opinions of Gartner I was curious to know their point of view. So basically, "look at this interesting stuff here..." , DENIED , eff off poor person.

C went years between K&R and ANSI, then years more before C99. And C is one of the most dominant langauges. C++ has a similar history (though of course currently the committee seems to have the attention span of a whippet on crystal meth), and it is one of the most dominant languages.

Java people - maybe your lang has reach a plateau of refinement? Not, of course, as refined as C or C++, but adequate to not rewrite the spec yet again?

i feel programming in a stable (or, in some others' view, stagnant) programming language and api keeps us productive - at least i don't need to, like the javascript guys sitting around me, constantly learn new ways of solving the same type of problems when the api library makers re-invents itself (angularjs 1 -> 2 comes to mind). some people may argue that java is cumbersome (in terms of lines of code...) but it is static typed and the tools (like Intellij IDEA) already suggests or even fill in much of the codes for you (like generating getters/setters/anonymous classes) and, as a result, i feel i actually type less than when i code in other languages. the only thing i feel oracle should seriously work on is its GC engine, the performance of which i feel lags seriously behind other newer languages (like golang). for the java ee part, well, i think if any company can make an app server that is as user-friendly as glassfish server (the admin console is so easy to use, everything self-explaining) i think more people will flock into the java ee scene - personally, i feel the major roadblock to java app server is that most of them is hard to admin.

Green

I was at Sun when the Green Project morphed from Set Top Box OS to something more general. I'd say the cycle is now complete. Java has attained 'meh' status at many companies thanks to Oracle.

Remember, Oracle is not a technology company

Oracle is an excellent sales company, that happens to sell hardware and software. A lot of their products were acquired, not created internally, paid for by the profits of that one product they did create, many years ago: the Oracle DB.

A lot of us hoped that the Sun acquisition would inject a "technical innovation" gene into Larry's baby, and perhaps that has occurred, but Sun's faith in open-source sharing of IP has clearly been rejected. The stewardship of Java clearly takes a back-seat to Oracle's other interests (profits). Instead, control of Java is mainly being used to harm the interests of competitors such as IBM and Red Hat.

It is time to reform the JCP. Java has grown up, and should be allowed to run its own life. Initiatives like microprofile (which is much more than simply a Red Hat thing, BTW) may well be the future, regardless of the JCP and Oracle.

Reformation in the Java universe is long overdue, and needed if Java is to evolve to address modern software development needs. Oracle, please go back to what you're best at, namely selling stuff, and trust those who are better at open-source innovation to generate new products and markets for you to buy into later on.

Free Duke now!