back to article 'We broke a few things and will continue to do so... in a careful way' – Oracle's Reinhold on Java renovation work

The perennial Oracle OpenWorld sideshow previously known as JavaOne flowered again on Monday under a new name, Oracle Code One. The rebranding, as Stephen Chin, director of the Oracle developer community team, said in April, represents an effort to create a "bigger event that’s inclusive to more languages, technologies, and …

  1. Version 1.0 Silver badge

    Microsoft should sue them.

    Every piece of Java publicity seems to closely echo Microsoft's publicity releases about 25 years ago that sang the praises of Visual Basic ... it's bigger, it's better, it's easier to use, it's more reliable etc., etc.

    1. HCV

      Re: Microsoft should sue them.

      Wait, what, publicity says good things about thing they're publicizing? Tell me more!

  2. Mike 137 Silver badge

    "We're doing this in order to keep up with competing platforms ..."

    In order to create robust, secure and usable products, what real software engineers need is a stable development environment, the idiosyncrasies of which they can get to know intimately, not constant churn that keeps them always behind the vendor in knowledge and understanding. Nor do they need a regular changing feed of 'broken things'.

    'Keeping up with the competition' has clearly become more important for vendors than serving the users of their products, but in the realm of computer languages (sorry - "platforms"), we should be asking the question 'what the hell's this thing for anyway?

  3. EricM
    WTF?

    The high levels of change seen in other languages is exactly what kept devs at Java ...

    At least the ones doing the the big, complex, "ugly" stuff that is used as code infrastructure.

    It wasn't (at least for me) only about "write once run anywhere", but also about "run anytime in the future". The JVM served as a firewall against OS changes. Today I still have code in production that dates back to very early in the 21st century...

    In that sense the time-stability and upward compatibility of the Java VM and its toolchain made Java a platform, not only a language.

    Add new things: fine, I might of might not start to use it, but my existing code still runs.

    Break "a few things", even if you claim it is done in a considerate way: WTF?

    Dear Oracle: If you continue to break things in Java claiming you have to respond to a perceived competition from other languages, you wil end up destroying the platform, that once was Java.

    1. Androgynous Cupboard Silver badge

      Re: The high levels of change seen in other languages is exactly what kept devs at Java ...

      Could not have put this better myself. I've just had to post an article for our customers explaining that now applets AND Java Web Start are both dead, we have no means of "light" deployment for them. They now have to handle deployment themselves by distributing an application.

      Applets I get but JWS I do not - it feels like it was killed because Oracle couldn't be arsed to maintain it anymore as it was no longer shiny. Over the horizon we have JavaFX slated to lose support in 2022, Swing in 2026. It's a wholesale abandonment of the Desktop, on a relatively short timescale.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Devil

    "an effort to make JVM memory usage more efficient"

    Let's see.... it's one of the main reasons to avoid Java. And they're already late.

  5. ibmalone

    "We want the next decade to be Java first, Java always,"

    If you want a vision of the future...

  6. HmmmYes

    Theres a lesson here.

    Java was always a solution lookign or a problem, so the ammoutn of code that went into it was shocking - 4-5 guis, various means of networking, god knows how mnyn 'Wouldnt it be nice ...'

    All over a 20 years period. And the they were reluctant to deprecate and delete the old crap.

    *IF* Java was a small, itght VM with support for sockets and decent built in integer then it would rule business and web stuff. No brainer.

    Instead is a bloated monster which requires a lot of money to just get the basica changes QA in place.

    Any compnay that bet on jave - and a lot did, internally - are o nthe hook for ongoing support costs. And, to put the cherry on the shit cake, that person is Oracle.

    Me? I stick C99 and its standard runtime. Nice n small, with lots of competing suppliers.

  7. Lorribot

    And how much will this all cost?

    Remember this is Oracle so even if you have only one server running Java you will have to pay for every server in your entire company and those next door as well.

    But Java is free, er... not if you want support and those patches they deliver every 6 months. If you thought MS licensing was unclear, murky and eye wateringly expensive wait till you try and deal with Oracle. Terms that are clear as mud, product names and numbers that make no sense and costs that are ridiculous. You want to run Java RE on a desktop PC because EMC were too lazy to move away from a browser based Java GUI, that will be $2 per user per month, plus a chunk for every core in your Virtualisation estate as you running Java on a server and that could run on any core so you have to licence them all.

    Java should be dumped for the bad thing it has always been, a triumph of developers over users, like flash.

    1. HmmmYes

      Slightly more complex.

      Official java will bleed you dry.

      Theres the open java thang - icedtea or whatever.

      But you are on your own. Last time i looked oracle did not ship the regression test.

      If youve made a sigificant investment in java then youve 3 choices

      1- Be bled dry by oracle. Youll pay each time larry has a shit.

      2 - Invest in your own java development team - produce your own regression tests for jdk and your apps. A massive commitment because if java is anything its a complex mess.

      3- port everything away.

      Pick one now.

  8. Ima Ballsy
    Windows

    Says it All ...

    "Language is still free, it's the support that will cost you plenty"

    It's Oracle after all .... Gotta buy a new racing yacht

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like