2006-03-31 #1

Java Still Cool?

DanT

Does Java Even Exist?

Never once did they mention the Java™ platform. They spent the whole evening essentially explaining how they were going to try to turn JavaScript into Java, without ever acknowledging that Java exists and already offers everything that they were describing. I was floored.

He concluded that

the Java platform has simply stopped being cool.

It makes me think that there is something about human psychology which leads to something of a newcomer advantage. Something like AJAX gets lots of press as new libraries are written, features added, problems fixed, etc. Java doesn’t get the same buzz because it has already had these features for years. If you only superficially follow the buzz it would seem that new technologies like AJAX and Ruby are where all of the advancement is; so they must therefore be the ways of the future. The thing is though, that with all of their furious activity, they aren’t pulling ahead of Java, they’re just catching up. Maybe there’s even a marketing advantage to technologies with lots of initial deficiencies, as it gives you lots of room for celebratatory growth (think DOS).

I think something similar happened with SOAP/Web-Services and CORBA. There is no need for anyone to write anything about CORBA as there really isn’t much new. There doesn’t need to be. It is a mature technology that already does just about everything that people need it to.

Arguably, Java did the same thing to C++ and C++ did the same thing to Smalltalk. In the Java over C++ case at least, it was a good thing as Java was a better concept.

In a somewhat related story: James Robertson, says that he’s noticed a big change in attitudes over the last year away from Java and towards dynamic languages. He attributes this partly to the extra complexity added in 1.5 by Java Generics.