

Java finally open-sourced. Does anyone still care? - ilamont
http://thestandard.com/news/2008/06/20/java-finally-open-sourced-does-anyone-still-care

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presty
Yes, lots of people care. Just because it's not trendy to program in java and
it doesn't get as much hype as ruby/python/etc, doesn't mean it's irrelevant.

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axod
I agree. It's irritating how idiotic people get with languages. They go from
"This is the bees knees! It can be used anywhere! It's the best thing since
sliced bread", to "This is irrelevant now we have our new fad favourite
language"

Why can't a language just be good at some things, and not others? Do we _need_
a grand unifying language that is great for everything?

If you want a reliable, scalable, bullet proof backend, java is still pretty
hard to beat.

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ardit33
I thing Java took a wrong turn with 1.5 and especially 1.6. Introduced new
complexities to the language, without adressing its main drawbacks: verbosity,
and lack of proper closures, and functions being first class citizens

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tomjen
Java 7 should add closures. And in the mean time, most of the times you would
be using closures, you can use anonymous inner classes.

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jmzachary
Yeah, closures and anonymous inner classes would really redeem Java in the
eyes of the masses.

Java is going, going, ...

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evilneanderthal
i think what tomjen was referencing was that java already has anonymous inner
classes.

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jmzachary
I'm aware. I was trying to take a funny jab at Java and it didn't turn out so
well.

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PieSquared
Could anyone elaborate on which sections of code weren't open sourced
originally? That'd be interesting to hear.

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fourlittlebees
In the Sun release in May of last year, it was something like 4-5% of the code
and most of it had to do with graphics stuff: font & image rasterizing, etc.
which makes sense. I think that's why most of the developers didn't care much
one way or the other.

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midnightmonster
I've been moving from doing most of my server side work in PHP to doing as
much as I can in Rhino. I'd have been more anxious about doing that if there
hadn't been a clear path to openness for Java, and I'm glad to see it get
there.

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bayareaguy
I don't make or distribute java much these days but the fact that it's open-
sourced means that java developers can start to expect most desktops to have
it.

And only after what... 14 years? Good going Sun.

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grantc
Not sure I follow you. Most desktops are some flavor of Windows, call it +90%.
What piece of technology, not present previously, became ubiquitous on Windows
once it was open sourced? Open sourcing java doesn't mean much for end users
on the desktop, imo.

The commercial open sourcing of java will matter on the ecosystem and it's a
good thing for java developers (which, despite HN demographics, there are
still millions of). Particularly, when you consider the flaws of the JCP and
Sun's control to this point.

Good going Sun indeed--stick to making awesome hardware.

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bayareaguy
Now that it's absolutely trivial to distribute, developers can count on the
same code base everywhere. Kind of like how everyone can count on GCC.

I don't write much Java now but at one time I supported a database library on
runtimes from sun, ibm, apple, microsoft and the blackdown guys. It was crazy.
Java and Python have been around for about the same amount of time. Python has
about 5 different VM implementations. According to
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Java_virtual_machines> Java has _10
times_ that number.

