Java at 20: A Look Back
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Java turns twenty! Here is a look at how Java changed programming.
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More like "Java at 20: How James Gosling cursed and saved us all"
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I seem to remember playing with it for a week or two during a coding class that I took about 10 years ago and I think it was ok but I've never really used it, so I may grow to like it should I get into it.
In consumer/end user facing stuff I have NEVER found an implementation that I've liked. Always bloated and slow.
Just for giggles, I remember one or two of my early Sony Ericsson phones had "Java Games" (yes, they advertised it as a thing). Whenever I'd accidentally launch the menu system for the games, it was faster to rip out the battery and then turn the phone back on than it was to wait and exit the program.
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Java is actually pretty awesome. Often keeps up with C++ for core algorithms. Tons of libraries and research. Really amazing platform.
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@scottalanmiller Until you try to use it in your web browser, lol.
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@dafyre said:
@scottalanmiller Until you try to use it in your web browser, lol.
that's not what it is for, though. That was a really bad idea. It's an awesome platform.
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Running most any awesome virtual machine in your browser is a terrible idea. You don't want to run .NET in your browser, or C++ or anything like that.
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Making a plugin in which a language runs that runs inside a browser is conceptually bad. Java is just famous for being good enough to pull off something horrible. You never see most languages used this way because they would have been even worse. Imagine SmallTalk in your browser!
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More like imagine using SmallTalk anywhere! * makes ghost moaning sounds *
Java applets in browser are on par with ActiveX controllers in IE, good intentions, always a bad outcome. Either make it purely web based or make it a full application. I understand the reasoning at the time, due to limitations of HTML and JavaScript, but no excuse anymore.
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@tonyshowoff said:
More like imagine using SmallTalk anywhere! * makes ghost moaning sounds *
Java applets in browser are on par with ActiveX controllers in IE, good intentions, always a bad outcome. Either make it purely web based or make it a full application. I understand the reasoning at the time, due to limitations of HTML and JavaScript, but no excuse anymore.
It's not unlike Flash too. Flash lasted a lot longer and was purpose built for that one thing and still sucked. Java was made for anything but that and did pretty well considering.
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It's much like how COBOL and Fortran take quite a beating today. But they were breakthroughs at the time and were really important.
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@scottalanmiller said:
It's much like how COBOL and Fortran take quite a beating today. But they were breakthroughs at the time and were really important.
In the context of their time COBOL, FORTRAN, et al were important, but today they're lumbering proto-dinosaurs. It's more disturbing than anything else how much out there still uses it and should've been replaced long ago.
I was going to mention flash as well, and what I like is how flash is finally on its way out, and mostly only gets used now for video. We fail over to flash player for some of our older videos which are not re-encoded (we've been slowly re-encoding to something HTML5 friendly, but there are 2 million videos so it's taking a while) and also fail over if the person simply doesn't have HTML 5 video playing for whatever reason.
