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Rear Adm Grace Hopper
To me programming is more than an important practical art. It is also a gigantic undertaking in the foundations of knowledge.
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2 weeks 4 days ago - Hmmmm...i jus called it and
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Pun intended.
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2 weeks 6 days ago
What gives desktop Java a future?
Hmmm, let me think about that one:
* JavaFX, if done right
* Increasing demand for rich clients, some of which make demands competitors can't provide
* Better look and feel and desktop integration -- some of which rivals or exceeds what's available from Adobe AIR
* The fact that people are *already* using Java on the desktop
And this is why I find this so frustrating. So, yeah, I guess there's really NO ONE using Java except for NetBeans and LimeWire. And Azureus. And Eclipse. And things based on Eclipse, notably Aptana and (increasingly important) Flex Builder, central to Adobe's strategy. And a range of double-click-ready productivity apps that Mac users do indeed use. And no one uses Java except for server developers. And client developers. And those needing to provide cross-platform support for the large number of Windows apps (noted by various critics here and elsewhere). And digital artists. And 3D artists. And game developers (few in number, but essential to efforts to provide excellent, open-source, cross-platform tools). And Java is irrelevant, except for the fact that it's currently the best genuine multimedia-rich, cross-platform development platform that can work with both 2D and 3D. Flash/AIR/whatever, by contrast, has limited hardware I/O support, nothing to rival things like JNI, and doesn't do 3D. It's NOT THE SAME THING. Nor is Ruby or Python. And C#/.net/Mono has a LONG way to go before catching up with the community and platform richness of Java, not to mention that Mono is unlikely ever to maintain full parity with Microsoft's Windows-centric options. (Nothing against Mono/C#, which I think has a lot of promise, but the world is better with it AND Java than just Mono.)
So, yeah. I'm just stumped. I can't imagine any reason anyone should allow Java to continue to live. Why do that, when we can embrace incomplete solutions that don't do the same thing?