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Technology: What to Make of Java?
Is Java still cool? Is it relevant? In the ’90s Java had great mindshare. The ‘write once, run-anywhere’ slogan was an exciting promise to developers that their lives would be simplified.
But things are changing. With competition from languages like Ruby, interest in Java is slowly declining. It’s interesting to see that the Tiobe Programming index shows Java and C running neck to neck in popularity.
Rod Johnson of SpringSouce says not to worry. He commented that oversight of the Java language probably won’t change that much under Oracle. “Oracle is incredibly dependent on Java for many of its core programs. The revenue that Oracle derives from Java being healthy far outweighs any revenue that it could obtain through more aggressive control.”
Oracle’s Thomas Kurian, VP of product development, called Java a “crown jewel” coming to Oracle as part of the Sun acquisition. He said that his top priority is to improve the performance Java for the nine million developers that are using it and revitalize the Java Community Process.
Sun also brings to Oracle their GlassFish application server. That’s a total of three application server technologies that Oracle now controls. GlassFish is to be used as part of the reference implementation for use with Enterprise Java. Oracle will promote BEA WebLogic for use in production systems.
What to make of it? Not sure. We’ll have to wait and see what Oracle does.
One thing is clear though. Even though many operations at Sun were frozen over the last year while the Oracle acquisition was being sorted out, Java has been evolving. Java 7 is now available. And some of the performance metrics for the 7 release show some eye-popping numbers — more than 50% faster than Java 5.
