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Ask HN: What's Java used for?

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Re: Ask HN: What's Java used for?

#11

Post by papaf »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #3

A buddy of mine is a programmer at AT&T, and they (mostly he) have developed a pretty incredible push notification and messaging system using Java on the back-end. He claims that they're getting some pretty astounding message processing rates. I keep having trouble thinking of Java as "fast", but that might just be due to really crappy desktop app experiences. But anyway: one of the biggest companies in the U.S. uses…

I keep having trouble thinking of Java as "fast"

When it first came out it was an absolute dog. Then Sun kept promising "faster than C" performance because of VM optimisation. The reality was that desktop apps were barely usable and the HotJava web browser was scrapped.

However, after over 15 years of VM optimisation and heavy use, Java is nice and fast. Its not quite up to C++ levels of performance but it is very respectable.

Re: Ask HN: What's Java used for?

#13

Post by riffraff »

david_p wrote: post #10
dikbrouwer wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the interesting question is why? Many large corporations indeed use Java, and the often-touted reason is safety and/or speed. Is that still a valid answer in today's web dev world? What would you recommend that AT&T for example uses if they could start all over again today?

IMO, Java is appreciated for the following reasons: - there are plenty of reliable open source libraries (see Apache) - it is easy to learn and to maintain - the IDEs are good (IntelliJ IDEA !) So, yes, this is still a valid answer, IMO.

also, the performances are quite good, and you are able to buy support from ibm/sun/oracle.

Neither it's true for python/ruby/perl etc.

Re: Ask HN: What's Java used for?

#15

Post by [deleted] »

dikbrouwer wrote: post #9
lukefabish wrote: post #7

In corporate-land, enterprise web applications are generally .net or Java. Enterprise Java is referred to as Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE). In this case, the web output a user sees in a browser is generated on an application server using a mix of Java code and templated HTML/CSS/Javascript/etc.

Yes, but the interesting question is why? Many large corporations indeed use Java, and the often-touted reason is safety and/or speed. Is that still a valid answer in today's web dev world? What would you recommend that AT&T for example uses if they could start all over again today?

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What's Java used for?

#16

Post by pullo »

dikbrouwer wrote: post #9
lukefabish wrote: post #7

In corporate-land, enterprise web applications are generally .net or Java. Enterprise Java is referred to as Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE). In this case, the web output a user sees in a browser is generated on an application server using a mix of Java code and templated HTML/CSS/Javascript/etc.

Yes, but the interesting question is why? Many large corporations indeed use Java, and the often-touted reason is safety and/or speed. Is that still a valid answer in today's web dev world? What would you recommend that AT&T for example uses if they could start all over again today?

there are more java and .net programmers out there than python/ruby programmers. hence a java programmer is easy to find, cheaper to hire and less disruptive to fire. This is probably one of the most important reasons why corporations prefer java/.net over ruby on rails/python. that said, when a programming language is around for more than a dozen years, it gains the tag of being reliable ( rightfully so).

Re: Ask HN: What's Java used for?

#18

Post by adn37 »

More on banking software: works from backoffice intranets / middleware (J2EE) to low latency trading (core J2SE).

The plus I see, is not having to worry too much about errors (wrt C++). Makes working with large codebases / multiple collaborators easier. Great IDEs too.

Still, coding in Java is quite boring (overdeclaration, lack of pointers/unchecked sections, ...).

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