We're writing our startup using Java and Google App Engine, so we're obviously stuck in the middle of something. But in the end, we're confident that Java is giving us the best performance for what we're doing (big data), and no matter what happens between Oracle and Google, there's still an Open Source programming language that can't be taken back.
Ask HN: Is Java Dying?
11–17 of 17 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is Java Dying?
#12Some information at:
http://www.michaelnygard.com/blog/2010/04/the_future_of_soft...
"The Future of Software Development"
Re: Ask HN: Is Java Dying?
#13dying? no. growing? no, not really, either. or, at least, nowhere near the pace that it had to get to where it is now.
Re: Ask HN: Is Java Dying?
#14I've been working with Java since '98. I worked for Sun Micro, then Netscape, then the Sun-Netscape alliance, then iPlanet. I also worked for Oracle before I joined Sun and would have lost a lot of money on the wager that Oracle would buy Sun one day.
Java is not dying. The enterprise footprint alone will sustain the community (and developers) for years. And there is still plenty of innovation rolling out (SpringMVC is a good example) and I see some great angles for VMWare.
That said, I finally broke down and started learning Ruby last week (after the Oracle litigation announcement). All I can say is...wow. In less than a week, I was pretty comfortable with RoR (OO and MVC felt right at home). Over the weekend, I built an app that I'm actually proud of and planning to share with the HN community for feedback this week. The community is friendly and I'm blown away by the ecosystem (Heroku is ridiculously great).
Bottom-line: I built my home and fed my family with Java over the past decade and feel almost a sense of loyalty. I thought I was pretty fast in Java, but my productivity is up in RoR, even with the learning curve. I've loved every minute and have decided to build subsequent projects using RoR unless I run into some type of crazy roadblock along the way.
The early adopters that embraced Java and pushed it before it was proven (.97b anyone?) are the same people that love trying new things now. That other options are so enjoyable is a bigger threat to Java than Oracle. Oracle might have just provided the nudge people needed to see for themselves.
Re: Ask HN: Is Java Dying?
#15Yes! Still there will be a remaining huge code base to be maintained.
Re: Ask HN: Is Java Dying?
#16This discussion often happens around JVM languages or dead-end projects that will need to be maintained until the end of the universe. If that's all that remains, then yeah, I'd say Java is dying, because people won't be actively writing new, interesting code in Java. A couple of projects that suggest Java may not be dying (quite yet) are Roo and GWT. Roo is a spring-based framework that is very Rails-esque in terms…
Theres also grails, but even that is a bit clunky at times. I was ready to jump ship to Ruby land and then I discovered Play framework (www.playframework.org). It goes against many Java conventions but thats a good thing! Development time definitely lot faster! The only downside is that the community around it isn't quite as big as the other frameworks (hopefully that will change!).
Re: Ask HN: Is Java Dying?
#17I had dropped java/j2ee since 2006 and moved to ruby and erlang community. I hated the deployment of j2ee application and the dependencies of jars, i known ant/maven would solve the problem somehow, but i enjoy the way ror/otp does