> Java is the replacement for COBOL. Java is popular with management > because it is above critical mass and thus won't become a dead language. > It will probably last as long as COBOL has, but that doesn't make Java a > technically good language anymore than COBOL was. You're attempting guilt by association. You're right, just because Java has been happily embraced by those who previously used COBOL, says nothing about Java's technical quality, positive or negative. Except maybe that its at least better than COBOL... Conceptually, Java is really a replacement for C++. As gcj proves, Java is really just C++ with cleaner syntax, and all the C backwards compatibility baggage, cruft, misfeatures, and hacks removed. Really there's three parts to java, that really need to be made clear: 1) Java, the core language. As I mentioned above, I feel Java is just an evolution of the C/C++, and beats the hell out of them for application development. 2) Java, the class libraries. The value of a language often depends more on the libraries available to build on, than on the language itself, and Sun knew this. Java allows rapid development because SO much stuff is already done for you. For example, the collections API. On the other hand, many parts of Sun's API's suffer from severe over-engineering. Bleh. 3) Java, the implementation. Sun's JVM/JRE is bloaty slow and ugly. Unfortunately, while there's plenty of open source JVM's, Sun's own class libraries depend heavily on undocumented native interfaces in Sun's JVM and can't be used on an open source JVM. This means the open source world is stuck creating its own set of class libraries from scratch, and this has been very slow going. Sun's API's are rather heavily interconnected and often overcomplex, so just cloning it a piece at a time isn't easy. Just deciding on some open-source standard (and more posix friendly..) Java API's hasn't caught on... I think Java's biggest crock is its severe xenophobia, in the name of cross-platform compatibility. In order to call any non-Java libraries, you have to go through the slow ugly JNI interface. This is a huge disadvantage in the open source world, with its large existing body of C libraries and infrastructure. This also extends to, despite Sun being a Unix vendor, for some reason Sun went to great lengths to make Java incredibly NON posix-interoperable or even the least bit posix-friendly. This has really killed its popularity in the open source world. Java's been around for what, over 8 years now, and the open source Java runtimes have only recently become even the least bit usable. Whereas Mono development has outstripped Java in half the time, plus C# seems to not have the 'xenophobia' problem. I understand C# lets you call C and C ++ libraries directly without any have-to-write-a-wrapper bullshit. Java is probably going to lose out to C# as the future native application development language in the open source world. _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota Help beta test TCLUG's potential new home: http://plone.mn-linux.org Got pictures for TCLUG? Beta test http://plone.mn-linux.org/gallery tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list