From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lee@piclab.com)
Date: Tue May 02 2000 - 22:50:43 MDT
> > So people are still using Java?
>
> Heh. Well, I know people who are learning Java, people who are teaching
> Java, and people who are talking about Java. I've yet to find anyone who
> has actually built anything with Java, aside from the personal toy-project
> stuff we all do to evaluate new technology.
You don't get out much, and you certainly haven't checked the job
market lately. What do you think those 6-figure Java programmers
are building, toys? No, their building server-side distributed
enterprize applications--the kind of software no one sees on any
shelf, but that runs everything behind the scenes.
My current employer (OTS) subcontracts its service of printing
bills--we print millions of bills. We are the single largest
consumer of the US Postal Service (yes, I do have some moral
issues there:) I write code for them in Java, that they use in
critical applications (that I can't tell you about).
> But it would be nice to be able to tell clients "yes, we can
> communicate with Java if you ever decide to use it for something".
> Its too bad Sun is so intent on maintaining a closed system.
Implying that Java is a "closed" system is about 170 degrees from
the truth. Not quite 180, because Sun does retain the right to pass
final judgment over the "official" status of new APIs, and they
retain a trademark on the name. But the Java platform itself is a
100% public specification with no restrictions of any kind on its
implementation or extension, with 100% freely available and
redistributable reference implementations from Sun, 100% freely
available source code from Sun, and 100% freely available and freely
redistributable source code from several other vendors. Anyone who
calls that "closed" has an agenda other than the truth.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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