10 years, sometime around today Well, Java has been known to the world for 10 years or so, now.
We had a party in the courtyard of the Santa Clara campus. There
was drinks, snacks, a dunk tank, James Gosling (and others) being
dunked in said tank, and Jonathan Schwartz refusing to get near the
tank. There was a bunch of people, music, and it being Northern
California in the Spring, there was some rain.
I was with the team for the 5 year anniversary, and that party was a
lot bigger. For whatever that's worth. Of course, 5 years
ago was a completely different Universe so far as these things are
reckoned (e.g. the bubble hadn't even burst yet).
Okay, so what happened? Other than schmoozing with co-workers and
former co-workers who'd been snuck onto campus for the party - we had
some speechifying, and a handing out of the official t-shirt and pin.
Hearing James Gosling recollect about Java's early days is always
interesting. I remember when we were discussing moving Swing into
"the core", there'd been a raging debate about whether to name the
package "java.swing", "java.awt.swing", "javax.swing" or something
else. And that one day James happened upon the Swing/AWT team in
the lunch room and I heard him talking about "in the 10 minutes we had
to decide X" about how quickly some of the decisions were made in the
early days.
Anyway, today he talked about how the "Project Green" people had holed
themselves up in a small office suite on Sand Hill Road and been
dreaming up science fiction fueled by soda's and ding dongs. He
claimed to be astonished at how we turned their science fiction dreams
into science reality.
And that this weeks most amazing thing he's seeing done with Java is
that in Brazil the whole health care system is run by Java.
They've got a zillion things running through cell phones with Java
MIDLET's, including filing ones taxes that way. That's
interesting alright.
What I found amazing is the required raising of the hands to find the
old-timers. Most software projects the people come and go, 2-3
years being the typical "stay". But with Java, there's many who
have been with the team for 10+ years.
It's not every day a software engineer gets to work on a product like
this. Speaking for myself that's been a source of why I've been
here for 7 years when my original plan was to join for a few months,
learn Java, and then move on to somewhere as a Java developer. To
know that what I'm working on is used by millions of people around the
world is "juice" ...
(2005-04-22 17:04:16.0)
Permalink
Comments [0]
Let's think about this question for a bit: Is AJAX worth adopting?
But let's first define AJAX since it's a relatively new model for
GUI applications. AJAX threatens not only the Java APPLET, but
also Flash, and perhaps some of the things Microsoft does. A
great example of AJAX is at http://maps.google.com/, the interactive local map service that Google recently launched.
The idea is that with modern HTML+CSS, modern browsers, modern
Javascript+DOM techniques, one can mimic a wide variety of GUI
applications. For example I'm typing this into a widget that
looks like a stripped down word-processor. It's creating HTML
that will eventually be uploaded to the blog server software. The
great thing is I don't have to code the HTML. If you search for
"WYSIWYG Javascript HTML editor" you'll find several similar
applications out there.
For many years the "web application" has been popular. At the simplest you have HTML and the FORM elements, the application logic is written on the web-server end and controlled by a sequence of CGI/JSP/PHP/ASP/etc scripts. The advantage is the application logic is centralized, making it easier to update, easier to deploy, and perhaps more secure. The disadvantage is that the user experience is very poor, because of the limited flexibility at the client.
At Java ONE last year, and for a couple years now, the message from the Java Client team has been "we got rich client experience". Anytime you have a real GUI toolkit you can construct a proper rich client experience. This involves good feedback, interactive data checking in filling out forms, a wide variety of GUI components (e.g. sliders or sortable tables or ...), rich presentation quality, etc.
Generally, to have a proper "rich client" experience one has had to either develop a native application and be tied to a specific operating system, or to use Java. There's been some exceptions of course, but in the big picture that's it.
At the same time, the goal is still there. Delivering applications to any client computer.
Some in the world are happy being limited to Microsoft's operating systems. They do have the biggest market share for desktop systems, and hence provide the biggest market to sell into. But many in the world are searching for alternatives, and I think the number is growing with the continuing virus and security problems Microsoft consistently refuses to do anything serious about.
While I prefer people to use a Java solution, this AJAX thing is up-and-coming.
What it offers is a very simple deployment model. One simply visits a web page, and the javascript loads and sets up the user interface. That's it.
Of course both Applets and Flash offer the same model. Clearly some in the world want to use the AJAX approach, by using javascript instead of Applets or Flash.
The "is AJAX worth it" author makes some good points. The makers of web browsers have done a terrible job on the compatibility story, so any application developer using the AJAX approach is going to have to work through the incompatibilities.
(2005-04-22 13:02:09.0) Permalink Comments [0]
