Java – Lives By Its Fame Or Does It Live on its fame

Well.. Take a look around.. Turn around.. yeah.. thats right… if you are a CS student, or a major or JASP(Just another software programmer), you would find at least one book on Java, be it Schildt or Deitels or just their very own docs.. No?? You dont?? Look at the tutorials folder you have on your PC.

JAVA – Four letters that people claim evangelized the software industry. While some swear by this, others say “Only C++ is for grown-ups”. Yeah.. YAWN.. this is  JAD(Just another Debate 😛 )

But for once.. I wont bring in C++. Look. C++ is for matured programmers who dont fear tougher constructs. I personally love C++ and given a choice would program in C++ any day. But the thing is i use the Gtkmm toolkit for C++. Apart from this my C++ program isnt directly compilable windows. You need the g++ compiler on Cygwin. That actually led me to rediscover Java. I previously use java (jdk 1.3) to create applets and command line interfaces.. I never used it as more than a toy. Reason: I thought it was a toy.

But as I kept programming with Java, i came across a lot of +ses in it.. and quite a few -ses too

Java : +ses

1) Compile once :  Send the jar to your buddy and he will see the same stuff as you
2) Code Beauty  :  I can count the various  types of constructs you see 1)  Classes and Interfaces 2) methods 3) generics(1.5 onwards) and packages. I had to use 1)classes 2) structures 3) pointers 4) templates 5) preprocessors 6) virtual stuff 7) Lots more.. Cant recollect em all. I knew them.. But this wasn’t too convenient you see..

3) Simplicity

4) Security

5) Exception Handling: which far exceeds C++’s primitive integer throws, this returns full-fledged objects

6) Applets

7) Fully class oriented approach

8) Enhanced For loops (Since 1.5) . I loved them in Ruby

9) Package oriented design

10) Confidence. Java is a haughty language. It s already famous and knows it.

11) The bytecode: Scala, JRuby, Jython and Groovy have used this among many

12) The packages it comes with.

Java: -ses

1) No pointers : Well yeah.. Security improvements are got without them.. But still.. i still  love them.. Yeah and i know what references are …

2) The JRE : The JRE aint as portable as the language. It bloats up the whole mechanism. this has been almost set right by the 1.6 release

3) Speed: Java has to lick C++’s shoes here. It however makes up for this by increased coding efficiency.

4)  The mystic X: Lame Excuse. Gimme a million reasons, but i will continue loving C++

5) Unlike the popular myths, there is still more software being developed on C and C++ than Java and the rest put together

Overall:

Yeah.. Java does live on its fame. But it does enough to survive even if everyone’s memories are wiped and poeple are given a language to work on. On reading on another if Java did anything new, i came to see that java did the old things.. but did it well… its merit lies not in innovation but in mixing it up the right way

I would give java an 8.5/10 overall.. of which 5.5 will be for the killer collections and packages it comes with.