Article Discussion: Java Comes of Age

Time to open the Champagne -- Java 1.5 is out, and the language has finally come of age! With the new Java 1.5 specification, Java now contains features that make it feel like a proper "grown-up" language. The rest of this article will introduce you to these new features. To try out the features for yourself, simply from Sun?s website and give it a whirl. Note that you?ll need to compile the code using the ?source 1.5 option; otherwise, you?ll get compilation errors when using the new features.


Read the full article here: Java Comes of Age

As a grizzled old C++ programmer, I find it amusing that Sun are gradually adding back into Java all the C++ language features they originally left out because "they made the language too complex for the typical developer".

I also note that they call their new template feature "generics", but they will not be truely generic in the way that C++ templates are until they add operator overloading to the language. For example in C++ it is trivial to write a template function sum(begin, end) that adds up a sequence of values. The sequence could be an array, a list, a set, etc and the values could be integers, floats, complex numbers, matrices - anything for which the "+" operator has been defined.

To see what truely generic programming means, take a look at the docs for STL (the C++ Standard Template Library), especially the algorithms - http://www.sgi.com/tech/stl/table_of_contents.html.

Dave - The Developers' Coach

It seems that the only good thing Java is bringing to the developer scene is cross-platform abilities and perhaps some simplified code structures. Other than that... it's still slow. Slow slow slow slow slow. It's interfaces, although able to display on multiple platforms without much (if any) code changes, are horrendously ugly on all platforms. They don't look a thing like any other interface. Now, this might not really matter to the programmers, but to the users (you know, the people who really matter when it comes to using a piece of software), it sticks out like a sore thumb!

I personally can't stand Java, and the industry's supposed move, combined with academia's more active switchover, sickens me and brings me almost to tears of pain. What, besides the ability to simply be executed on more than one platform, has caused all these institutions and corporations to move over? Speed and flexibility for the user used to be the key issues in development... but now it seems these key issues involve producing as little code as possible with as small a programming team as possible to get the product out as quickly as possible. Seems like a very Microsoft-like design philosophy to me: code fast, release soon, ditch quality and speed.

And please, no religious flames.

Even with the addition of new features in 1.5, Java is still a much more intuitive and more object-oriented language. Java doesn't support pointers, memory allocation, and multi-inheretance which is the major source of unnecessary complexity in C++. Java gained popularity 'cause of Applet and platform independent. The true value of Java is really the power of building large-scale Enterprise application (based on J2EE). For instance Oracle's 11i eBusiness suite (a couple of million dollars a piece) is built on top of J2EE.

With complexity comes flexibility and power. Java seems more like a beginner's language than anything else because it does everything for you, and because of that, is harder to use lower level structures with. I'm sure that a linked list in C++ is much much faster than any linked list object Java can provide, and the same goes for all structures.

I wasn't sure what you were saying in the line about the complexities Java tries to avoid. ("which Java was trying to avoid is nothing but pointer, garbage collection and multi-inheretance."). Perhaps you could re-explain that?