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January 2007
January 29, 2007
Java Continues to Grow
Java ended 2006, and began 2007, with astounding growth. Just take a look at these numbers.
One month into 2007, Java can be found in more and more places, and the Java developer community continues to grow. Take a look at these numbers:
- There are over 5 million Java developers, and growing
- As I write this, there are 1165 Java Community Process (JCP) members and 308 Java Specification Requests (JSRs)
- Java can be found in over 4 billion devices of some sort
- There are over 1.5 billion Java Powered phones (source: Ovum; as of end of Dec. 2006) and over 180 Java carrier deployments
- Java is used in 6 million television set top boxes
- There are over 2.2 billion Java Cards in use
- Java is installed on over 800 million PCs
- More than 391 million visitors to java.com have downloaded the JRE
Overall this is good for Java developers world-wide, as Java continues to be the leading language for innovation on the web and in the enterprise. Now, with the recent release of Java 6, it will be interesting to note Java's growth on the desktop and within Web 2.0 (Ajax) applications, thanks to its new desktop integration features and scripting support.
Thanks to you, as members of the Java community, Java continues to both evolve with the changing world of Web 2.0, and revolutionize in the world of the enterprise. Amid all of the growth and progress, one question remains: what role will you play in the Java community in 2007? Perhaps you have revolutionary ideas of your own that you want to share with DDJ readers worldwide. Write me at eric@ericbruno.com, and I'll be sure to write about it.
-EJB
Posted by Eric Bruno at 10:06 PM Permalink
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January 22, 2007
IBM Releases its own Java SE 6 SDK
Included tools help speed up start-up, diagnose JNI code problems, and more.
IBM’s Java 6 allows data to be easily shared between JVM instances. Any byte-data, such as XML, images, and so on, can be shared between running JVM instances, helping to reduce application memory footprint.
Also included is a new documentation Launchpad that directs you to documentation for APIs and error diagnostics. This unique documentation is also searchable. Additionally, enhanced debugging support allows stack traces down to the operating system level. The result is enhanced support to diagnose problems in native code (JNI).
Ports are available for Linux for x86, x64, and PowerPC.
Posted by Eric Bruno at 08:29 AM Permalink
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January 04, 2007
Groovy 1.0 Released
Groovy is a dynamic scripting language that works with Java, and can call Java libraries.
As described on the Groovy site, "Groovy is an agile dynamic language for the Java platform with many features that are inspired by languages like Python, Ruby and Smalltalk, making them available to Java developers using a Java-like syntax."
With Groovy, you can develop shell scripts, automated unit-tests, prototypes, and full-blown web applications with ease. Groovy works with all existing Java objects and libraries and compiles straight to Java bytecode in either application development or scripting mode.
Here is an example of a 100% Groovy script (taken from Groovy’s site):
class Greet {
def name
Greet(who) {
name = who[0].toUpperCase() + who[1..-1]
}
def salute() {
println "Hello $name!"
}
}
g = new Greet('world') // create object
g.salute() // Output "Hello World!"
Notice the omission of semicolons? Groovy was designed to be less wordy and easier to type, and this is one example of it. String manipulation is also intended to be easier than with Java, as shown in the above example.
The example below illustrates how you can use Groovy with Java to make life even easier (again, taken from Groovy’s site):
import org.apache.commons.lang.WordUtils
class Greeter extends Greet {
Greeter(who) {
name = WordUtils.capitalize(who)
}
}
new Greeter('world').salute()
It wasn’t too long ago that I read blogs, articles, and even whole books on how Ruby was going to replace Java. While these publications raised very good points about some of the shortcomings of Java, I see a different trend occurring. Instead of dynamic languages like Ruby and Python replacing Java, I continue to see more cases where they are used with Java to build on the strengths both sides have to offer. Groovy is a good example of that, along with Java SE 6, which has built-in support for scripting (JSR-223), and even ships with the Rhino JavaScript engine.
Tell me if you’ve seen the benefits of integrating dynamic languages with Java, or have instead chosen one side over the other. Email me at eric@ericbruno.com
-EJB
Posted by Eric Bruno at 12:56 PM Permalink
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January 03, 2007
What’s So Great About Harmony?
What exactly are the goals of Apache's Harmony project?
On Apache’s site, there is a goal for the Harmony stated as:
"The aim of the project is to produce a large and healthy community of those interested in runtime platforms tasked with creation of:
- A compatible, independent implementation of the Java SE 5 JDK under the Apache License v2
- A community-developed modular runtime (VM and class library) architecture."
But is this one goal enough to make it compelling to use it? First of all, it will be out of date when it first launches, as Java has moved on past version 1.5. Also, with Java moving to GPL, is there really a need for another open-source version of Java? In my opinion, the answer is no.
Why? Because it splinters the community, which is something Microsoft attempted to do back in 1997 until Sun litigated. I feel it’s better to have the entire community build and deploy Java software on a standard VM. Having multiple implementations of Java 1.5 (and Java 1.6 eventually, and so on) will be confusing, and may lead to inconsistencies in application behavior.
The danger is that Java will be reduced to nothing more than a specification that is open to implementation by multiple vendors as they see fit. This very same problem has plagued CORBA from the start, and has caused application developers great pains as their components might work with some ORBs, and not others.
Because Sun’s Java is open to the community to contribute code, and especially since it is moving to GPL, perhaps it’s best if the entire community got behind one Java platform. Even if you don’t like Sun Microsystems, the move to GPL removes Sun as the sole owner of Java. It truly belongs to the community. I suggest you feel empowered; download the source to the latest Java platform; and stay united as one community around one standard Java VM. Let me know if you agree.
-EJB
Posted by Eric Bruno at 04:07 PM Permalink
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