Why Are There No 'Killer' Java Apps ?

  • Thread starter Thread starter The Ruling Class
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The Ruling Class

With all the books and code written in Java, why are there no /killer/
applications?

Can you name one Java application that is a must have?

I run Suse 9.0 -- I don't see a single Java application on my OS.

I can't think of a Java application that I would actually want or need?

The Java Community just seems like a big, huge self-congratulatory group of
back slappers.
 
How about:

- Tomcat
- JBoss
- JRun
- Eclipse IDE
- Thousands of web sites running J2EE architecture

Of those, Eclipse is the only desktop application. IMHO, Java's strengths
are on the server side. .NET has some catching up to do when it comes to
enterprise services.

Regards,
Kent
 
Hi Bailo, a.k.a. The Ruling Class,

You asked,
" Can you name one Java application that is a must have ? "

You make a great point,
The only Java app that I recall using was
the installation routine for my Encyclopedia Britannica.
And that really sucked ...
I had to edit it just to stop it from crashing.

Once installed, the Britannica code was running C++,
I know that because of the many error messages
that popped up showing C++ code.
The code truly sucked,
It wouldn't scale to my screen or resolution.
It was barely readable.
It had no context menus.
The Mac uses a single mouse button by default,
you could tell it was designed to run on a Mac,
but not on a PC.

Are there any good cross platform apps ?
I truly love Moz Firebird, but Gimp's UI is lame, I say.

Fortunately, thanks to the telephone assistance program
that that came with my food stamps and the bad economy,
I could trash the Britannica code
and replace it with Google.
Google is at least a million times better, at least.
( I went on-line at the start of 2003 )

Speaking of welfare, Three renters in my rooming house
have outstanding warrants.
One Renter hasn't paid any rent since
the start of this year
( lots of bounced checks, he's hiding, but his room
is waiting for a warrant to go through ).
One guy is planning to turn himself in
and do a few years time.

Another guy was bragging to me about getting
paid 8 dollars per hour painting someone's house.
He thought that was fantastic considering
that he has a felony and all.
... Until another housemate piped in to say
that he had 19 felonies
( and he's only in his late twenties ! )
and that he gets between 15 and 18 dollars per hour
to paint houses.
 
Jeff said:
Hi Bailo, a.k.a. The Ruling Class,
Click to expand...

First of all -- thank you for posting the most discontinous train of thought
in the history of Usenet. The beginning and end of this essay are true
dipoles of human reasoning and experience.

But let me address your points individually:
You asked,
" Can you name one Java application that is a must have ? "

You make a great point,
The only Java app that I recall using was
the installation routine for my Encyclopedia Britannica.
And that really sucked ...
I had to edit it just to stop it from crashing.
Click to expand...

See -- where is all this java code? WHERE IS IT? Why are all these people
reading these books? So they can write cell phone games that no one will
ever play -- or create browsers for a 1" x 1.5" screen -- which people will
use maybe once before throwing their cell/browser off the side of the
Bremerton ferry into the Puget Sound ?
Once installed, the Britannica code was running C++,
I know that because of the many error messages
that popped up showing C++ code.
The code truly sucked,
It wouldn't scale to my screen or resolution.
It was barely readable.
It had no context menus.
The Mac uses a single mouse button by default,
you could tell it was designed to run on a Mac,
but not on a PC.
Click to expand...

My guess is that E.B. will go out of business in a few years. A compendium
of knowledge is no match for the web.
Are there any good cross platform apps ?
I truly love Moz Firebird, but Gimp's UI is lame, I say.
Click to expand...

I am enjoying staying inside of the Suse/KDE environment. I really
appreciate orthogonality when it comes to the desktop environment. Using
the K's: Knode, Kmail, Konqueror is just so consistent in look and usage
that I now judge my external environment -- the Internet -- in terms of
it's being able to be KDE compatible.
Fortunately, thanks to the telephone assistance program
that that came with my food stamps and the bad economy,
I could trash the Britannica code
and replace it with Google.
Google is at least a million times better, at least.
( I went on-line at the start of 2003 )
Click to expand...

Are you saying that they give you $$$ to have a phone so that you can have
an Internet connection so that you can browse Google. And why not? You
know, the single most important thing for the poor after food, shelter and
clothing -- would be Internet access. Any schoolchild with drive can teach
himself anything from Kindergarten to college level with a web connection.
An Internet connection is worth 12 Head Start programs.
Speaking of welfare, Three renters in my rooming house
have outstanding warrants.
One Renter hasn't paid any rent since
the start of this year
Click to expand...

How come? Doesn't your landlord care?

Or is it run by some absentee holding company in the Cayman Islands?
( lots of bounced checks, he's hiding, but his room
is waiting for a warrant to go through ).
One guy is planning to turn himself in
and do a few years time.
Click to expand...

Wow...classy place. Though probably not much different from my digs on
East Hill. This place is gang bangers central. Probably operates the
headquarters of the Puget Sound crack and prostitution trade.
Another guy was bragging to me about getting
paid 8 dollars per hour painting someone's house.
Click to expand...

It's hard to hold those kind of conversations. Since both you and I know
better. I mean what do you do: tell him that there are people sitting on
their asses in corporations who make $80 or $800 dollars an hour? Or just
let them live in their dream world?
He thought that was fantastic considering
that he has a felony and all.
... Until another housemate piped in to say
that he had 19 felonies
( and he's only in his late twenties ! )
Click to expand...

Did you feel ashamed. Like did you think: I have no felonies and then try
to make up really /bad/ stuff that you did as a nine-year-old.
and that he gets between 15 and 18 dollars per hour
to paint houses.
Click to expand...

So are you saying that the more felonies, the higher the hourly rate? Is it
some type of secret arrangement the government has made with crooks? The
more dangerous the criminal, the greater the need to keep them from crime
and hence a higher salary?
 
Jeff Relf wrote:

I love hand-helds ... But the OS'es and scripts
that they have come and go like the wind.
Linux and GCC on a hand-held would be a welcome change.
I'd love to see that.
Click to expand...

It's not so much the OSes and scripts, but the handhelds themselves.

It's like for the past 10 years, because the technology to miniaturize
computers and turn them into tablet PCs and watch PCs and Cell Phone PDAs
became available, the presumption was that people would want to carry a GUI
around with them.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The classic desktop, on a desk with the user sitting at a chair, has proven
to be the ideal environment. Users would rather have the *public pay
phone* approach rather than the walkie-talkie approach. That is, they want
highly available desktops -- like in libraries and public areas. They
don't want to lug expensive electronics around with them or use postage
stamp size screens.
I've never tried Konqueror,
but I know that I loath your KNode.
KNode doesn't just spit out broken links,
Click to expand...

They don't appear broken -- to another KNode user.

See -- it's that orthagonality thing again...
Then KNode sets up random Follow-up-to's
Click to expand...

I think it just sets the follow up based on the newsgroup in which I make my
reply.
including some Very cute girls that he ****s.
( One girl stole 250 dollars from him,
I think she drugged him too ... Date rape ? )
Click to expand...

That sounds more like pay for play to me.
It wasn't too many years ago that Lina was
a fresh immigrant from Malaysia cleaning houses.
Click to expand...

I'm surprised. Usually those types are very harsh when it comes to money
because they know how hard it is to earn a buck. On the other hand, if
you're going to hit someone up for rent, a convicted felon ( or rather an
unconvicted/ felon in this case ) would not be my first choice...
It's a very fine service, it's totally free,
and I know lots of people that use it.
But the 50 bucks that I pay every 6 moths
allows me to connect to something other than port 80,
e.g. 119. That's their premium service, NCPlus.NET .
Click to expand...

I'm surprised you don't have a UW dial in account with net access since you
are somewhat of a student there aren't you?
 
Matt Parker wrote:

http://www.mpcontracting.co.uk/images/desktop2.png

This shows LimeWire up and running happily, took me about 2 minutes to
install it. Shows your incomptetence. Also show NetBeans and Poseidon.
Click to expand...

I followed your advice and here's LW running on my machine:

http://home.earthlink.net/~jabailo/lw.png

LimeWire has one of the best installers for Linux I have ever seen.

It actually ASKS me where I want it to be installed ( UnrealTournament 2004
is like that too ).

LimeWire is a great OpenSource application.

I think their search technology is superior to Google and is the real future
of search ( p2p ).
 
The Ruling Class said:
The Java Community just seems like a big, huge self-congratulatory group of
back slappers.
Click to expand...

yep, i just LOVE the fact java is everywhere! java on the desktop
definitely suffers (although in another post i point out that it seems
like it will be expriencing a rennaisance due to increasing diversity
in the desktop area), but java is everywhere else.

in fact, the java platform right now is probably the number one app
development client in the world, surpassing windows, since it is in
several hundred million cellphones, several hundred million smartcards
and embedded devices, in millions of desktops, and running in the
great majority of large enterprise servers, even IBM mainframes.
several nations in europe and asia have standardized and distributed
hundreds of millions of javacards to their citizens, which are used as
a health info cards and id cards...the usa army itself is distributing
tens of thousands of javacards to its personnel as a secure method of
id.

do you use a cellphone? then your SIM card is probably running Java,
and the phone itself may be running java apps. Do you watch cable?
Java is coming to your legacy cable boxes via time warner, cablevision
and all the other biggies in a year or so. do you buy stuff online?
eBay's backend is completely Java, and so are most of the very large
enterprises on the web.

As examples of enterprise use, just looking at 2 J2EE app servers:

BEA WEblogic's J2EE app server is used by
30,000 customers worldwide, while IBM Websphere provides integration
to:

65% of the Fortune 500 companies
80% of the top US healthcare companies
75% of commercial banks worldwide
90% of the top commercial banks in the US
67% of the world's largest banks use IBM messaging servers
15 of the top Wall Street brokerage firms
7 of the 8 largest US telecommunications companies

The open source world is heavily using Java. In fact, java is the most
used language in sourceforge.net! apache is a strong promoter of Java
in its jakarta projects, and is even coming out with its own J2EE app
server! of course, JBOSS has been there for awhile now. Plus,

AS to the desktop, here's my take on it:
http://groups.google.com/[email protected]
 
The Ruling Class said:
The Java Community just seems like a big, huge self-congratulatory group of
back slappers.
Click to expand...

i am always astounded by how narrow people's focus are....one of the
greatest paradigm shifts in computing is happening right before their
eyes, and they keep focusing on the desktop ;-)

i must admit though, it would help if java had become stronger in the
desktop (which for a long time was a very antagonistic windows
monoculture), but the increasing diversity in this space means it is
only a
matter of time before it becomes very amenable to java as well....

in the end, diversity almost always increases java usage, and with
linux making some inroads in the desktop enterprise space (via sun's
java desktop and perhaps others), and macs embracing java as well,
then it just becomes a matter of time.

let the clueless close their eyes...i'm a java developer and linux/mac
os x/windows user, proud of it, and i'm into making money and coding
for the
largest number of possible devices. and the money, and cool projects,
for a long while will generally be in java. plus, i'm not on the
microsoft treadmill, doomed to be forced into the next big thing every
half decade or so - i KNOW i'll be using the same platform to get my
work done 5, 10, 15 years from today!

it's so GOOOD to be alive at this time! heheheh....
 
it would help if java had become stronger in the
deskto
Click to expand...

You can develop on the desktop and port easily to smaller devices.

you can create variants of the same app where the work is split
between server and client differently, but the same code.

Here is a way to reuse work on the tiniest to the largest machines.

We got to run the Integer Spreadsheet (a multithread spreadsheet) on a
machine with 256 cpus. No coding changes needed from my old 256 MHz
pentium.
 
Roedy said:
On 8 May 2004 20:07:31 -0700, (e-mail address removed) (asj) wrote or quoted


You can develop on the desktop and port easily to smaller devices.

you can create variants of the same app where the work is split
between server and client differently, but the same code.

Here is a way to reuse work on the tiniest to the largest machines.

We got to run the Integer Spreadsheet (a multithread spreadsheet) on a
machine with 256 cpus. No coding changes needed from my old 256 MHz
pentium.
Click to expand...

Right. Just hope and pray that the Java runtime environment doesn't
have any hidden doozies because your "portable" java code application
could be fried.

Any which way you slice it, Java is a "scripting" language that runs
in its own virtual machine, written in C/C++. It is no different conceptually
from Perl, or any other scripting language, with bindings to the OS and
GUI extensions.

Although it's nice to have a portable script as powerful as Java, it is not
a substitute for C/C++.

Some will argue, "gjc will compile and link Java into native machine code!"
If you compile and link Java with gjc, *it is no longer Java*.
 
Roedy said:
On 8 May 2004 20:07:31 -0700, (e-mail address removed) (asj) wrote or quoted


You can develop on the desktop and port easily to smaller devices.

you can create variants of the same app where the work is split
between server and client differently, but the same code.

Here is a way to reuse work on the tiniest to the largest machines.

We got to run the Integer Spreadsheet (a multithread spreadsheet) on a
machine with 256 cpus. No coding changes needed from my old 256 MHz
pentium.
Click to expand...

Right. Just hope and pray that the Java runtime environment doesn't
have any hidden doozies because your "portable" java code application
could be fried.

Any which way you slice it, Java is a "scripting" language that runs
in its own virtual machine, written in C/C++. It is no different conceptually
from Perl, or any other scripting language, with bindings to the OS and
GUI extensions.

Although it's nice to have a portable script as powerful as Java, it is not
a substitute for C/C++.

Some will argue, "gjc will compile and link Java into native machine code!"
If you compile and link Java with gjc, *it is no longer Java*.
 
Roedy said:
Roedy said:
On 8 May 2004 20:07:31 -0700, (e-mail address removed) (asj) wrote or quoted
Click to expand...
[snip]
Any which way you slice it, Java is a "scripting" language that runs
in its own virtual machine,
Click to expand...

so you would include statically typed languages with a distinct compilation
step and a persistent binary form "scripting languages"? that seems to be a
rather idiosyncratic use of the term.

[snip]
Some will argue, "gjc will compile and link Java into native machine code!"
If you compile and link Java with gjc, *it is no longer Java*.
Click to expand...

would you say that c++, compiled and linked with, say, gcc, is still c++? if
not, i am probably missing the point you are trying to make here.

-- j
 
Is it stronger than traditional Windows? No pun intended - anybody knows
professional comparison of both GUIs - functionality, user-friendliness,
development support?
Generally I am interested to find out what is now best industrial GUI
platform - please no flame / hype!

Rgds
Alex
 
The Ruling Class said:
The Java Community just seems like a big, huge self-congratulatory group of
back slappers.
Click to expand...


Well, I guess them open source types (you know, like apache, which is
crushing IIs and everyone else on the web server front) are a bunch of
backslapping self-congratulatory nincompoops too, since three open
source J2EE app servers are making headway and headlines. kinda puts a
low spin on mono, eh, with its patent problems and potential problems
getting into major distros?

http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/0511opensourc.html

----------------------------------------

Enterprises shopping for a Java application server will soon have more
reasons to look at open source software, with no less than three open
source projects expected to be certified compatible with Sun's
enterprise Java standard by year-end.

Geronimo, a project of the Apache Software Foundation, and Jonas,
overseen by Europe's ObjectWeb consortium, both announced recently
that they have begun testing their products against Sun's Java 2,
Enterprise Edition (J2EE) 1.4 test suites. Geronimo said it hopes to
be certified as J2EE-compliant by August, while Jonas is aiming for
the second half of the year.

JBoss, whose application server is already widely used, is being cagey
about when it expects to complete Sun's compatibility tests, but the
company is likely to announce certification as early as next month,
according to John Rymer, a vice president and industry analyst with
Forrester Research
 
Well, I guess them open source types (you know, like apache, which is
crushing IIs and everyone else on the web server front) are a bunch of
backslapping self-congratulatory nincompoops too, since three open
source J2EE app servers are making headway and headlines. kinda puts a
low spin on mono, eh, with its patent problems and potential problems
getting into major distros?
Click to expand...

It already is in major distos. It is going to ship with SuSE 9.1. It
is part of the Gentoo portage collection. You get on RedHad with that
Red carpet thingy. Debian - apt.
 
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