🚀 go-pugleaf

"Sam Becker" <sb@beckerpages.com> wrote in message
news:vs827.119572$mG4.59068544@news1.mntp1.il.home.com...
> Hello,
>
> I have some open-ended java questions, and I would really appreciate an
> answer to any or all of them.
>
> First of all, why is everyone excited about using JDK 1.3, in applets. It
> would appear that no web browser supports it or has any plans on
supporting
> it. Also, I am seeing less and less java applets on web pages. The trend
is
> XML, javascript, ASP, server-sided programming. I'm 600 pages into my java
> book (Beginning Java 2 JDK 1.3 Edition), and I am wondering what I'm
doing.
> I am very hard pressed to find a good application for a java applet these
> days.
>
> Don't get me wrong, I love the language. I think java's foundation on
> object-oriented programming is awesome. I'm having much more fun with java
> then I did with C++. But I cannot seem find its usefulness. It seems that
I
> can't use anything I'm learning towards applets, and I still have no idea
> what the point would be in developing a Java application. No one has the
> hardware to run them efficiently, and pretty much everything done in java
> can be made into native code for the actual program.
>
> Can someone please persuade me that Java is a great thing to be learning
and
> that I should finish my 1200 page book. Thanks for reading this far.

The trend is, as you mentionned, in server-sided programming. So what
language do you use for this? Some of the choices are:

    - COBOL, RPG, proprietary L4G... The old generation is not always up to
the web revolution and show limitations for XML/HTML generation.
    - Script languages ASP, PHP, perl... Good, especially for fast
development. But interpreted, so may be slow for heavy-duty complex jobs.
    - Java: JSP/servlet for HTML/XML generation, J2EE/JavaBeans for complex
transactions. Good and inexpensive developement tools exist.

See also some of the problems faced by huge companies: For example, IBM
struggles since ages with 4 mostly incompatible family of OS's (OS/2, AIX,
OS/400, OS/390) and supports 2 others (NT, Linux). Why do you think IBM
spend all that money on Java development? If you think IBM is special, just
imagine what you find in some IT departements after several merges and
acquisitions...

And if you do not think that replacing COBOL is not a big enough market,
think about those:

    - J2ME platform for embedded applications. May be you think you do not
need intelligent phones or hand held computers, but I do not think you will
go without credit cards, and in less than two years, most credit cards will
be Smart Cards, some of them (most of them?) with JavaCard technology to run
Java applications.

    - One of the next trend in Web application is P2P (peer to peer), where
(among other things) applications would want to execute agents/programs into
another system. For security reason, the other server will not want to
execute blindly such programs. The JVM sandbox is a good way to provide
security for the execution of unknown applications and is faster that
scripts. And it is platform independant.

If you have any doubt, look at the Microsoft .NET platform. Looks a lot to
me like a MS version of the Java platform.

--
Fr�d�ric Lachasse (ECP 86)
flachasse@qwest.net