the benefits of Java?

/|/)etal)-|ead

could someone please explain to me what the hell java is actually used for in real life? Ok, it's portable and there's the communications stuff and dodgy GUI stuff, but surely it's waaay too slow for most applications? THX

Vorrtexx

used in mobile phones for games I think.

running applications online.

machine independent.

marauder

free

Hobbes

Originally posted by /|/)etal)-|ead
but surely it's waaay too slow for most applications? THX

Nope it's pretty fast if you have a more up to date JDK. The 1.1 JDK is years old.

Quite a few programs out now written in Java, although it has really taken off on the server side end of things.

bonkey

Originally posted by /|/)etal)-|ead
could someone please explain to me what the hell java is actually used for in real life? Ok, it's portable and there's the communications stuff and dodgy GUI stuff, but surely it's waaay too slow for most applications? THX

Its used for virtually everything which other programming languages are used for.

As for its performance...sure, you'll never write a blayingly/fast 3d game with it, but its performance in non-graphical areas aint all that bad.

Right now, I'm using it to write a system which takes records from two DBs, compares the output, and generates a set of differences which I can then use to resynhc the tables.

Performance wise, this can compare about 10,000 rows per second. The bottleneck is the network...it cant fetch or write the data fast enough.

jc

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

marauder

There is free and then there is GPL free

Most of the java.sun.com products and API's are free to download and use for commercial programming

yossarin

..of which Java is the current best one:

It's much more object-oriented than C++ allows for

this allows for easier development and for advances to be made in programming theory: design patterns, aspects, etc. have grown from the original OO idea.

Java also offers security of running, by having a VM rather than the OS allocating memory, etc.

Whats interesting for me about the Java Language is that it follows on in a pattern of moving further and further away from hardware, enabling more-generic use at the expense of hardware optimisation.
Is the eventual end of this not having different languages for different layers on an OS 'stack' ?


I'd agree about the free Vs GLP free argument though - one possibility for C# and the .net enviroment is the loss of programming freedom to M$.

flyz

Java is cross platform.

C/C++ isn't.
You can compile your java app on any platform and run it on any other operating system, regardless of the architecture (i.e. big endian/little endian).

Well that's the reason why I likes it anyway

/|/)etal)-|ead

So it's mainly for web stuff like applets with the increased security and stuff? Are C# and .NET still much faster than java? Is portability that important? surely by fixing up the differences in memory allocated to variables etc. and getting a program many times faster that can cope with much more data is worth it?!? Thanks for all the info by the way

bonkey

Originally posted by /|/)etal)-|ead
So it's mainly for web stuff like applets with the increased security and stuff?

OK, you havent read any of the replies here, have you?

Are C# and .NET still much faster than java? Is portability that important? surely by fixing up the differences in memory allocated to variables etc. and getting a program many times faster that can cope with much more data is worth it?!?

Sniff, sniff. Is that a troll I smell. Or could it be a Microsoft Marketing weenie?

jc

Hobbes

Yea somewhat trollish as .NET is different to java. I suppose if you were to compare the two it would be .NET vs J2EE?

So it's mainly for web stuff like applets with the increased security and stuff?

No it's used in a lot of things, but it dominates currently on the server end. Applets would not be as used as much as servlets. Applets in Web browsing even less so.

Are C# and .NET still much faster than java?

Still? What are you talking about?

Is portability that important?

Yes.

surely by fixing up the differences in memory allocated to variables etc. and getting a program many times faster that can cope with much more data is worth it?!?

Java already does this for you?

/|/)etal)-|ead

heheh ok, thanks for the added info. Sorry if i'm not that knowledgeable about all this ****. I guess at least it isn't controlled by M$, I'm not going near C# cos its also much slower than C++ and they'll probably drop it in a few months and replace it with C.XP PLUS! or something...

GUI

java is not portable.
write a cross-platform app in java..
and u have hundreds of portability issues to comprehend.

Hence the reason of different releases of programs
for windows..
linux
and solaris.

i think its failed in its cross-platform bit..

cross-platform works for ****ty applets but
not robust commercial aspects..

i await the response :-)
im sure they will be heated!

DiscoStu

i think someones been using visual j++

Hobbes

>java is not portable.

What are you using to write the application? Visual J++ isn't that portable as they use their own libraries, but I've written loads of stuff which works on Linux/Windows both with no issues whatsoever.

Also I've seen stuff work from lowest up. For example I had a nice spinning ball applet on my Sharp PDA (Linux for PDA's, J2ME) which ran on a compaq PDA (J2ME) and also run on linux and windows (J2).

All with no changes whatsoever.

Gavin

Java is portable. I've never written any code in java that was platform specific.

Having said that, C is also extremely portable.

Have a read of http://www.compapp.dcu.ie/~renaat/projects/cvjava.html for a good comparision of java to c++.

Java is good for some things. C++ is good for others, and C is yet again good for others You use the language appropriate to the problem domain.

Gav

/|/)etal)-|ead

Verb, just want to say thanks very much for that link, I'm learning Java in college, and i'm also learning C++ on my own for stuff like openGL and DirectX (games junkie ), and i'm always getting confused by the differences like those mentioned, it's very helpful, thx

GUI

i use netbeans actually :-)

Evil Phil

Originally posted by GUI_XP
java is not portable.
write a cross-platform app in java..
and u have hundreds of portability issues to comprehend.

Hence the reason of different releases of programs
for windows..
linux
and solaris.

i think its failed in its cross-platform bit..

Is this not more of a install issue? I´ve written stuff that runs fine on both windows and linux.

bonkey

Originally posted by GUI_XP
java is not portable.
write a cross-platform app in java..
and u have hundreds of portability issues to comprehend.

Err, like what?

I am currently writing a J2EE-backed application in Java.
We developed on Windows. When some of our developers decided they preferred working under Linux, they decided to develop *and run* the application under Linux.

It worked first time, and nothing we have done to date has caused platform-specific issues. This is a project with > 450 class files, taking up in excess of 2.5MB of source code.

The only platform-specific issue is how to install/run the application on different platforms. This is where things like WebStart or InstallAnywhere come into play, allowing you a single method of access, distribution, etc.

Java is cross-platform. Yes, you can use non-platform-specific stuff, but this either involves the developer not knowing what they are doing and using something they havent researched properly, or simply making a conscious decision to become non-platform-independant. Neither situation is due to a flaw in java.

jc