In Support of Oracle and Java | Hacker News Reader

In Support of Oracle and Java

jasonvictordartmouth.blogspot.com

2 pointsfogus6 comments

"But there is immense value in an open source-friendly yet commercially backed platform upon which to build our projects. Anybody functioning within the four walls of a company knows that, when it comes to big decisions, the executives tend to want to invest in a platform that isn't going anywhere -- and that means, backed by a big bad company."

Not going anywhere? So does that mean that Python or Perl because it isn't backed by a big company is going somewhere? That Linux would go away before Solaris?

If there is a company backing it, it will go away when they no longer find value in supporting it. If a community backs it, it will go away when the community no longer finds value in it.

I have never understood the security that people find in technologies backed by a single company.

For a platform backed by big bad company, that is not going anywhere, see what happened to Visual Basic (6).

Yeah, right. I'm sure that were great many decisions by many executives.

My knowledge of the history of VB is basically non-existent. So, what happened with VB6?

It was big, supported platform supported by big company. Until it was not. Overnight, you were told to rewrite all your sources to new, shiny language, also called VB.

Basically, VB1-VB6 were compatible. You made app in any of them, it required only small changes to build with never version, no big deal.

However, 2000 called and Microsoft came with new version, Visual Basic Net. It changed syntax, class libraries, everything. With the old VB, it had only name in common. It looked similar only on the surface (both are Basics, anyway). Sure, they fixed lot of warts, but broke many existing apps, that were in the maintenance mode for the time. If you relied on VB6 apps, and VB6 runtime had problem with new version of your OS, you just could not upgrade without expensive rewrite.

The message is: just because the language or platform is supported by big company, does not mean, that it is safe for your business to build your apps on it. On the other hand, ten years ago I took the risk to build an app in Python. At the time, it was little, unknown language (especially in the MS world). The app still works reliably today and is buildable (only .pycs were deployed) by modern Python.

Traditionally, it's been about support from the "creator" of the tech, but also blame and compensation when things go wrong.

In reality, most end-user corp's have an in-house support team of a size and skill that's comparable to their level of reliance on the systems. And when you try to lay blame or get compensation from the "creator", they always have excuses to avoid paying for it.

"Every wonder why "Droid Does"? Because Android code is written in Java, the most popular and most commonly taught programming language in the world. That means every coder and his grandmother can write code for an Android phone, since they already know the language, and they can likely write the majority of their app without even getting the Android developer tools (everything except the graphical components)."

So then wouldn't we expect to find very little code written for iPhone? At the time the iPhone SDK launched, pretty much the only people using Objective-C and Cocoa were Mac programmers. The fast majority of people who went on the produce iPhone apps had to start by learning a new language--one very different from any language they were likely to already know.

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