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Comment by darklajid | Hacker News Reader

Given that Oracle now tries to make you install Ask malware (adware? Same thing..) with every "So you want to get security fixes, eh?" updates..

No, the title's totally fine. Oracle sucks balls and killed Java. I'm still having it installed (interested in Clojure, for example), but I actively make sure that people around me Do Not Use It.

Java as a platform on the desktop was killed by the company that is

a) unable to advance the language and platform, to make it 'state of the art' again (right now, it's ... old-fashioned and limited, if you're looking at competing platforms)

b) actively trying to get malware on your machine because .. why not, you're already installing stuff from those clever people, maybe another browser toolbar would be totally fine?

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The title is still ultra link-bait.

Both Java applets and Java desktop apps are completely irrelevant to Java on the server-side.

A case could be made that Java is also an amazing success in countless devices, from Java smartcards to smartphones / tablets (with, for example, use Java source code compiled to bytecode run on something looking very much like a JVM on Android devices).

Java is an amazing success and neither Java applets nor Java desktop have anything to do with it: on the contrary, these two Java technologies hardly did anything besides giving the Java brand bad reputation.

Both Java applets and Java desktop apps could disappear overnight and the millions (!) of Java devs out there would still have a job. Granted, they'd still need one Java desktop app: the IDE they're using to develop Java apps).

Note that I'm not saying that Oracle is playing nice when, apparently, they're using spammy techniques when you install desktop Java...

All I'm saying is:

"Java applets + Java desktop apps" != Java

Pretty sure Sun was doing Ask Toolbars with Java installs [1]. And Ask Toolbars are not malware, they're not even adware. They don't compromise your computer. The shady thing it does is change your default search engine to an Ask.com search result that has more, and less noticeable ads. That's a pretty shitty thing, not user friendly, but it's not "malware" and it's not "adware." I worked on the Ask Toolbar and there was no tracking information other than your general non-personally identifiable stats gathering like one would use on a website with Google Analytics.

[1] http://www.quora.com/Java-programming-language/Why-does-Java...

>I worked on the Ask Toolbar

That's a pretty shitty thing, not user friendly

Changing the default search engine in a user's browser when they did not consciously ask for it counts as malicious data corruption in my book. Can you even begin to imagine how much damage and confusion that causes for "old people"?

FWIW, the Ask.com toolbar is only installed on Windows. Installing Java is relatively painless on MacOS and Linux. Not that this makes me any happier about the situation.

There's also OpenJDK as an option, though for some reason there's no official Windows builds for it.

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