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newsmaker James Gosling's mantra to Java developers has stayed the same since he created the programming language a decade ago--write an application once and port it across multiple platforms with no worries.
Since its inception in March 1995, Java has grown to become a tool that some developers swear by, using it to run a gamut of devices ranging from mobile phones to financial systems.
The Java economy comprises 4.5 million developers, one billion Java cards, 700 million PCs shipped with Java, and 708 million Java-powered phones. The power and ubiquity of Java remains unchallenged, even with the rising popularity of scripting languages such as PHP, which Gosling describes as a "narrow solution".
Speaking on the sidelines of a Sun Microsystems developer conference in Bangkok last month, Gosling spoke to ZDNet Asia on the future of Java, where it stands among competitors and its open-source prospects.
Q: Most people take the portability of Java for granted. Will that cause the language to be overshadowed by the next big thing?
A: Well, there better be something that's better than Java some day, otherwise it says something about the evolution of the human species. If there's never going to be a better programming language then we're probably dead. But it feels like Java still has a long way to go before it runs out of steam.
| So far, [Flash] hasn't had a huge impact on Java. |
It's interesting how people involved in enterprise software take Java as an assumed thing. Java is sort of like oxygen in the air--nobody thinks about the oxygen when they're breathing. Although there are special purpose programming in new domains, Java seems to be living pretty long.
What is one thing that you want Java to fix in future?
When I look at systems like the audio visual set-up in my house, a lot of those are completely brain-dead. They are mostly a combination of different standards and software--brought about by a movie and recording industry that's goofy.
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Someday that will get fixed.
What do you think of Macromedia wanting a slice of the Java mobile market?
Macromedia's Flash format is good for doing flashy graphics, but not for sophisticated applications. From what I see, Flash takes quite a beefy machine to run, because it's very graphic intensive. So far, it hasn't had a huge impact on Java.
But Java isn't as good as SWF (ShockWave Flash) in snazzy graphics used in mobile games, is it?
There are various libraries that you can use to do all that [graphical] rendering in Java. It's more a matter of [programming] tools that aren't centered on creating those graphics. A lot of Java tools are more about doing business logic and interacting with databases.
But these days, the interesting games on cellphones are in 3D. It's amazing how many cellphones today have 3D accelerators. There are Java standards that let you do 3D in cellphones, but Flash just doesn't let you do that at all.
Netscape's co-founder Marc Andreessen predicted that PHP's simplicity would make it more popular than Java as a development platform for Web applications. What are your thoughts on this, and how can you make Java simpler?
PHP is pretty simple if you do small Web applications, and that's fine. But it doesn't scale up well, such as [developing for] huge financial systems.
I actually think they are looking at the problem backwards. PHP makes generating HTML pages easier, and that's such a small slice of the computing universe. You are boxed into that one piece--it doesn't interact very well with any part of the universe. It's a really narrow solution.
I think the way to make Web site development easy is with the tools. If you want to make a really easy Web site, try Java Studio Creator 2 which gives you a great graphical
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