Sun Says Java Source Already Available

mjdroner writes "In an InfoWorld article, Java CTO James Gosling says that source code for Java has been available for 10 years. Gosling claims Java is close to an open source model, though discounts Sun joining the Eclipse Foundation. He goes on to say that Eclipse's endorsement of the standard widget toolkit destroyed interoperability, saying it's based on the windows API, making it problematic to run on other platforms."

Destroyed Interoperabilty?

[null etc.]

Moses, come down from the mountain, please.

Eclipse has shown that the market can indeed rally around Java optimized for Windows. Prior to SWT, remember running Together on cutting edge hardware, and the windows would still take 30 seconds to refresh? No one would tolerate the idea of running Java on Windows for Java's sake, when native apps absolutely destroyed Java apps in UI speed comparisons.

It's time for the theoretical niceties of interoperability to meet the practical demands of customer acceptance within the Windows market.

Re:Swing

[lokedhs]

It's improved a lot in every release, SWT or not. Today it's pretty damn good on Windows. The situation is worse on Unix though, I can agree with that. On the other hand, SWT sucks on anything but Windows anyway.

Re:It's available?

[magicjava]

You can get the native c code for the vm and such from here: http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/scsl/README-SCSL.ht ml [sun.com]

Re:Shills polluting the conversation?

[nikster]

This is pretty childish, but here it goes. SWT is what Swing should have been, only Sun didn't invent it first. Sun went the wrong way when they chose "pluggable look and feel" over "looks native on every platform" and they still don't get it.

You might think that a pluggable look and feel (PLAF) is more general - true. But in reality, in real-life apps, you don't want to shock users with your "different but good-looking" GUI. Instead, you want to look exactly the same as all other apps on that OS. In the real world, the PLAF makes the Swing code so complex as to be almost unusable / unfixable, costs an insane amount of engineering resources which explains why it performs well only on Windows, and remains largely unused. The thing which it is used for most often, namely to look like a native GUI, it does a pretty bad job at. Each new version of the Windows GUI demands a new Java GUI to keep pace.

Had Sun spent all half the engineering time it spent on Swing on SWT instead, it would be perfect now. I just hope they include it as an official GUI framework in one of the next releases.

Re:Yes, it is available...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been wondering about the whole "OMG SUN MUST OPEN JAVA"-farce every fucking time it occurs on this shitfest.

It's about time someone invents a device to punch people in the face via TCP/IP and this device is made obligatory by law.

Re:It's available?

[carlos92]

src.zip doesn't have the sources to the sun.* packages, which contain classes that are not part of the API.

Re:Destroyed Interoperabilty?

[Jason Earl]

Yes, and the only people that are even slightly interested in using Java to create desktop applications are A) those people that are creating Java-related development tools, and B) those folks working on alternative (ie. Linux) desktop applications. However, thanks to Sun's ridiculous Java licensing Mono gets more actual use in the creation of desktop applications than Java does. SWT helps, to some extent, as it is possible today to create SWT applications that run on gcj.

Sun is eventually going to come to the realization that it needs the Free Software community if it is going to survive. These days you would basically have to be some sort of a zealot to create a desktop application in Java. The Free Software community has the market cornered on zealots, and they all think that Java is evil.

Re:Destroyed Interoperabilty?

[Com2Kid]

Although it's possible you have a point, I cannot believe you cite Eclipse as an example - that pos halts and leaves you looking at a blank menu bar more times than I care to count.

Never had that problem with Eclipse, though Netbeans leaves me staring at my monitor waiting for something to happen often enough.

See, this is the problem with Java's "cross-platform compatibility" spiel.

Even on the same platform, an application may or may not work properly.

And speaking of Sun's dedication to client side apps, lets look at the change log just for 1.5.0_06:

• 6257260 java classes_2d Memory leak on closing JFrame
• 6182812 java classes_io FileOutputStream constructor throws FileNotFoundException with long file names
• 5092063 java classes_net Extremely slow socket creation using new Socket("ip-address", port)
• 4263904 java classes_swing JTextPane: Paragraphs with Justified Attributes Appear Centered
• 6256473 java_plugin iexplorer To download an applet does not finish for 10 minutes with proxy server and IIS

And ad nauseum.

Don't get me wrong, I like Swing and Java in general. (Some of the bugs I listed above are not Swing specific, but they are still /stupid/). Swing is a wonderful API to create GUIs in. Very easy to use for the programmer.

Woe betide the poor user. Yet, is not the very purpose of client software to serve the end user?

I am sitting here on a machine with 1GB of RAM and Netbeans 5 is all but unusable. In fairness, previous versions were not nearly so bad. Of course previous versions did not have nearly as many features and niceties either.

Quite frankly, I love Eclipse. Amongst three of the largest IDEs (Visual Studio, Netbeans, Eclipse) it was the first to have refactoring support (which everyone then went and copied from it!).

Ah, last week I used the final release version of VS 2005, and now I am stuck on Intellisense. (My reasoning is that Intellisense is needed since the MSDN search engine is so unusable!) Eclipse's auto-complete is a joke in comparison.

Oddly enough, KDevelop has a REALLY cool auto-complete that finishes off my variable names for me, and since I tend to use long self-descriptive variable names, this is very useful! Anybody know of an Eclipse plug-in that does the same? :)

No, Swing doesn't suck anymore

[^Z]

As an everyday user of Swing apps (and specifically jEdit) I assure you that under Java 5 Swing apps *do* look native enough. I have to strain my eye to find very slight differences. Note that many native win32 apps alter their look and feel uch more, "to stand out", probably. Opera on win32 looks less "native" than most Java apps, and newer MSO apps always keep going for some new and rather alien (though cool) look and feel.

Re:Shills polluting the conversation?

[ArtDent]

So is Skerrett being disengenous when he says that and, if he is, is he just getting back at Gosling for over simplifying?

Actually, I think he was just being polite. "I don't believe James really understands how Eclipse works" is a whole lot nicer than "James is lying through his teeth," which is what I would say.

Re:Swing

[darkpurpleblob]

Using themes doesn't work that great with Swing either (Not Swing themes but Gnome, KDE, Windows global themes). Swing apps will stick out like a sore thumb.

Indeed. Swing's file open dialog is another example. Sun have attempted to make it look like the native Windows file open dialog, but it doesn't provide all the usual Explorer functionality and totally ignores my places bar customisations. It's a backwards step in usability in my eyes.

Re:5.0: Java's Death Knell

[Anonymous Coward]

I call utter bull**** on the parent article.

The type erasure in Java 5 generics was an utterly elegant solution given the constraints involved -- and blows away C++ templates and the object code bloat that is all but intrinsic in their design.

Nothing, including Java is perfect, but Java as a language is still a lot better than C++ *or* C#. It is good balance of power, simplicity, and readability/maintainability.

Re:Swing

[Blakey Rat]

Also remember things like drag&drop, integrated spell-checker, support for text-to-speech code (the "speak text" command in the Edit menu), AppleScript responsiveness... those are all part of the "feel" of Mac OS, and Java doesn't do any of them.

Re:Destroyed Interoperabilty?

[angel'o'sphere]

Yes, and the only people that are even slightly interested in using Java to create desktop applications
Not true. I do all my applications in Java, regardless wether it is Desktop or Server, and all people I know, do the same.

are A) those people that are creating Java-related development tools, and B) those folks working on alternative (ie. Linux) desktop applications.
I work on Mac OS X, btw ... most of my friends on linux, however.

However, thanks to Sun's ridiculous Java licensing this is a /. myth or FUD. Java has nothing preventing any GPL fan from using it, except that Java itself is not GPL.

Mono gets more actual use in the creation of desktop applications than Java does. Sure, by VB programmers switching to a slightly better language. If one uses C# and Mono (instead of C# and .Net, at least, because of WinowsForms) it only shows how few he has learend about software so far in his life.

SWT helps, to some extent, as it is possible today to create SWT applications that run on gcj. Same for this statement, SWT is a clone of the Windows API, more or less. and ported into a Java (look and feel?) dress to Linux, Mac Os X, etc. Everyone who uses SWT in favour over Swing simply has no clue about programming and software development in general.

Sun is eventually going to come to the realization that it needs the Free Software community if it is going to survive. This is a myth and FUD. For what should Sun need the FSS movement? How should SUN make more money if Java was GPL? And bottom line they live from making money.

These days you would basically have to be some sort of a zealot to create a desktop application in Java. No, besides Qt there is no other mature framework (trans platform even) that any sane person would use to make Desktop apps in, well, besides using SWT ofc, but thats also Java.

o If you use C++, you can forget cross platform if you dont use Qt.
o If you use C# you either have Windows with .Net/Windowsforms or you have mono on Mac/Linux with GTK. So you are not cross platform. AFAIK there are no mono ports to AIX or Solaris. So why even consider C#?
If you want to be crossplatform you use Java or Python ... or some other niche language, probably anything that can use TK (from TCL, but does not use TCL itself)

The Free Software community has the market cornered on zealots, and they all think that Java is evil. Indeed. So it only prooves that most about success in the world has absolutely nothing to do with maturity but only with the talk about it (it, not its maturity).

angel'o'sphere

Re:5.0: Java's Death Knell

[Dyst Mingus]

Type erasure erases they correct type information of paramatized types and replaces it with its super. Call get class on the object it reports the wrong information. This means you can load any type with the same super or that super type into a collection or to a refrance from persistent data. No error until you try to access a method on the bad object. Type erasure produces incorrect run time information, breaks the rules of inhieretance, and destroys the type saftey of the language. The only arguments i have heard so far for it are "no language is perfect", "we need a solution that works with legacy code", and "its better than ". The first and third arguments, well... some real visionaries, huh? That second dog just don't hunt. Type erasure does not play well with legacy code. Imagine trying to find the line of code that crashed your program when your error is thrown in a completly different place. It was a bad move that cannot be taken back. I think time will show that developers will choose a more reliable and logical solution that behaves predictably.