Re: OS X Java Deprecation & JVM Source Code
Re: OS X Java Deprecation & JVM Source Code
- Subject: Re: OS X Java Deprecation & JVM Source Code
- From: Ian Joyner <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 25 Oct 2010 22:52:56 +1100
Interesting take from Matt. A few things concern me.
1) He says "Executive quips always make headlines". Surely, what executives say should be based on what their technical people have told them and be well thought out. That is the mark of an agile environment where technical people are treated with respect. If technical directions are taken without the input of its technical people, that company is losing its way.
2) It is good that Apple stays true to its mission of producing computers for "the rest of us". The translation being "consumer focused". However, the rest of us used to be computer novices. This is no longer the case. It is coming back to a situation where people are knowledgeable in many computing techniques and programming. These are the new consumers. That is we are getting back to using computers for computing.
Yes, producing and supporting development environments is difficult. Apple probably has its time cut out just with Xcode, Objective-C, and Cocoa. If Apple just concentrates on this core technology, then it should make it easy for others to provide other development environments.
That is because development environments enable us to use computers for computing. A lot of universities love Apple equipment. Like Java, Ruby, and Python developers favour Macs. But if Apple ditches these, they should be provided by other parties (which Ruby and Python mainly are anyway).
I think of a previous university darling - Burroughs. Universities (and other schools) are important customers because they train the next generation of developers. Burroughs was used by many universities and universities produced a lot of software like WFL (Burroughs ALGOL-like and structured JCL), etc. But eventually Burroughs focused on their "customers" - corporations (Ray McDonald, CEO of Burroughs once famously refused to sell Edsger Djikstra 3 B5000s, not wanting to set up a support structure in Europe). Universities moved to Unix as more open development platforms, while Burroughs closed off somewhat, even though they still had superior architectures and OS. Burroughs lost Bob Barton and his ideas (although where they were left off still survive at Unisys), but luckily he passed a lot of it onto students like Alan Kay.
Thus I think it is good that Apple has been so focused as to bring successful products, platforms, and strategies to the market. But that focus could also kill it. Universities teach technologies like Java (Scala), Ruby, and Python. I'd like to get back to things like LISP and Smalltalk - languages and environments that are simple for beginners, yet have advanced features for later years. Apple should not ignore this, and if it can't do it itself, encourage others to do it. Although wasn't the best way to predict the future to invent it? Apple has been very successful in inventing the future, or at least promoting it (from Xerox) with Mac, and now iOS. So what's next? If you can't invent the future, at least be a part of it and don't get in its way - get out of the way... is that what Apple is doing?. That's maybe the open strategy. IBM and Microsoft tried to dominate by getting in the way of the future. It's not a nice strategy.
What about WO? Will that be continued to be developed by Apple? Or will it be opened up and maybe opened up to other languages?
Ian
On 24 Oct 2010, at 18:09, Pascal Robert wrote:
> And Matt Drance take :
>
> http://www.appleoutsider.com/2010/10/22/java
>
>> SJ Speaks:
>>
>> <http://www.flickr.com/photos/frasers/5104179782/>
>>
>> On 2010-10-22, at 7:29 AM, Kieran Kelleher wrote:
>>
>>> I am not advocating anything since I only develop one browser GUI for web-based apps myself. However I am stating an opinion that the platforms are diverging at a rate where "in my opinion" (and that is all it is) a cross-development GUI tool will have difficulty in being ideal and/or perfect on every platform. For example, are Apple's Human Interface guidelines identical to Microsoft's, Ubuntu and RHEL? Even at that, we have new form factors and input devices adding further divergence to interface interaction (iPad, touch-pad laptops etc.).
>>>
>>> Personally I only need server side java for web-based apps. Ideally I want my development tools to run on Mac because that is my platform of choice. As long as I have a WO-compatible JVM on OS X, and I can run my development tools on OS X, I will, but if the sky fell down tomorrow and I had to use Parallels and a Linux VM to run Eclipse and get my WO-dev job done, I would. Life goes on....
>>>
>>>
>>> On Oct 22, 2010, at 2:12 AM, Jean Pierre Malrieu wrote:
>>>
>>>> I cannot believe that a developper advocates doing three times (MacOS, Windows, Linux) the same boring UI job...
>>>>
>>>> Le 22 oct. 2010 à 04:37, email@hidden a écrit :
>>>>
>>>>> Cross-platform development GUIs, IMHO, can never offer true fidelity on any one platform. They will mostly achieve an inferior subset of functionality at best, and possibly only look good on the platform to which they have been biased from the start. This is especially true as the gap widens between advancing high-tech operating systems such as OS X and would-they-ever-give-up-and-go-home-with-their-junk operating systems such as Winblows.
>>>>
_______________________________________________
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.
Webobjects-dev mailing list (email@hidden)
Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription:
This email sent to email@hidden