In Pictures: 15 things we hate about Java
Slow startup times, null pointers, security flaws -- Java's ongoing success leaves plenty to complain about
But Oracle remains committed to working with the Jakarta EE working group and Jakarta EE specification process
Skilled software developers have been cited by Australian businesses as the most difficult group to recruit in a recent survey.
Once-faltering Java is beginning to run away with the Tiobe language popularity index, with the language getting a shot in the arm from last year's Java 8 release.
Addressing a controversy over a popular but unsupported Java API, Oracle's plans now call for making most internal APIs inaccessible by default in Java 9 while leaving a few of them still accessible.
Java developers are slated to get REPL (Read-Eval-Print-Loop) capability via jshell with next year's planned Java 9 release.
Remembering what the programming world was like in 1995 is no easy task. Object-oriented programming, for one, was an accepted but seldom practiced paradigm, with much of what passed as so-called object-oriented programs being little more than rebranded C code that used >> instead of printf and class instead of struct. The programs we wrote those days routinely dumped core due to pointer arithmetic errors or ran out of memory due to leaks. Source code could barely be ported between different versions of Unix. Running the same binary on different processors and operating systems was crazy talk.
Although Java was developed at Sun Microsystems, Oracle has served as the platform's steward since acquiring Sun in early 2010. During that time, Oracle has released Java 7 and Java 8, with version 9 due up next year. InfoWorld Editor at Large Paul Krill recently spoke to Oracle's Georges Saab, vice president of software development for the Java Platform Group, about the occasion of Java's 20th anniversary.
Think of Java, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this week, and your first thoughts most likely go to the language itself. But underneath the language is a piece of technology that has a legacy at least as important and powerful as Java itself: the Java virtual machine, or JVM.
What began as an experiment in consumer electronics in the early 1990s celebrates its 20th anniversary as a staple of enterprise computing this week. Java has become a dominant platform, able to run wherever the Java Virtual Machine is supported, forging ahead despite the rise of rival languages and recent tribulations with security.
Would the Java community thrive as well under Oracle's control as it did under Sun Microsystems'? Vendors of Java products seem split about the question.