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Posted: Tue Aug 15, 2006 2:39 pm
by jayshields
Well I'm off to university in a month to study for a degree in Internet Computing and I have to learn Java for the first year I think.

I'm not overly happy with it, to be honest. Another university where I applied for Internet Systems: Business Computing the language of choice was JavaScript, I would've been happier with that. Developing desktop applications seems boring to me, like everything has been done.

I prefer to stick to what I know - I'd rather be brilliant at a couple of things than average in alot.

Posted: Tue Aug 15, 2006 4:12 pm
by panic!
a few things things: good and bad!

1)Java programmers earn on average more than programmers of any other language.

2)Java is a great language, it's Object Oriented, tidy etc.

3)It's very big in the business world.

4)It's horribly un-deployable in the desktop world, Limewire won't run at the same time as iTunes on my laptop (only 512 ram). :(

5) I can't help but feel that the non standard dialogues and interfaces quite frankly suck :(.

Posted: Tue Aug 15, 2006 4:13 pm
by Christopher
Think of it this way - Learning Java will make you a better PHP programmer.

Posted: Tue Aug 15, 2006 4:20 pm
by Luke
arborint wrote:Think of it this way - Learning Java will make you a better PHP programmer.
that's the goal! :D

Posted: Tue Aug 15, 2006 4:22 pm
by neophyte
arborint wrote:Think of it this way - Learning Java will make you a better PHP programmer.
That's what I thought. The language/syntax is so close to PHP 5. I'm not interested in Java for desktop deployment anyway, except perhaps Beans for db frontends. can anyone recommend some sites or books for learning struts/jsp?

Posted: Tue Aug 15, 2006 10:24 pm
by alvinphp
neophyte wrote:
arborint wrote:Think of it this way - Learning Java will make you a better PHP programmer.
That's what I thought. The language/syntax is so close to PHP 5. I'm not interested in Java for desktop deployment anyway, except perhaps Beans for db frontends. can anyone recommend some sites or books for learning struts/jsp?
Instead of struts you should look into Spring and Hibernate (and jsp/servlets/javabeans/pojos).

And I would not follow a java book written in 1997 for web applications. For one JSP did not come out till 1999. And then the recommended architecture has changed a lot since then. And I don't see PHP and Java (JSP/Servlets/EJBs/JBs) similar at all. You can mimic PHP by using JSP and scriptlets, but that is not the recommended (or best) way.

Posted: Tue Aug 15, 2006 10:34 pm
by alvinphp
neophyte wrote:But I can't figure out why it isn't more common. Is it a speed issue? Is the language that difficult? Absence of a solid IDE? Or have I not looked around much?
It is because most hosts do not offer it and the ones do charge a lot more for what you get. I am guessing the reason for this is Java does not work on the two most popular web servers Apache and IIS. You need a servlet container like Tomcat in addition to Apache/IIS. And then every time you add a new java project you need to stop/start tomcat making it even more difficult to on shared hosting.

Posted: Wed Aug 16, 2006 3:18 am
by daedalus__
Daedalus likes C# but hasn't looked at Java yet.

<offtopic>
Daedalus also heard that game performance for games written in C++ can be 20% better than games written in C#, if they are written correctly.

I do not know how true that is but I saw it in a Microsoft webcast.
</offtopic>

Posted: Wed Aug 16, 2006 7:04 am
by feyd
Daedalus- wrote:Daedalus also heard that game performance for games written in C++ can be 20% better than games written in C#, if they are written correctly.
'tis true.

Posted: Wed Aug 16, 2006 8:02 am
by Jenk
there is a reason PHP5 is close to Java..

Posted: Wed Aug 16, 2006 8:37 am
by neophyte
alvinphp wrote:
neophyte wrote:But I can't figure out why it isn't more common. Is it a speed issue? Is the language that difficult? Absence of a solid IDE? Or have I not looked around much?
It is because most hosts do not offer it and the ones do charge a lot more for what you get. I am guessing the reason for this is Java does not work on the two most popular web servers Apache and IIS. You need a servlet container like Tomcat in addition to Apache/IIS. And then every time you add a new java project you need to stop/start tomcat making it even more difficult to on shared hosting.
Cow buckets! :D

So really the only way to deploy a Java app on the web is on a dedicated solution. Has anyone deployed on a shared host? What was it like?

Posted: Wed Aug 16, 2006 11:01 am
by Jenk
Java is a 'standalone' (to a degree) application development platform. PHP Is not on par with Java.

However, Java has taken on the market area of web applets and serverlets, probably because it has not found much success when competing with the likes of C# due to difficulties with the JRE and cross platform availability.


Tomcat is for JSP.. JSP != Java. (Though it can make use of Java Beans.)

Posted: Wed Aug 16, 2006 11:50 am
by neophyte
Jenk wrote: However, Java has taken on the market area of web applets and serverlets, probably because it has not found much success when competing with the likes of C# due to difficulties with the JRE and cross platform availability.
By availability I'm guessing you mean that users do not have JRE installed on their machines? C# runs on MS where there is no additional platform to install. Correct me if I'm wrong but C# is also a MS environment only language. I'm wondering if Open Office will change the equation as it forces folks to install the JRE.

I took a look at some JSP/Tomcat shared solutions. It looks like most of them have scheduled Tomcat restarts. You upload your tested app and wait for the scheduled reboot. And hosting appeared, after a casual survey, to be in the $8-$14 per month range.

Posted: Wed Aug 16, 2006 11:51 am
by alvinphp
Jenk wrote:Tomcat is for JSP.. JSP != Java. (Though it can make use of Java Beans.)
Well, JSP is part of Java. JSP is converted to a Servlet by the container and a Servlet is really just a Java Object with a few unique abilities. Java is quite a large beast.

Posted: Wed Aug 16, 2006 2:28 pm
by panic!
theres the MONO C# for linux and os x


http://www.mono-project.com/Mono:OSX


also java requires JRE

but c#.net requres .net framework...

JRE is slow by nature though.