[clug] Why isn't Java popular on the Linux Desktop?

[Sam Couter]

Hugh Fisher <hugh.fisher at anu.edu.au> wrote:
> If I'm writing a program for my own use, or for a small community
> of users, I'll get the blame. Fine with me.

That's true, but if your program goes very far and it's unstable or
insecure it will reflect badly on Java.

I'm not saying that's a good reason, but it seems to be part of Sun's
reasoning.

> Portability is nice at times, but it's not something that should
> be enforced at the programming language level.

It's not enforced, just encouraged. You can even write pure Java
programs that aren't portable if you like.

> Microsoft let you write code in your preferred language on
> top of CLR. (Yes I know you can implement Python and other
> languages on top of JVM with enough effort, but JVM wasn't
> designed to make it easy.)

No, it was designed to support Java. The language and the JVM are pretty
tightly integrated, the JVM isn't a general-purpose VM.

> And while MS would certainly prefer you to be writing for MS
> Windows frameworks, it's just as easy to write native code
> for other platforms - as the increasing number of GNOME apps
> being developed in Mono demonstrates.

Until Microsoft squishes it (I hope that never happens).

> All in all, I think Microsoft have done a much better job
> of letting programmers choose which combination of language,
> runtime packages, portability, and security they want.

That's true, but I don't think that's necessarily such a good thing.
Microsoft are famous for lowering barriers to entry and along with that
quality plummets. They make the easy things easy and the hard things
impossible.

See PHP for an example of why it's not a good idea for just anybody to
be able to whack a seemingly functional program together.

[ Yes, I'm an elitist PHP hater. I also hate MySQL, another result of
satisfying the lowest common denominator. ]
-- 
Sam Couter         |  mailto:sam at couter.id.au
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