Java: the 'Miss' is out of date?

Sun's revolutionary programming language is so familiar to web developers. But now, as the 1990s increasingly recede, Java also gradually "grows beard".

With Peter Yared, CEO of ActiveGrid software firm, Java programming language is associated with an important chapter in his career path. In the late 1990s, Yared was then chief technology officer of NetDynamics, a company that almost every major product was based on Java. For the next 5 years, Yared became a leader in Sun. For that reason, it is surprising that Yared declared that " Java is a dinosaur " - also means that Java once had a real "fierce" time, but now, where is this glorious time?

Yared has his own reason when concluding that. ActiveGrid - Yared's 2-year-old company - is trading what he calls the new generation of application servers. They are still used to build business websites and software, but they do not rely entirely on Java.

Instead, they target open source software packages, including Linux operating systems, Apache Web servers, MySQL databases, and a set of scripting languages, all starting with P: Perl, Python, and PHP. Combine all these elements, initial the initials and you will have LAMP - New programming language .

Light up the web with LAMP

Yared revealed that LAMP is becoming more and more popular and used in developing a new generation of Web applications, as well as related technologies. And Java? The steaming coffee cup is now like an old textbook, "growing beard" and short of breath when chasing the era inventions. In other words: It already belongs to the previous millennium.
Perhaps Java - once a " beauty queen ", " the most modern of the modern times ", has turned into a "mummy" technology, old, old and outdated like a mainframe computer. IBM or SAP business software? It is sad that the evidence is there to make us nod.

Currently, Java is mostly preferred in Asia, in Europe and North America, it is like a girl who is "out of grace". The rate of using .NET has increased by nearly 15%, from 40.3% to 54.1% in North America, surpassing the rate of using Java in Europe and Asia combined.

In another poll, the popularity of PHP in North America increased from 26% in 2003 to 36% this year, but in the former continent of Asia - Europe, the speed is even faster. " There are too many big competitors and they're nibbling on Java's market share ," Evans's president concluded.

Another sign that Java is getting cold comes from the technology book market. According to O'Reilly Media, a leading book publisher, Java-related books lost 4% of sales compared to last year, while sales of AJAX guidebooks - a programming language are dominate open source software packages - up to 68% again. According to reports from Evans Data Corp, which conducts annual regular exploration of software development activities, the rate of Java usage is increasing, while Microsoft's LAMP and .NET are constantly expanding. In North America, only 47.9% of respondents use Java as the main programming language, compared with 51.4% in fall 2002.

"It's late to lose love"

Of course, Sun is the most opposed to this statement. " Has Java come to an end or not? It's been a long time. We all thought it was just beginning to come into play ," said John Loiacono, Sun's executive vice president of software.

To demonstrate his remarks, John points out two facts: 1. Java is still very strong in complex, scalable, sophisticated enterprise applications and 2. Java is particularly popular in mobile phones - when available Up to 600 models available on the market are running Java, and every 10 Top models have 7 developed based on this technology.

It's sad for Sun, because other firms don't think so. Even if Java is still firmly in the key markets, interviews with more than a dozen tech giants and analysts all show that the market is moving in a way that is not conducive to Java.

This is not only a concern for Sun, but many companies like IBM, BEA Systems and jBoss are also reconsidered, because they are making a big bet for this programming language. If Java loses its glory, the appeal of these language-based products also disappears.

New stars

For many tech giants like Google and Yahoo !, Java has never occupied an important position in their development strategy. Smaller companies, specializing in Web 2.0, are especially popular with AJAX with PHP, a new generation of lightweight, portable and portable programming tools. This is the case for companies like Friendster, Flickr and Facebook. According to them, the new tools are not "picky" like Java, programmers with skills and qualifications not too high can also learn how to develop applications very quickly.

According to many analysts, this change is no different from the 90s of the last century, when Java displaced traditional programming languages ​​like C and C +. Now the development community is flooding from Java to PHP and AJAX. From the zero of the year 2000, the number of websites using PHP jumped at rocket speeds to 23 million pages.

Emerging, Java was considered a "detox" remedy against Microsoft's tyranny. Using Java, software developers and website developers can write programs that run on many different operating systems. In the desktop realm where Windows dominates, Java has failed, but in the server world, Java has become a powerful force.

For simple websites and Web applications, people no longer need Java. But when you have to do something more complicated, more sophisticated, it is time to invoke Sun's products. When writing code on Linux, the number of layers is much less so you don't need Java. Similarly, when writing desktop applications for trading, brokerage and sales circles, many people use Microsoft's Visual Studio .NET programming tool.

" The market is more competitive and customers have more choices. No one, whether a user or a big man, is loyal only to one technology, " said Rod Smith, vice president of technology section. IBM's new software shrugged. After all, is it time to put up a sad suitcase for Java?

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