Java. What the fuck is it for? Does anyone know – or care – any more? I remember it was the absolute pinnacle of the tech zeitgeist around 10 years back, when it promised to be a utopia of write-once-run-anywhere programming and cubicles were packed with dickheads pulling down £8999k p.a. because they understood those big diagrams that people used to draw to explain what Java did… but now?
Now it sits there on my hard drive glowering resentfully because no-one uses it any more – the ginger-haired stepchild of programming languages (or whatever the fuck it is).
I can handle that – I don’t use HongKong RAMfucker or PornLocator any more; but at least they have the decency to sit there quietly in the background until the day that I need to fuck my RAM or locate some porn.
What I can’t handle is Java’s constant crying out for my attention… update me… please! Every single bastard day that little system tray bubble comes up, winking at me cheerily to remind me there’s another Java update. So for days I dutifully close it and yet, the very next day, there it is again.. taunting me. Look: I didn’t update you yesterday. Or the day before. Or the day before that. Please take the fucking hint – no-one likes you any more. Imagine if your girlfriend behaved like that!
And then, eventually, I concede defeat and download it just to get that fucking message out of the way. Only its not an ‘update’ in the sense of “here’s a couple of megsworth of patches and files” but a full 23323327Gb download of the entire fucking thing that slows everything down to a crawl and puts a big fat install dialogue up in my grill for what seems to be a week, reminding me of all the pointless crap Java ‘enables’ me to do.
And then, when you’ve done all that and your heartrate has returned to normal levels, you find some gimcrack, cobbled-together piece of toss on the internets that does actually use Java to do something – usually something completely fucking gay like add an animated reflection to a picture of the Taj Mahal - and the fucking thing still isn’t right. Sometimes you get a message saying that the version you’ve got is too fucking new!
And to add insult to fucking injury every one of these damn Java applets in the world has to tell me that it’s using Java before it loads. Imagine popping a CD into the tray and having Brian Blessed announce that you are using CD Technology. Actually – that would be pretty fucking awesome. So imagine instead opening your sandwich box to be greeted with a cheery “you’re eating Kingsmill bread!” The world would grind to a halt as people flung sandwiches out of the window in pulsating, red-faced rage, making pavements impassable and putting Dairylea out of business. That’s what “this is a Java application” messages do to the internets.
Java is a big bunch of balls, and Sun Microsystems are a big bunch of ball washers. Fact.
Alex’s fancy new Google phone runs on Java, Facebook’s multiple-photo-uploader-with-thumbnails-and-access-to-the-hard-drive runs of Java…
Not that you have a reason to, but if you visit scientific/physics websites, then you’ll notice all the calculations & graphs are all done using Java too.
I like it
Facebook’s multiple-photo-uploader-with-thumbnails-and-access-to-the-hard-drive sucks ass. Flickr’s way better. And faster. And doesn’t require me to download 88 Gigs after 3 weeks
And what are you doing visiting science/physics websites when porn sites require almost nothing in the way of plugins?
But nobody really uses Flickr, unless they’re a photographer, or unless they just have a digital SLR and want people to comment on their photos with things like “I like the way you’ve captured the light here”, when all you want to do is put some holidays photos up for your mates to see…
I just meant those sites use Java because of it’s power to do calculations & stuff, it’s supposed to be a halfway point between web programming (PHP, ASP) and computer programming (C, C++)
Ha! You’re right about Flickr
Their interface is much slicker than FB’s though. I’ve spent months uploading pics to Facebook with 5 individual file boxes because the Java thing crashes on Chrome. It might have been fixed in the meantime, but only ‘cos they’ve made me download a 6 Terabyte update. Do it with Ajax and they could issue a patch in real time at no noticeable effect to Joe Soap. I notice they don’t use Java anywhere else in their interface, so it can’t be all that.
Java’s basically a solution in search of a problem. Originally when it was brought out, the idea was that it was a platform-independent way to deliver apps. You could write once and software would run on a PC, a Mac or Whatever. That was the whole point! And it was shit, because its interface didn’t look, feel or respond like native apps, so using it was really weird and alien (am I showing my age here?) And in the intervening decade, that paradigm has shifted to the web anyway. If I want to deliver a photo app to the masses, I’m going to do it through the web: even something pretty good on the desktop, like Picasa or Hello, doesn’t get any real traction because…. who cares about that desktop and all the hassle of getting upgrades and dealing with licenses and all that shit?
So now its something for mobile phones… it does “calculations and stuff”? I’m sure it’s fine for that, but why is it making me download updates every two months to my PC? Motherfuckers.
You know what? I thought Java = coffee and Javascript = Java. Firstly, there’s a coffee logo on the damn thing and secondly, they have the same name.
And they all act as a great way to wake up in the morning
Dan, I thought the G1 ran on Linux, but the apps are all programmed in Java.
I’ve always quite fancied learning Java, but as Carps says, never found a real-world use for it.
But if you’re talking about white elephants Carps, what about fucking JavaBeans? Holy shit.
Yea that’s what I meant, just worded badly!
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I remember trying to implement a secure client-side email gateway applet using Java back in 1997, and bleeding from the eyeballs. The ONLY compelling reason for using Java back then was the BSD socket wrappers which let you do real client/server stuff. AWT was a pathetic joke, and trying to get a version of Swing that actually did what it said (i.e. run cross platform) was a nightmare. I plotted dark fantasies of torture and mayhem against the Javangelists.
The very instant I learnt about XMLHttpRequest I realised with profound gratitude I would never need to wrestle with this appalling bag of bollocks ever again. Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive.
Bonus points for coining the word “Javangelists”
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I’m not quite sure how I managed to end up on a swear-blog that isn’t wholly devoted to politics. I could tell you which site’s link I followed, but I refuse to believe it matters. His site has enough traffic already.
In my experience, the single most annoying aspect of Windows is the notification balloon, with its petulant demands for attention. For example, the first time you insert a USB flash drive:
1. Plug+Play detects the presence of a new piece of hardware.
2. It identifies the physical USB drive.
3&4. Likewise for the logical drive.
5. Autorun starts looking for porn.
All these tasks generate a balloon, which must be clicked or left to expire before the next balloon pops up. Only after the fifth balloon do you see the Autorun dialog box, with yet another close box to click.
At this point I’m thoroughly hacked off, and ready to kill the balloon tips altogether:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307729
This also avoids the daily grind of Java updates.
I think I love you, Clive.
I know I’m a bit late to this thread, but I’m annoyed because there wasn’t one comment in favour of Java.
Yes there are still people using Java and I am one of them. I used to be a Delphi enthusiast mainly because I hated C/C++. The supposedly cross platform libraries were no such thing, code becomes littered with #IFDEF conditionals and configuration management a bloody nightmare.
The reason that people have problems developing cross platform using Java Swing is because they don’t understand layout managers. If you don’t like AWT or Swing then try SWT. No reason to give up on the language.
If you don’t want notification of Java updates then they are easily turned off from the Java Control Panel.
Which brings me to MS Windows haters, which most people seem to be. Java development platforms (e.g Eclipse) offer an Open Source alternative to MS developer options which are truely awful.
I’ve said my piece, and probably won’t come back here so feel free to slag me off.
Sean
I *would* slag you off… only that meant almost nothing to me!
@Carps
I did come back, albeit by accident. That’s a nice sombrero. You should give up on the cigars though, they aren’t good for you.
Nice GoogleAd for Java tutorials today.