jonr originally posted this on Jon Rose's Blog.

Cay Horstmann posted a great blog today on the current state of Java:

http://weblogs.java.net/blog/cayhorstmann/archive/2008/01/dinosaurs_can_t_1.html

‘Why is it that Sun can’t give me a decent web framework? Is it a shortcoming of the Java language? Or crummy API design? Rails uses the metaobject protocol to good effect in Active Record, but as it turns out, that isn’t my problem. JPA works ok for me. The rest of Rails doesn’t attract me—I want components, not RHTML files.’

Also, Last night I listen to a Java Posse podcast on Java/Web UI/Applets:
http://www.javaposse.com/index.php?post_id=291572. It is funny to me how they describe the problem (paraphrasing), “Java is great for RIA development, except for the browser plug-in stinks.” Followed by repeated suggestions that Java just needs to address this ‘small’ problem. This is why Flex/Flash is so interesting to me – they solved a problem that Java hasn’t been able to address in a decade plus.

There are so many wonderful new options for building RIA’s. Why is anyone still trying to use Java? It is possible that JavaFX will catapult Java back into the race, but as things stand now I am confused why anyone is turning to Java for building web UI’s.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 at 5:00 pm and is filed under Jon Rose. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.