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April 2001  
  
This essay developed out of conversations I've had with several other
programmers about why Java smelled suspicious. It's not a critique of Java! It
is a case study of hacker's radar.  
  
Over time, hackers develop a nose for good (and bad) technology. I thought it
might be interesting to try and write down what made Java seem suspect to me.  
  
Some people who've read this think it's an interesting attempt to write about
something that hasn't been written about before. Others say I will get in
trouble for appearing to be writing about things I don't understand. So, just
in case it does any good, let me clarify that I'm not writing here about Java
(which I have never used) but about hacker's radar (which I have thought about
a lot).  
  

* * *

  
  
The aphorism "you can't tell a book by its cover" originated in the times when
books were sold in plain cardboard covers, to be bound by each purchaser
according to his own taste. In those days, you couldn't tell a book by its
cover. But publishing has advanced since then: present-day publishers work
hard to make the cover something you can tell a book by.  
  
I spend a lot of time in bookshops and I feel as if I have by now learned to
understand everything publishers mean to tell me about a book, and perhaps a
bit more. The time I haven't spent in bookshops I've spent mostly in front of
computers, and I feel as if I've learned, to some degree, to judge technology
by its cover as well. It may be just luck, but I've saved myself from a few
technologies that turned out to be real stinkers.  
  
So far, Java seems like a stinker to me. I've never written a Java program,
never more than glanced over reference books about it, but I have a hunch that
it won't be a very successful language. I may turn out to be mistaken; making
predictions about technology is a dangerous business. But for what it's worth,
as a sort of time capsule, here's why I don't like the look of Java:  
  
1\. It has been so energetically hyped. Real standards don't have to be
promoted. No one had to promote C, or Unix, or HTML. A real standard tends to
be already established by the time most people hear about it. On the hacker
radar screen, Perl is as big as Java, or bigger, just on the strength of its
own merits.  
  
2\. It's aimed low. In the original Java white paper, Gosling explicitly says
Java was designed not to be too difficult for programmers used to C. It was
designed to be another C++: C plus a few ideas taken from more advanced
languages. Like the creators of sitcoms or junk food or package tours, Java's
designers were consciously designing a product for people not as smart as
them. Historically, languages designed for other people to use have been bad:
Cobol, PL/I, Pascal, Ada, C++. The good languages have been those that were
designed for their own creators: C, Perl, Smalltalk, Lisp.  
  
3\. It has ulterior motives. Someone once said that the world would be a
better place if people only wrote books because they had something to say,
rather than because they wanted to write a book. Likewise, the reason we hear
about Java all the time is not because it has something to say about
programming languages. We hear about Java as part of a plan by Sun to
undermine Microsoft.  
  
4\. No one loves it. C, Perl, Python, Smalltalk, and Lisp programmers love
their languages. I've never heard anyone say that they loved Java.  
  
5\. People are forced to use it. A lot of the people I know using Java are
using it because they feel they have to. Either it's something they felt they
had to do to get funded, or something they thought customers would want, or
something they were told to do by management. These are smart people; if the
technology was good, they'd have used it voluntarily.  
  
6\. It has too many cooks. The best programming languages have been developed
by small groups. Java seems to be run by a committee. If it turns out to be a
good language, it will be the first time in history that a committee has
designed a good language.  
  
7\. It's bureaucratic. From what little I know about Java, there seem to be a
lot of protocols for doing things. Really good languages aren't like that.
They let you do what you want and get out of the way.  
  
8\. It's pseudo-hip. Sun now pretends that Java is a grassroots, open-source
language effort like Perl or Python. This one just happens to be controlled by
a giant company. So the language is likely to have the same drab clunkiness as
anything else that comes out of a big company.  
  
9\. It's designed for large organizations. Large organizations have different
aims from hackers. They want languages that are (believed to be) suitable for
use by large teams of mediocre programmers-- languages with features that,
like the speed limiters in U-Haul trucks, prevent fools from doing too much
damage. Hackers don't like a language that talks down to them. Hackers just
want power. Historically, languages designed for large organizations (PL/I,
Ada) have lost, while hacker languages (C, Perl) have won. The reason: today's
teenage hacker is tomorrow's CTO.  
  
10\. The wrong people like it. The programmers I admire most are not, on the
whole, captivated by Java. Who does like Java? Suits, who don't know one
language from another, but know that they keep hearing about Java in the
press; programmers at big companies, who are amazed to find that there is
something even better than C++; and plug-and-chug undergrads, who are ready to
like anything that might get them a job (will this be on the test?). These
people's opinions change with every wind.  
  
11\. Its daddy is in a pinch. Sun's business model is being undermined on two
fronts. Cheap Intel processors, of the same type used in desktop machines, are
now more than fast enough for servers. And FreeBSD seems to be at least as
good an OS for servers as Solaris. Sun's advertising implies that you need Sun
servers for industrial strength applications. If this were true, Yahoo would
be first in line to buy Suns; but when I worked there, the servers were all
Intel boxes running FreeBSD. This bodes ill for Sun's future. If Sun runs into
trouble, they could drag Java down with them.  
  
12\. The DoD likes it. The Defense Department is encouraging developers to use
Java. This seems to me the most damning sign of all. The Defense Department
does a fine (though expensive) job of defending the country, but they love
plans and procedures and protocols. Their culture is the opposite of hacker
culture; on questions of software they will tend to bet wrong. The last time
the DoD really liked a programming language, it was Ada.  
  
Bear in mind, this is not a critique of Java, but a critique of its cover. I
don't know Java well enough to like it or dislike it. This is just an
explanation of why I don't find that I'm eager to learn it.  
  
It may seem cavalier to dismiss a language before you've even tried writing
programs in it. But this is something all programmers have to do. There are
too many technologies out there to learn them all. You have to learn to judge
by outward signs which will be worth your time. I have likewise cavalierly
dismissed Cobol, Ada, Visual Basic, the IBM AS400, VRML, ISO 9000, the SET
protocol, VMS, Novell Netware, and CORBA, among others. They just smelled
wrong.  
  
It could be that in Java's case I'm mistaken. It could be that a language
promoted by one big company to undermine another, designed by a committee for
a "mainstream" audience, hyped to the skies, and beloved of the DoD, happens
nonetheless to be a clean, beautiful, powerful language that I would love
programming in. It could be, but it seems very unlikely.  
  
  
---  
  
  
---  
| | Trevor Re: Java's Cover  
  
| | | | Berners-Lee Re: Java  
  
  
| | Being Popular  
  
| | | | Sun Internal Memo  
  
  
| | 2005: BusinessWeek Agrees  
  
| | | | Japanese Translation  
  
  
  
  
  

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