From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.6 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_20,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,c7b637f8b783b7c X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: fac41,c7b637f8b783b7c X-Google-Attributes: gidfac41,public X-Google-Thread: 107d55,c7b637f8b783b7c X-Google-Attributes: gid107d55,public X-Google-Thread: 109fba,c7b637f8b783b7c X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: f43e6,c7b637f8b783b7c X-Google-Attributes: gidf43e6,public X-Google-Thread: 1108a1,c7b637f8b783b7c X-Google-Attributes: gid1108a1,public From: "James P. White" Subject: Re: The great Java showcase (re: 2nd historic mistake) Date: 1997/08/27 Message-ID: <3404670B.C3A2C4A2@pagesmiths.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 268622900 References: <34023FC9.59E2B600@eiffel.com> Organization: Pagesmiths Newsgroups: comp.object,comp.software-eng,comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.eiffel,comp.lang.java.tech,comp.lang.c++ Date: 1997-08-27T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Bertrand Meyer wrote: > > In my message on the "second historic mistake" I had > written that, whereas Eiffel has successful commercial > applications approaching the million lines of source > code, there was no comparable experience in Java outside > of applets and of the Java tools themselves. > > A few weeks ago there was an interesting exchange: > > [Ken Garlington] > > !!! The discussion is interesting in that Meyer > !!! (a) criticizes Java for not being used on large > !!! projects (whatever happened to unfair criticism > !!! of new languages? > > [Robert Dewar] > > > > Hmmm! I guess he does not consider the Corel office > > > suite large. Or perhaps simply does not know about it. > > [Bertrand Meyer] > > > It would be difficult not to know about it, > > as it gets hammered over and again by Java proponents > > (along with Java tools themselves) as the example of > > completed Java development, to the extent that one > > may wonder whether there is any other. > > It's really fascinating to read this again a month later, > with the recent announcements -- widely reported by the > press -- that Corel is dropping its Java strategy altogether. > > So much for the showcase success of the century... As I am sure you will hear, those reports were entirely inaccurate. What Corel dropped was the already doomed, regardless of language of development, approach of creating monolithic personal computer product suites for the consumer marketplace. In its place is a true network centric architecture in which servers provide the high volume memory and cpu cycles. This is an inevitable consequence of the economics of computing which is now playing out as the cost of communications decreases. Corel, along with most other players in the industry, are and will be using Java to implement that. As for the size of the products developed with Java so far I am sure the experience of my company is not unique in having built a working system of over 500K lines in less than 12 months (and it will be growing into a system of millions of lines over the next two years). This involved combining large modules (50K to 200K lines each) which successfully integrated with no serious failures even though the respective modules are all rather immature and barely out of beta (and sometimes not even that). Even though Java lacks anything as comprehensive as DBC, in our experience the simple matter of having automatic memory management and pointer protection has yielded a productivity boost of several hundred percent. jim ----------------------------------------------------------------------- James P. White Netscape DevEdge Champion for IFC Director of Technology Adventure Online Gaming http://www.gameworld.com Developers of Gameworld -- Live Action Role-Playing and Strategic Games jim@pagesmiths.com Pagesmiths' home is http://www.pagesmiths.com