JavaHeads of the world unite

The Spring 1997 Java Education World Tour played its first date to a sold-out crowd of a reported 800 people, ranging from Java devotees to those just wanting to see what all the hoopla is about. And believe me, hoopla was abundant. Scott McNealy’s standard anti-Microsoft “CaptiveX” rap, for example, reached new heights (or new depths) in his Letterman-esque “Top Ten Reasons to Download ActiveX.”

The multidate event — slated to appear in almost 40 cities worldwide live or (mostly) via broadcast — kicked off in San Francisco. And, if you haven’t been keeping up with the latest alliances forming around Java, you may be surprised to learn that IBM Senior VP of Software John M. Thompson shared the stage with Sun Microsystems and Netscape. Even Novell took part in the event — belatedly: By the time Novell announced its participation in the World Tour, the keynote lineup had already been finalized. (Novell’s president was, however, featured in the opening video, and CTO Glenn Ricart participated in the press Q&A following the opening session.) With the anti-Microsoft sentiment running high (and almost non-stop) these days, it’s no surprise these industry giants have joined forces in an effort to bring the mighty Microsoft to its knees.

Hoopla aside, was the World Tour all that it was cracked up to be? Well, that depends on who you ask and what you crave. Joseph Allotey, systems technician at Portal Publications Limited, is pretty sure Java is the future of Internet-based programming and wanted to get a better feel for the capabilities of the language. Although he has dabbled a bit with Java (using Symantec’s Cafe), he found it “an eye-opener that you can create full-blown applications with Java — not just frills on a Web site.” Allotey found the sessions helpful and encouraged other programmers new to Java to check out the World Tour when it makes a stop in their neighborhoods.

Those sentiments were echoed by Matthew McEachen and Steve Thomas, software engineers at Enlighten Software Solutions, developer of a popular distributed Unix management system called Enlighten/DSM (Distributed Systems Manager). Faced with the tremendous task of porting the Enlighten/DSM code to the Windows NT platform, McEachen eagerly scooped up his copy of the JDK 1.1 (currently available only for Solaris and Win32). Interestingly enough, he noted that Enlighten is looking to Java “not as a tool to avoid porting — our product requires native code to do administration and kernel monitoring –” but because “the object-oriented elegance of the language … will allow us to cleanly abstract out the platform-independent code. The AWT, and extensions upon the AWT, like JMAPI’s widget sets, will help us get a cross-platform UI.”

Other developers in attendance, however, were more subdued. Although Dave Hlopak, vice president of business development at JSource Inc., is excited about Java, he noted that the technology is still in its infancy, leaving it open to much speculation. In addition, he found McNealy’s comments about “CaptiveX” overly critical, pointing out that ActiveX does have its place. “Not everything has to be platform-independent,” said Hlopak, but added that he thinks ActiveX’s long-term viability is shaky.

Likewise, Allen Carroll, president and chief technologist of LogicLab Inc., found the humor to be in slightly poor taste, but acknowledged that Java is definitely the way to go. He stressed, however, that the security issues swirling around Java need to be addressed before he will fully embrace the language. In addition, Sun’s claim that coding in Java is “fast and easy” struck a nerve with Carroll: “Writing the code is not the problem; learning to use objects cleverly, however, will impose a significant learning curve.” Neither Hlopak nor Carroll found the World Tour of much help to seasoned programmers, noting that the sessions each had attended were too basic in scope.

These hard-core types will, no doubt, find the essential details they’re seeking at JavaOne, Sun’s comprehensive Java conference, which takes place April 2-4 in San Francisco.

Once the fanfare had died down and the conference hall had cleared out, at least a few of us were left with one burning question: When will Java live up to its write-once, run-anywhere mantra? According to Sun’s JavaSoft Division, several things are in the works to solve this pesky problem:

• The Macintosh version of the JDK 1.1. A beta of the newest release of the JDK will make its way to the Mac in the second quarter of 1997.

• The 100% Pure Java initiative. This program is designed to assure vendors and users that applets and applications developed in compliance with the initiative will indeed “run anywhere”; that is, on any certified virtual machine (more on this in a moment). Sun is currently at the drawing board developing a compliance test (to be rolled out at JavaOne and handled by a third party) designed to ensure any given product touted as a Java program is indeed 100% Pure Java. Pure apps are those that are written entirely in Java, have no native method calls, and require no libraries other than those either included in the reference implementation of Java or bundled with the app.

• Introduction of the Java Compatibilty Kit (JCK). The JCK, bundled with the JDK 1.1, contains an extensive test suite — more than 8,000 individual tests — to help developers test and certify their VMs based on the JavaSoft standard. Java VMs (or “platforms” such as browsers or Network Computers that include a Java VM) that pass all of these tests will run any pure Java app, JavaSoft says.

Until the many Java VMs actually conform to this standard (currently only JavaSoft’s VM qualifies) — and until a VM is available for every platform — Java cannot live up to its write-once, run-anywhere promise. Progress is on the horizon, though: Both Netscape and Microsoft plan to support the new JDK in the coming release of their respective browsers, which suggests their VMs will earn the Java-compatible designation within the next few months.