Our roving reporter gathers a few dissenting opinions
JavaWorld spoke with some of the attendees at the JavaOne conference to find out what they thought of its various offerings.
“Sun wants to popularize Java, which is fine,” said one participant. “But the army of C++ programmers is much larger. Java is a good language, but it’s as useful as C. They are equal. Developers should be able to do either. Native interfaces should support both.”
Other participants were disgruntled by the amount of competition-bashing. By the third day, said one, “It’s really annoying. McNealy is obviously green with envy. Their success rankles him. Gates is much cooler about competition. McNealy sure doesn’t do Sun any favors with all the bashing. It’s bad karma.”
The same participant praised Sun for delivering. “The other stuff is exciting. It was great to see a JavaOS boot on a 486 and on a smart card. The other impressive thing was that Sun delivered on its promises. I expected JavaBeans to work; it worked. I expected RMI to work; it worked. That part is cool.” The participant ended his commentary with a reminder: “It’s one thing for Sun to bash its competition; it’s another for it to bash its partners. Bash Apple? Don’t forget who it was who brought you to the dance…”
Another participant underscored this sentiment: “What happens if Microsoft shuts down? Do you think everyone would go out and buy Sun technology? No. It’s too expensive. Microsoft builds its platform on an uneven surface […] Microsoft can sure live without Java — but the reverse is not true. Sun should stop pretending it doesn’t need that market.”
Finally, some participants felt that the conference catered too much to the Gen-X sensibility, and that it would have served the preparers well to have realized beforehand that about half of the attendees were over the age of thirty-five.
