Where are the java apps?

[Mateo]

http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html

Java is the most widely used programming language. So, where are the java applications? Java has long been the most popular language, but where are the results? The only place I can think of that is dominated by java is mobile phones. Every where else, java is at best semi-popular. On the desktop java is not that popular, on any operating system. On the web java used to be popular but less so today. Certainly not widely used enough to beat out php.

It doesn't make sense to me. Probably 9/10 desktop applications are either programmed in c+ or vb. On linux replace vb with python. But still, the point is there are very few java applications. While java does dominate the mobile platform, that's a fairly small market, and most mobile manufactures don't make it easy for 3rd party software anyways.

I'm sure the answer here is the web. I'm just not seeing where these java apps are. Explanation anyone?

[LaRoza]

http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html

Java is the most widely used programming language. So, where are the java applications? Java has long been the most popular language, but where are the results? The only place I can think of that is dominated by java is mobile phones. Every where else, java is at best semi-popular. On the desktop java is not that popular, on any operating system. On the web java used to be popular but less so today. Certainly not widely used enough to beat out php.

It doesn't make sense to me. Probably 9/10 desktop applications are either programmed in c+ or vb. On linux replace vb with python. But still, the point is there are very few java applications. While java does dominate the mobile platform, that's a fairly small market, and most mobile manufactures don't make it easy for 3rd party software anyways.

I'm sure the answer here is the web. I'm just not seeing where these java apps are. Explanation anyone?

Java is used in the following:


Phones
Blu-Ray players (it is in everyone of them, Blu-Ray menus are now Java)
Java applets
Devices of all kinds
Server side programs
Many in house programs
OpenOffice.org is loaded with Java

[Mateo]

There has to be one area that java just completely and utterly dominates (besides phones) for it to be the dominate language. The blu-ray player menu market is so small that's it's practically insignificant. Besides, Java has been the most popular language probably this entire decade. So new technology is not a good explanation.

The key is definitely on the web, i'm just wondering where.

[jespdj]

Java is one of the most popular programming languages for enterprise systems. Many big Internet companies, such as Amazon for example, use Java to run their business systems.

Software for the consumer desktop is only a very small part of the IT industry.

The key is definitely on the web, i'm just wondering where.
As I said, on the servers of for example Amazon and many other companies.

[perlluver]

There has to be one area that java just completely and utterly dominates (besides phones) for it to be the dominate language. The blu-ray player menu market is so small that's it's practically insignificant. Besides, Java has been the most popular language probably this entire decade. So new technology is not a good explanation.

The key is definitely on the web, i'm just wondering where.

Frostwire, Limewire, Java App's, javascripts, on alot of websites.

[Mateo]

Java is one of the most popular programming languages for enterprise systems. Many big Internet companies, such as Amazon for example, use Java to run their business systems.

Software for the consumer desktop is only a very small part of the IT industry.

Every company of reasonable size has an IT department. Internet companies might choose java, i'm not going to argue that point. But certainly the .Net languages dominate the enterprise landscape.

Maybe the answer is in that java is simply everywhere. It might not dominate any one area, but being used in almost every area (being that it is so easily cross-platform) makes it crawl its way to the top of the list.

[FuturePilot]

I can name a number of apps that use Java.


OpenOffice
Azureus
Frostwire/Limewire
OpenProj (http://openproj.org/openproj)
Eclipse (IDE)
CrossFTP (http://www.crossftp.com/)
IPlist
aTunes (http://www.atunes.org/)


I'm sure there's a bunch more too.

But as for the web it seems that Flash has overpowered everything though.

[Mateo]

Frostwire, Limewire, Java App's, javascripts, on alot of websites.

Javascript is listed separately on that web page. Java apps on websites? those used to be popular in the 90s, but don't seem so any more. Got some examples? Seems most use flash for the web these days.

[Mateo]

I can name a number of apps that use Java.


OpenOffice
Azureus
Frostwire/Limewire
OpenProj (http://openproj.org/openproj)
Eclipse (IDE)
CrossFTP (http://www.crossftp.com/)
IPlist
aTunes (http://www.atunes.org/)


I'm sure there's a bunch more too.

But as for the web it seems that Flash has overpowered everything though.

I can name a number of apps that use every language. That doesn't help explain the rankings, though. Unless we plan on naming every application currently out there, we can't really get anywhere this way.

[jespdj]

Maybe. I don't agree that the .NET languages dominate the enterprise landscape. I'm a professional Java developer, and I've worked on a number of big projects where Java is used successfully for mission-critical systems of large companies.

Currently I'm working on a project for the railways, a system that processes messages from a number of different systems to produce information for travellers, which is displayed on the monitors at the train stations.

I'm working in a large IT company, we have many large companies as our clients, and many of them use Java for many different kinds of enterprise systems.

We also have .NET developers, but at least in my part of the world, Java seems to be used more than .NET.

[jespdj]

Javascript is listed separately on that web page.
Because JavaScript is not Java, it is an entirely different programming language that for strange reasons (marketing by Netscape in the 90's) has a name that looks like "Java".

[Mateo]

Maybe. I don't agree that the .NET languages dominate the enterprise landscape. I'm a professional Java developer, and I've worked on a number of big projects where Java is used successfully for mission-critical systems of large companies.

Currently I'm working on a project for the railways, a system that processes messages from a number of different systems to produce information for travellers, which is displayed on the monitors at the train stations.

I'm working in a large IT company, we have many large companies as our clients, and many of them use Java for many different kinds of enterprise systems.

We also have .NET developers, but at least in my part of the world, Java seems to be used more than .NET.

Must vary from place to place. Maybe you live in area that is rich in the technology field. Where I'm from probably 9/10 IT job postings are for .net languages.

[JudgeFudge]

SAP, which dominate ERP systems, are moving more and more towards Java. At least one other big ERP vendor (Intentia) moved their entire code base to it some years ago.

I think the problem is that Java's GUI (swing etc) is utter garbage so desktop users don't see it. It is very common in enterprise systems. Products like weblogic, websphere, webmethod are standards in their various niches but only corporate IT people would ever use them.

[samjh]

Every company of reasonable size has an IT department. Internet companies might choose java, i'm not going to argue that point. But certainly the .Net languages dominate the enterprise landscape.

Maybe the answer is in that java is simply everywhere. It might not dominate any one area, but being used in almost every area (being that it is so easily cross-platform) makes it crawl its way to the top of the list.

Actually Java is very dominant in enterprise server-side systems, even more so than .NET.

The thing is, Java integrates extremely well in mixed-OS infrastructure, which is what the majority of very large companies use. The financial sector, telecommunications, and large-scale data centres generally use MS Windows desktops and UNIX/Solaris/Linux back-ends, where Java provides the best balance between interoperability, speed, and reliability.

Also when people say Java is used for websites, it's not so much the interactive content which use Java, but rather websites that make extensive use of databases to process content, and channel it to a different front-end which takes care of what is sent to a client web browser.

.NET is more popular for smaller or medium-sized businesses which have exclusively Microsoft-centric infrastructure. There is a lot of it, but not quite enough to oust Java. Keep in mind also that .NET uses multiple languages, so you need to count C# and VB together (I know VB is different from VB.NET, but I don't really care).

[morningboat]

Yes, Java is quite popular in the enterprise server, web service, officer automation, and ERP market, where it has obvious development efficiency advantage and heterogeneous environment advantage.

On desktop market, although Java hasn't got very popular due to some history reasons, it does have quite a number of high quality applications available, especially the network related applications. They run on Linux quite well, and they are often among the top quality in the corresponding software category, even on the Mac/Windows markets. Here are some listed here:

Vuze (Originally Azureus) (http://www.vuze.com/): BT client
Frostwire/Limewire (http://www.limewire.com/): P2P client
CrossFTP (http://www.crossftp.com/): FTP client
jDownloader (http://jdownloader.org/home): Downloader for sharing hosters, such as Rapidshare and Megaupload
BlogBridge (http://www.blogbridge.com/): RSS reader

[david_lynch]

The real reason for java's lesser presence on the desktop than one might imagine, is probably just NIH syndrome. Different political realms want to stake out their turf, and only a minority is really interested in true cross-platform software.

Also, java in the past had a bad rap for being slow and bloated, but it has gotten better with each release, and now it's a perfectly valid choice for a cross platform app, or even a single platform app for that matter.

My school (Cal State Dominguez Hills) used java for the core CS curriculum.

The one "killer" java app that I use at home is the bittorrent program azureus (well now it's called vuze). At work I use lotus notes 8.5 beta 2, which is written in java, and it's surprisingly snappy and fun to use, compared to the old lotus notes. The fact that it's written in java also allows them to quickly ship a lotus notes release for pc, mac and linux.