Home | Contact Us | FAQ | Search & Site Map | Link to Us
Sign In | Join | Other 45 Sites in Network
HomeAnnouncementsWhite Papers
Discussion GroupsFirst AidDatabasesJavaBeansGUIJava 3DVirtual MachineCORBASecurityToolsGeneral
Java DirectoryOpen Source ProjectsSample Book ChaptersUser GroupsWeb Resources
Related Topics
Databases.NETMore Topics ...

Java Forum / General / July 2007

Tip: Looking for answers? Try searching our database.

What products do you wish you could buy?

Thread view: 
Jon Harrop - 16 Jul 2007 23:09 GMT
What products for Java developers do you wish you could buy?

We recently discovered that there are no decent commercial FFT libraries
for .NET programmers. This gap seems to have been filled for Java
programmers. Where are the gaps in the Java market?

Signature

Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy
OCaml for Scientists
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/ocaml_for_scientists/?usenet

Twisted - 17 Jul 2007 04:51 GMT
> What products for Java developers do you wish you could buy?

None. I want FOSS stuff. I certainly don't want something that would
force me to restrict the distribution and use of applications I
developed, and/or force me to charge for them, because they insist on
a per-user fee or similarly from anything that uses their library!
Moreover, I want the control over and confidence in the end product
that cannot occur if any of its parts is a black box I'm not allowed
to examine or tinker with. Closed-source libraries are for the .NET
and Visual C++ microserf crowd. :P

This is one thing I like about Java -- the language specs and VM specs
are open (even C's language spec isn't; the C standardization
organization treats it as proprietary and demands money in exchange
for copies ... of the SPEC!) and large chunks of the standard library
have been open sourced, and the source for well-nigh all of it is
readily available to at least peruse. (Of course, there's a lot of
open source CRT implementations, like glibc, and C compilers, like
gcc, but the spec being unfree is still bothersome, and C is really
showing its age these days. Ditto C++.)

Also, with Java, if the worst comes to the worst, it's often fairly
easy to decompile and reverse engineer stuff. The emphasis on
adherence to specs and interfaces when implementing things also makes
replacing a faulty "black box" (e.g. a broken JVM) more feasible. It's
much less likely you'll run into a problem and efforts to fix it will
dead-end at some box labeled "no user-serviceable parts inside" that
you can't make work and you can't avoid needing either.

And of course, development is much less *expensive* when you avoid
proprietary libraries, which also means your eventual users can be
charged less (or nothing).

The irony being that Java itself is technically more proprietary than
C. But the abundant open spec information lets anyone make compatible
clones easily (if not necessarily use the Java trademark in
association with it), and better developed standard library and
language design itself reduce work, wheel-reinventing, need for third-
party libraries for common stuff like threading and UI, and bugs,
particularly memory management/crash-inducing bugs. Development costs
are lower. Tools are mature. The proliferation of complexity found in
e.g. C++ is largely absent in Java. You won't run into a paywall
trying to look at the language spec when you DO need to consult it.
You need to resort to third-party libraries much less often. You don't
have to worry about platform differences as much or CPU/hardware
architecture at all...
Roedy Green - 17 Jul 2007 08:05 GMT
>What products for Java developers do you wish you could buy?
>
>We recently discovered that there are no decent commercial FFT libraries
>for .NET programmers. This gap seems to have been filled for Java
>programmers. Where are the gaps in the Java market?

Whenever I think of one, I write it up as a student project.  There
are hundreds of them.  See http://mindprod.com/product/products.html
Signature

Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
The Java Glossary
http://mindprod.com



Free Magazines

Get these publications absolutely FREE for up to 12 months. There are no hidden fees and no obligation. Simply choose a title, complete the application form and submit it. Read more ...

Oracle MagazineNetwork ComputingComputer WorldBio-IT WorldeWeekInformation WeekInfosecurity
 
Sign In
Join
My Latest Posts
My Monitored Threads
My Blog
My Photo Gallery
My Profile
My Homepage

Start New Thread
Enable EMail Alerts
Rate this Thread



©2009 Advenet LLC   Privacy Policy - Terms of Use
This website includes both content owned or controlled by Advenet as well as content owned or controlled by third parties.