Sun's open source boss slams App Engine's Java support | Hacker News Reader

Sun's open source boss slams App Engine's Java support

thestandard.com

3 pointsilamont6 comments

If I were Sun, I would probably be complaining about how nobody is going to buy Sun hardware anymore when they can just run their Java apps on GAE for pennies a day.

The incompatibility actually helps them -- if you want "real" Java, you are going to have to get a "real" server.

Finally, I don't blame Google for omitting core classes. Java's standard library is some of the worst code I've ever seen -- the interfaces are horrible (do they even know what OOP is?), and the implementation shipped with the open source JDK looks like it was hacked together by some high-school kids on crack. Google is smart to kill this shit off.

At the time Java was first released and MFC was the most widely used OO framework, Java's standard library was like a breath of fresh air. OO has had a few different fashions since the first release of Java but, in my opinion, the base Java API has stood up well. What's so horrible about it?

Look at URLConnection for example. Ignoring the Factory Factory Factory aspect, note that the object starts off as a request object, and then magically becomes a response object when you magically happen to call certain magical methods. Magic sucks, you should start with two objects, a user agent and a request. Tell the user agent to execute the request, and you get a response back. This is easier to implement, easier to use, and easier to reuse... but Java instead decided to go with a non-OO API encapsulated in 150 different objects.

Not good design.

java.util.Date, java.util.Calendar

I reckon people who buy SUN hardware will never-ever run their app on GAE for too many reason.

I do agree however there is nothing wrong in omitting core classes, I think SUN started it with idea of lightweight client java a while ago :) And such an initiative should really have come from SUN many years ago, giving java developers cheap hosting.

Learn the difference between 'flaut' and 'flaunt'.

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