[geeks] Misuse of Java

[Chris Hedemark]

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Maybe Sun is keeping their options open for a change of hardware 
architecture, or change of OS (Linux?)

They've been warming up to Linux more and more, and they have not been 
very aggressive in developing new hardware or dumping their old 
processor line.

On Wednesday, November 6, 2002, at 07:16 AM, Jonathan C Patschke wrote:

> Disclaimer:  I like Java, and I think it's a Good Thing.  However, I 
> don't think it's appropriate for everything; there's very little that 
> is.
>
> It seems like every program that comes from Sun these days ships with 
> an installer written in Java against what has to be one of the world's 
> slowest installation toolkits.  You pop in the CD, and (if you're 
> running CDE), you get to wait a couple of minutes for the first window 
> to pop up, and then you get the slug through dialog after dialog of 
> crap, and then wait nearly forever while things get installed.
>
> Here's what I don't get:
>   1)  Why waste all that CPU time on a Java app that's only going to 
> run on one platform, anyway?  Why not build it in C, or, hell, TCL/Tk?
>   2)  What was wrong with pkgadd, wrapped in a little shell script for 
> picking package bundles?
>
> My current data-point comes from Forte 6.1, which takes several 
> -hours- to install from CDROM on an Ultra 1e if you select to install 
> everything from the installation program.  However, if you just "cd 
> /cdrom/cdrom0/products/packages ; yes | pkgadd -d. *", the process 
> takes about fifteen -minutes-.  A good part of this sloth can be 
> attributed to the stupidity of Sun's installation framework, which 
> doesn't handle overlapping bundles properly (all the overlapping bits 
> get installed N times).  Part of it is just that the installation 
> program is that slow.  Hopefully, so long as Sun ships applications 
> with this sluggish installer, they'll keep the SysV packages nicely 
> exposed so that we can just use pkgadd.
>
> I'm bothered by the fact that this trend doesn't seem to be stopping 
> at installation gizmos.  More and more Solaris-specific administration 
> utilities are being written in Java by Sun.  I know it's typically a 
> lot easier to hammer out an app in Java than in C, but are Sun's 
> programmers really -that- strapped for time, or have they forgotten 
> that not everyone has a Blade 2000 or an Ultra 80 on their desk?  Or 
> are the Java programmers on the Solaris team simply not up-to-speed on 
> how to make a Java/Swing application more optimized?
>
> --
> Jonathan C. Patschke
> The contents of this electronic mail message are intended for whomever 
> gets them.  If you don't want it, delete it.  If you received this 
> message in error, yell at your Postmaster, since I really don't give a 
> damn.
> _______________________________________________
> GEEKS:  http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/geeks
>
>

Chris Hedemark
Hillsborough, NC
http://yonderway.com


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