Why does Java suck so much?

I'm not a developer, I'm a sysadmin. I don't write software, I implement and use it.

Freaking routers, printers and SANs often have Java web based configuration applications, and universally they are slow, glitchy and unreliable.

I've just spent an hour trying to change a few settings on a printer and have had to restart IE 8 times and its starting to really shit me.

Why are java apps like this? is it java or the developers that suck?

If its Java then why do they use it? Why not just do a decent HTML interface?

Discuss.

 

NFI, but I never install Java on any of my systems anymore. Causes to many issues and I hate it.

 

developers suck

and HTML is going interact with a device how?

 

Mostly Java.
I am a developer and have used Java, I avoid it like the plague. The Problem is its an interpreted language (effectively a fast script language). You need an interpreter to run the code. So this is why you always need to download some java application when running java applications on your PC.

what gets me is why they put it on mobile phones!!!!!

btwt: my router and printer have web interfaces

 

Fixed that for you.

 

Java is compiled. It has nothing to do with scripting languages.
You need a virtual machine not an interpreter. These are not the same thing.

Java is so widespread because it's robust, powerful and applications can be optimised dynamically by the many Java compilers running in the background to perform as well as possible given some set of hardware constraints.

It's also one of the few truly dynamic cross-platform development languages which is why it features everywhere.

To answer the OP's question: it's not Java that sucks, it's the shitty Chinese developers writing the front-end for your hardware.

 

thanks for correcting the bytecode and virtual machine, but you didn't need to cross out my "effectively a fast script language" comment

 

^^^^ This is the answer

 

I doubt this somehow, however.

If you look at the overall shittyness of applications written in C++ (for example) I would guestimate that 20% of them are buggy, slow and use stupid amounts of CPU for no good reason... however with Java I would put this at about 80-90%.

I am willing to accept that this is in-part due to the accessible and easily distributable nature of Java code.... but not all of it.

 

Because java is easier to write in you get hobbits coding stuff.

 

Java applets suck. But there is nothing wrong with using java on the server side to interact with the hardware.

 

I assumed because it can be cross platform.

 

The difference between JavaRE and .NetRE is that .net works on one platform so they have no problems calling the WinAPI functions for window controls. The Win API is done in C and as such is helluva lot faster then the Swing Toolkit or whatever the hell Java uses to draw a User Interface.

 

Because you don't need to recompile to every architecture? Compile once, and it works on every phone in existence = win.

 

more weirdness..
an app that is in use where i work runs only on a specific version of java.
which falls AOT when the SOE has a newer version of java and it tries to update.

no idea why it needs a specific version to run. but it does.

 

Swing sucks, Java does not.

 

Because code written in C++ are often less complicated?

It is hard to scale C++ apps up before the age of the language start to show, you start having memory leak problems etc...

Because HTML is a mark up language...

Correction, everyphone which has J2ME...

 

Still doesn't explain why they don't use some kind of cgi with html.

 

Not true, J2ME is heavily fragmented between devices. Write once run anywhere does not exist in mobile.

 

It's the programmers and their code.

It would be the same for any other language except, in this case, Java is the "standard". Java however, is "slower" when it comes to performance.