I am so sick and tired of this ....

Miscellaneous Topics
#1

DISCLAIMER: The following is a pointless Rant:

Yes…
I am extremly sick and tired of this.
and I’m gonna (re)start a new thread that the topic that
will ALWAYS be around. and NEVER get an answer…

I hate C++ programmers. They piss me off.
I’m sick and tired of defending java.
People just don’t listen to what you are saying.
They’re all arogant in their little own world and can’t
admit that sometimes, change is good.

I’m suck of all their BULL#$%@ reasons why Java “sucks”

Reason #1: Java is too slow
They play this like its the ace of trump of something.

A: What? You’re coding in Java? Java is too slow…
What the hell are you thinking? Why would people
code anything in Java?

B: Have you coded anything in java before?

A: Well, other than school assignments, no.

B: Have you heard of any situation of products where
it was too slow, and the solution which solved the
problem was switching from Java to C++?

A: No…

B: Have you seen any of the benchmarks using newer
version of JVMs?

A: No…

B: So java is too slow because?

A: That’s what I hear.

B: Seriouly , stfu.

Java is never gonna lose this image. And I think its sad.
I’ve worked at 3 different places on products which are
based entirely on java. Never ONCE was speed
(non-Swing-GUI aspect) a problem.

I strongly believe that on a high application level,
java’s speed is good enough to handle anything.

(NOTE: There are probably right ways to do Swing
as shown by JGoodies to make it fast. We just didn’t
know of them at the time.)

Reason #2: Java has no Pointers, enumeration, blah blah
insert fav useless problematic functionality here

These things were removed for a reason.
There are whole thread devoted to argueing these,
so I’m not gonna bother.

I’m just gonna say, if you shoot down another language
because you can’t do you gimmicky tricks in it. That
doesn’t really say much of your skillls as a programmer
doesn’t it?

Most Java programmer I’ve met, pride themselves in
reconizing and applying design patterns, good OOP
deisgns and refactoring techniques. Aswell as Utilizing Unit
testing and test first philsophies.

Most C++ programmers, pride themselves in being
able to pull fancy memory and pointer techniques out
of their ass to cause pain who ever has to read their
code in the future and gain a 0.0000001 % increase in
performance.

B: Seriouly , stfu.

Reason #3:
What futher pisses me off is that they totally ignore
the good things about java. and shoot down your
arguements…

B: One of the reasons I love java is cause everything
is standarized. You know where to go for documentation.
Which are always up to date. And they constant to make
improvements on it. and you get improvements everytime
there’s a new version.

A: That’s cause Java sucks, STL is perfect, no need to
EVER improve it.

B: …

Conclusion:
I’m sick and tired of this. I’m pissed off,
and I’m not making sense.
And I’m just looking for some support.
Looking if there’s any one in my corner.

#2

Yep, I’ll agree with you at the risk of receiving some of the flame impact. However…

I’m a C++ and Java programmer (about 50% of each). Am I allowed to agree? :wink:

Kev

#3

As Cas recently decided, this is a GOOD thing: it means there’s plenty of fat in the industry which people like you can make easily cut out. Where there’s fat, there’s money for those that can excise it. In other words, you’re able to produce better games in less time… and this can be turned into more money/fame/etc for yourself.

That aside, it sounds like you’d really like to do something about it. I’ve been fighting it for years - in fact, 3 of the 5 software 3D renderers I wrote were done mainly to prove that java was not only fast but also fast on client-side, gaming features. Of course, now they’re irrelevant (except for the 3k one :)) thanks to mature OGL bindings. They worked OK - for the few people that saw them.

Based on lengthy experience with advocacy and evangelism (and lots of PR and community-building stuff) I set up JGF. All those poor misguided people who say “I’m really thick and will only believe java is fast when I see a great game using it” (OK, so they don’t generally include the first phrase, but many of them ought to ;)) can go to JGF, get a bit scared when they see a screenshot of Quake 3, then actually try running Squareheads - gettin even more scared when it runs and installs without them having to do anything and doesn’t mess with their system - then finally see their world shatter when they get 75fps running around the level.

Seriously, advocacy is tough. It’s even tougher when the platform owner has done a generally poor job of it (and remember that IBM had to step in years ago with several hundred employees devoted to java promotion because Sun wasn’t doing anywhere near enough advocacy even on the server side!). If you’ve got the strength to keep going, and spend your effort wisely, you’ll see things get much better - witness the fact that only a few years ago Sun didn’t even have a games dept, but ChrisM and co managed in small steps to bring about a big leap forwards.

Now, obviously (as you’ve discovered, by the sounds of things) just one voice alone in the dark doesn’t get very far. Which is part of why I setup JGF - both as a showcase for java’s successes, all in one place, and also as a rallying point for java games developers. FYI almost 40% of all the outside links to JGF were posted by people who have no involvement but have found it useful to support arguments such as the one you describe (we frequently get entires in the log which point back to forums e.g. on gamedev.net where someone has used the JGF games page to enact smack-down on some bigmouthed ignorant C++ programmer), and also to help other people who are struggling to move forward (e.g. we now have at least one university course linking to the articles section specifically for the programming tutorials there).

So far, the ultra-basic site has only allowed volunteers to help by:

  • writing articles
  • editing other people’s articles
  • finding technologies and games, gathering all the data, and adding it to the DB
  • submitting additional content by email (e.g. the supported-hardware list that we maintain for JInput)

But I’m working on version 3 right now which will give the people running JGF a lot more power. All discussion is purely by email right now, since version-2 (current) doesn’t have any forums, but get in touch and you can start helping shape what version 3 will be right now.

(email me at ceo @ grexengine.com)

#4

STOP THE PRESSES!

Blahblahblah starts thread named "I am so sick and tired of this … "!!!

Sorry, I couldn’t resist. :wink:

BTW, on topic…
Last night I gave a 1 1/2 hour presentation to the local IGDA chapter about using Java for Gaming, entitled “Java for Gaming, State of the Union” (current political theme).

Anyway, it was incredibly well received and I ended up spending an additional hour afterwards in group discussions.

My approach was…

  1. explain a bit more about how Java works NOW

  2. Contrasted it with .Net and what is happening in the Managed languages space

  3. showed allot of pretty 3D demos using JOGL and Java3D, and finally closing the demo part with Techland’s “Chrome”, and

  4. explained that Java has the most, best FREE tools, and to date there has never been a single Java virus…

Needless to say people seemed to like what they saw and heard and at no point did I attempt to “convert” a C/C++ programmer. I just showed whats great about it in a very practical way.

[mod - formatting]

#5

Agreed. But Swing was really slow (and is still in some cases with bad developers)! Maybe we should try to separate the Swing scene from the Java Platform scene.

Or maybe we (Java Developers) should do nothing, and just let the C/C++ developers be smashed by the Java storm that shall come :wink: ;D

#6

Sorry for maybe this question but what’s the relationship between Quake 3 and Java? I think a missed something.

#7

Ahhhhh, sorry Blahblahblah!!!

I miss read the thread when I posted, as I thought you started this thread.

Opps! My bad! hahah
:-X

#8

If I had actually started it, then I’d have got the point. As it is, I’m just confused ???

EDIT: Ah, OK, gotcha :). Obviously, my reputation and character are now so cemented that your subconscious interpreted what your eyes were seeing as a mistake, and corrected it :).

A fine example of how advocacy can work extremely well, if you manage to speak to the right people at the right time (and of course it helps that:

  1. An IGDA chapter is a heck of a lot more receptive than an online forum :(.
  2. Although I’ve never heard him speak, considering all the writings and lectures he’s done I’m sure Shawn’s pretty good at it - and he has lots of visible background (prior work etc) which helps get people to listen to you seriously.

That’s the one bit everyone can do. And it does work, so long as you have enough knowledge and facts to back up what you’re saying. It helps if you’ve been a C++ programmer too.

A lot of java devs can’t do that because they don’t know .NET well enough to compare/contrast. Like being a C++ programmer, it helps if you know it well enough to speak lucidly and accurately - but I’ve seen java proponents shot down in flames because they tried to compare it to C++ when they’d hardly used C++ at all, and ended up undermining all their own arguments :(.

i.e. the same approach as JGF - show them stuff that’s been done (although so far mostly it’s “look, here’s what hobbyist’s can do…impressive, no?”)

By the very act of choosing to stand up in front of an audience of professional C++ games programmers to tell them about how good java is you were attempting to convert them already!

But I think I see your point - I think you’re emphasizing that there’s no need to be aggressive or confrontational?

#9

[quote]Sorry for maybe this question but what’s the relationship between Quake 3 and Java? I think a missed something.
[/quote]
Squareheads, a game on JGF, loads and runs Quake3 maps at a good fast speed.

Lots and lots of people use “yes, but could it do Quake X?” as a benchmark for the suitability of any platform, where X == whatever the lastest version is. (soon to be replaced by “can it do Doom3?” of course ;)).

#10

[quote] 2) Contrasted it with .Net and what is happening in the Managed languages space
[/quote]
So what is the contrast with .net and what is happening in the managed language space?

#11

Good question. I myself really want an answer.

#12

I really am interested in this; anyone care to explain?

#13

in an attempt to end the hijckign of this thread…

Java - .Net info links. (found Googling “java compare .net” and “java versus .net”)

Microsoft .NET vs. J2EE: How Do They Stack Up?

Sun link
An Analysis of .NET
http://java.sun.com/features/2000/11/dot-net.html

Java versus .Net?
In enterprise shops, Java and .NET is more like it
http://www.sdtimes.com/news/091/special1.htm

#14

The first two are 4 years old and a waste of time (seen them before), but the third is quite sensible. All in all though, it doesn’t say much, beyond “.NET and J2EE both aim to work well with a variety of systems at an enterprise level, so that - unsurprisingly - they are both approximately as good as each other, and often copy the best ideas of each other” (not exact words).

I would have thought you would have more to say than to just dig out google links (that anyone could find), seeing as you just gave a talk on this topic? Especially seeing as the main links google supplies are useless (as noted above) - which I know has been a problem for people before, because they’ve asked me if I knew any better resources :).

Howabout start a new topic on this? IMHO it’s relevant to games, given the number of times consider one or the other for doing online games here…

#15

I went into explaining about .Net’s CLR and how .Net uses virtual machine mechanism similiar to Java uses. Also what managed means as comapre to Java’s “managing” - stuff you can find out on the web if you choose to look, these people aren’t necessarily doing that, that’s why I talked about it.

Mostly I use .Net as a way to give legitimacy to the Java platform (for game programmers) since it uses a form of virtual machine.

Sorry if my links didn’t turn you on, I just grabbed whatever came up that even look reasonable, and it was indirect reference to the thread at hand.

In any case, I see you start up the thread so I’m sure the discussion will get worked out there.
[mod]

I’m sorry you thought I would “have more to say than dig out a few Google links”…
I’m not sure why you would think that, I mean we all only have so much time in the day and I’m so sorry if my free commentary came up short in your expectations - geez…It’s not like I advertised Java vs. Net for game programming complete explanation stay tuned! I simply mentioned my approach to discussing Java with C/C++ game developers as per the thread…