3.4. Community
The most critical crown jewel for Java is the community. Said another way, Java's
market share makes it the 500-lb. gorilla who can sleep anywhere he chooses.
Java's community is as massive as it is diverse:
 Vendors across the industry support Java. Though Sun is the inventor, IBM
is perhaps the most important Java supporter.
 Enterprise developers use Java to do almost everything. Java is at once a
mobile computing platform, a web-based applications language, a systems
language for enterprise-plumbing code called middleware , and everything
in between.
 Hobby programmers flock in droves toward open source projects. Once the
black sheep of the open source community, Java has now become the
dominant player.
Standards also play a significant role in enterprise computing. From the beginning,
the core Java vendors have collaborated to establish standards. Servlets, EJB, and
JSP were three of the most influential standards of this decade. To fend off the
image that Java was growing increasingly proprietary, they established a
community process.
Java has characteristics that many of us take for granted. You can find good Java
developers everywhere. No one ever gets fired for choosing Java. It's mature and
ready for outsourcing. You can get education. You can buy components. You can
often choose between many implementations of a standard. You can do many
things for free. I could go on, but the point is clear. Java's community makes
enterprise development safe.
3.4.1. The Importance of Open Source
Everyone wants to build a monopoly for the inevitable benefits of market
domination, but the power behind Java's community goes well beyond riding the

 IBM still maintains some control over the IDE, and more importantly, it
keeps its competitors from controlling any aspect of Java through an IDE.
I'm not suggesting that the open source community is easy to manipulate or
control. It's a force of its own. If you're starting a new software company or
managing a mature one, you have to consider the impact of open source.
3.4.2. Moving Forward
Community played perhaps the key role in the emergence of Java. Without
enticing the C++ community, Java would have started much slower, and may never
have attracted the support of the core vendors. Without the open source
community, many of the innovations that now define Java might never have
happened. The challenges for the next major language are daunting.
If there is to be an ultimate challenger for Java, the next successful language will
need to achieve a critical mass quickly. That suggests to me that there will need to
be some sort of catalyst, like applets in Netscape. The next successful language
will probably also need to nurture a massive open source programming
community, if it is to enjoy the variety and longevity of Java. Finally, the next
language needs to be politically safe (think Ruby, not C#), so standards can emerge
without the constant bickering that can get in the way. 3.5. Breaking the Myths
As with all technologies that rise so quickly and become so prominent, it's
tempting to worship Java. In fact, many media Java proponents use Java's
overwhelming success to defend everything from EJBs to static typing. They make
a leap of faith to suggest that Java had to be perfect for it to achieve such
widespread success. That's dangerous. In fact, many of the following myths may
eventually help lead to Java's demise.

languages have had a limited period of leadership. In the end, this will be true of
Java as well.
3.5.2. Myth 2: Java Is a Great Applications Language
Java didn't succeed because it was the best application programming language. It's
not even a particularly good application programming language. Smalltalk and
Python are certainly more productive. Visual Basic is simpler. Java succeeded
because it was able to grab the existing C++ community, and enable them for the
Internet. The community, not the language, represents the most important aspect of
Java. Some of the very forces that ushered in the Java revolution may well help
lead to its ultimate demise. The C++ legacy, necessary to attract the vast existing
community, also limits Java in many ways that we'll explore in Chapter 4.
Beyond the syntax of Java, its explosive success forces Sun to make conservative
decisions at the language level. It's doubtful, for example, that we'll see aspect-
oriented programming baked into the language, as many think it should be. These
decisions, designed to maintain backward compatibility, mean Java simply can't
evolve as quickly as its competition. All of this means that Java's evolution is
limited, when you compare it to its competition.
3.5.3. Myth 3: Java Is the Most Productive Language
When you compare it to C++, Java is indeed quite productive. That's the cloudy
window through which we view Java. But Java's not an application language, any
more than C++ was. Anyone who's ever used Basic or Smalltalk can tell you about
the importance of a rapid feedback loop. Java's compilation requirements and static
typing blow away any ability of real-time interpretation or a rapid feedback loop.
Static typing is good for preventing some runtime errors, but it's hard on
productivity. Java's string handling is limited. Java's syntax lacks features like
closures and code blocks (which let you pass a block of code as an argument).
Again, Java won because it was more productive than the language that most of us
were using at the time. It was productive enough. It won't always be.
3.5.3.1. Corollary 3a: All languages are about the same
Java was able to displace C++ because it offered significant improvements, like

The last few major programming languages have mostly come from unlikely
places. The last two didn't even come from major software companies. C came
from Bell Labs, a communications company. Java came from Sun, a hardware
company. The next popular language will likely come from an unlikely source as
well. I don't count C#. It's effectively a Java clone. And the roots of success of
Visual Basic came from a small company, operating on a razor-
thin budget out of a
garage in the Pacific Northwest, called Microsoft.
Java is a mere programming language. Like all languages, its moment in the sun,
and its leadership, will prove to be limited. The question is not if, but when.
3.5.6. Looking Ahead
So far, I've tried to paint an accurate picture of Java's success. I owe much of my
career to the fathers of Java, and the incredible run of success it's had. Still, I
believe that Java is not the unassailable juggernaut that many believe it to be. I
think that Java is drifting away from the very developers who made it successful,
those who could download a relatively simple language and environment to get an
applet or servlet running quickly. Further, some of the very compromises that
made Java attractive to the C++ base, like primitives, static typing, and a C++-like
syntax, are beginning to work against it. Simply put, Java has reaped the benefits
of effective compromises. In the next chapter, we talk about the costs.