The revolutionary programming language from Sun has long been familiar to the web development community. However, as the 1990s fade further into the past, Java is gradually showing signs of age. 
For Peter Yared, CEO of ActiveGrid, the Java programming language is closely tied to an important chapter in his career. In the late 1990s, Yared was the Chief Technology Officer at NetDynamics, a company whose key products were all built on Java. For the next five years, Yared held leadership positions at Sun. Therefore, it is surprising to hear him declare that “Java is a dinosaur“—implying that Java once had a glorious past, but where is that glory now?
Yared has his own reasons for such a conclusion. ActiveGrid, Yared’s two-year-old company, is in the business of what he calls a new generation of application servers. These are still used to build websites and enterprise software, but they do not rely on Java at all.
Instead, they focus on open-source software packages, including the Linux operating system, Apache Web server, MySQL database, and a set of scripting languages all starting with the letter P: Perl, Python, and PHP. Combine all these elements, take the first letters, and you get LAMP – a new generation programming language.
Illuminating the Web with LAMP
Yared reveals that LAMP is increasingly favored and used for developing the new generation of web applications, as well as related technologies. And Java? That steaming cup of coffee now seems like an old textbook, showing signs of age and struggling to keep up with modern innovations. In other words: It belongs to the last millennium.
Could it be that Java—once the “queen of queens“, “the most modern of the modern“—has turned into a “mummified” technology, outdated and old-fashioned like IBM’s mainframe computers or SAP’s enterprise software? Unfortunately, the evidence we have compels us to nod in agreement.
| Currently, Java is mostly favored in Asia; in Europe and North America, it resembles a girl who is gradually “losing her charm.” The usage rate of .NET has surged nearly 15%, from 40.3% to 54.1% in North America, surpassing the combined rate of Java usage in Europe and Asia. In another survey, the popularity of PHP in North America increased from 26% in 2003 to 36% this year, while in the old continent of Eurasia, the pace was even faster. “There are too many strong competitors, and they are gradually nibbling away at Java’s market share,” concluded the president of Evans. Another sign indicating Java’s decline comes from the technology book market. According to O’Reilly Media, a leading programming book publisher, sales of Java-related books have dropped by 4% compared to last year, while sales of AJAX guidebooks—a programming language dominating open-source software packages—have skyrocketed by 68%. |
According to a report from Evans Data Corp, which conducts regular annual surveys on software development activity, the usage rate of Java is steadily declining, while LAMP and Microsoft’s .NET continue to expand. In North America, only 47.9% of respondents still use Java as their primary programming language, down from 51.4% in the fall of 2002.
“Not anytime soon will it lose its charm”
Of course, Sun is the most vehement opponent of this assertion. “Has Java reached its end? Not at all. We believe it is just getting started,” declared John Loiacono, executive vice president of Sun’s software division.
To support his statement, John points out two facts: 1. Java remains very strong in complex, large-scale enterprise applications, and 2. Java is particularly popular in mobile devices—with up to 600 models currently on the market running Java, and 7 out of 10 top models being developed based on this technology.
Sadly for Sun, other companies do not share this view. Even if Java still has a firm foothold in key markets, interviews with more than a dozen tech giants and analysts indicate that the market is shifting unfavorably for Java.
This has raised concerns not only for Sun but also for companies like IBM, BEA Systems, and jBoss, as they have heavily bet on this programming language. If Java loses its luster, the appeal of products based on this language will also vanish.
New Stars
For many tech giants like Google and Yahoo!, Java has never held a significant position in their development strategies. Smaller companies specializing in Web 2.0 particularly favor AJAX and PHP, the new generation of lightweight and agile programming tools. This is the case for companies like Friendster, Flickr, and Facebook. According to them, modern tools are not as “picky” as Java, allowing programmers with moderate skills to quickly learn how to develop applications.
Many analysts believe this shift is reminiscent of the 1990s when Java displaced traditional programming languages like C and C+. Now the development community is flocking from Java to PHP and AJAX. From a mere 0 in 2000, the number of websites using PHP has skyrocketed to 23 million pages.
In its early days, Java was seen as a “detox” remedy against Microsoft’s hegemony. By using Java, software developers and web developers could write programs that ran on multiple operating systems. In the desktop realm where Windows reigns supreme, Java has failed, but in the server world, Java has become a powerful force.
For simple websites and web applications, there is no longer a need for Java. However, when it comes to doing something more complex or intricate, that’s when one must resort to Sun’s products. When coding on Linux, there are significantly fewer layers, so Java is not necessary. Similarly, when developing desktop applications for traders, brokers, and salespeople, many have turned to Microsoft’s Visual Studio .NET programming tools.
“The market is becoming increasingly competitive, and customers have more choices. No one, whether a user or a giant, remains loyal to just one technology,” shrugged Rod Smith, vice president of new software technology at IBM. Ultimately, is it time to play a sad waltz for Java?
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