Calvin Austin's Blog

If Java was a car

Kirk Pepperdine, guru of Java performance, recently praised Sun and the Java team for their open bug database and questioned the labelling of enhancements as 'bugs'. At the same time, someone at Sun made a tough decision to slip JDK 6.0. Personally I thought the schedule was never going to fit, it has been a tough time for engineers at Sun and google is a tempting new home for many, so I applaud the move, people remember a bad product for far longer than they remember a delay.

However, given Kirks point and Rays blog together, I think as developers we have get a good deal from Java when I compare it to the car I bought last year.

If Java was a car:

1. You would have to pay to see bug reports (car technical service bulletins)
2. Every 3 to 6 months you would have to stop using it and find something else to use for a day (car service)
3. Unless you were part of a focus group selected you couldn't give product feature requests or track them using a number
4. You could only use a copy for your state, you would have to pay for a different state or country (ok california have fairly tough car laws)
5. Tuning the JVM voids your warranty and insurance

Cars have other advantages of course but it does underline that developers and Java developers do get a certain freedom to influence a product and gain important information for free.

Comments

• Except that cars aren't Java's competition, eh?

  Not to be negative. Just being pragmatic rather than rhetorical. (I also agree that it's better to be late than have a bad release.)
  

  Posted by: tjpalmer on January 25, 2006 at 01:10 PM

• - it would be a free car
  - it would be 5 times faster than when you bought it
  - you could drive it on any road you wanted, regardless of whether they drove on the right hand side (Windows) or the left hand side (Unix)
  - there would be a huge community of add-ons for your car, some completely free
  - the blueprints would be available after clicking through fairly liberal license
  

  Posted by: jessewilson on January 25, 2006 at 05:43 PM

• @tjpalmer: ok it wasn't the best comparison :*)

  @jesse: I wish I thought of those too!

  Posted by: calvinaustin on January 25, 2006 at 06:10 PM

• maybe jello would have been a better comparison. If you eat it too soon after making it you get liquid goo. But if your patient and wait until its set up then you get a jiggly delight(ahem, well maybe that's not the right word)! leouser

  Posted by: leouser on January 26, 2006 at 12:54 PM

• "Tuning the JVM voids your warranty and insurance" and depending on what tuning you do tuning your car may well do the same ;)
  If Java were a car you'd be forced to buy a new one every year or so because the manufacturer would stop carrying spares and refusing maintenance on older models. Of course that's pretty much the case with cars as well, though the interval is longer.
  

  Posted by: jwenting on January 30, 2006 at 04:30 AM

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