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Poll Result: How Quickly Will JavaFX Be Adopted?

Posted by editor on May 15, 2009 at 10:22 AM CDT

A quick glance at the results of last week's java.net poll might make you think the java.net community has a clear opinion about the future of JavaFX. After all, more than half of all votes were cast for the response "It [JavaFX] will never be widely used." And it has been rare in recent polls for a single response to garner 50% or more of the voting.

Look a bit more closely, though, and you can argue that the community actually is more evenly divided on JavaFX's future. Here's the specific question that was asked, along with the final vote tally:

How quickly will JavaFX be adopted as a rich client technology?

  • 4.3% (27 votes) - It's growth will be explosive
  • 12.7% (79 votes) - Eventually it will be a dominant technology
  • 22.4% (139 votes) - It will endure as a secondary option
  • 52.5% (325 votes) - It will never be widely used
  • 3.8% (24 votes) - What's JavaFX?
  • 4.0% (25 votes) - I don't know; other

The first thing to note is that more than 600 votes were cast. That means that this poll stimulated more community participation than any of the other recent polls. Does this matter? I think so. I think it suggests that, whatever may people think about the future of JavaFX, JavaFX is something that has captured their interest. People are following JavaFX.

Here's why I think the poll results indicate a divided view rather than a clear verdict, despite the 52.5% of votes cast for "It will never be widely used." If you total the votes for the first three response options, you see that almost 30% of the votes cast reflect the view that JavaFX is going to be a viable technology for quite a long time into the future, either within a niche, or as an ultimately dominating technology that displaces other, currently dominant technologies.

More than 1/6th of the responses believe that ultimately JavaFX will become the dominant rich client technology. That's a remarkably high number for a new technology that's entering an already crowded field that includes a fairly entrenched established technology, and new competitors backed by corporate giants.

Now perhaps you can say "but yes, this is a poll of Java insiders, so it's not an objective view." Yes, you can say that; also, this is not a scientifically conducted survey. Still, most of the voters have established expertise in technology and software development, and many have seen technologies long presumed to be unstoppably dominant begin to lose their footing. It takes time, certainly, but if you've been around for some decades you've seen things that never would have seemed possible happen -- such as free software effectively competing with corporate products on many different fronts.

Anyway, this was indeed an interesting poll, with interesting results. The comments voters posted were interesting as well, with people saying what they think is wrong with JavaFX as it currently stands, and others offering ideas as to what enhancements would turn JavaFX into "a killer."

New Poll: How closely will you follow JavaOne 2009

Voting is now open on our new poll, which asks "How closely will you follow JavaOne 2009?" Voting is open through the next week.

In our Feature Article,

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The latest Java Mobility Podcast is Java Mobility Podcast 78: JSR 290 XML User Interface Markup Language, in which JSR 290 developers Natalia Medvedenko and Petr Panteleyev talk about JSR 290 and the new power it will give Java ME developers. OpenJDK Podcast is The latest JavaOne Community Corner Podcast is

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In Java Today, Charles Humble reviews the history and current state of OpenJDK governance in OpenJDK Governance Board's Life is Extended Despite Lack of Delivery: "Sun Microsystems' probable acquisition by Oracle, the fact that there is still not a JSR for Java 7, and the lack of a Constitution for the OpenJDK project, is becoming a matter of concern amongst some in the Java community. However, on the 8th May 2009, Mark Reinhold, Chief Engineer for Java SE at Sun, announced that Sun has extended the life of the Interim OpenJDK Governance Board for a further twelve months..."

InfoQueue published a new article by Ryan Knight, Spring BlazeDS Integration: What it Is and What Does it Change?: "Adobe and Spring made a major announcement the end of last year that they where going to collaborate on a joint project called Spring BlazeDS Integration. The goal was to allow the Spring development model to be used for creating Rich Internet Applications (RIA's) with Adobe Flex, BlazeDS, Spring and Java. This would allow Spring managed services to be exposed through BlazeDS..."

And Peligri talks about history and a new era for computing in No Longer Punch Cards... Nor Laptops! - Hudson Services On The Cloud: "Many years ago, one would write a program by punching a Card Deck on your Puncher, submitting it (with a rubber band) and then getting back a printout... Then we went through Teletypes, CRTs, Workstations and today's Laptops. So, how does the future look like? ..."

In our featured Weblogs, Felipe Gaucho shows how to implement Google AdSense in your Hudson installation: "This is probably my shortest blog ever, just to register a mini trick with Hudson. The good news are: you can add Google AdSense to your Hudson frontpage - or any other HTML snippet you want..."

Jim Driscoll demonstrates Redirecting from a JSF 2.0 Ajax Request: "Recently, I had a user ask how to do a redirect from an JSF 2.0 Ajax request. Here's one way, that I've lifted from one of our tests. First, the bean that does the work..."

And Ed Burns announces JSF2 Final Approval Ballot in Progress: "As you can see on the JSR page for JSR-314, the Final Approval Ballot phase for JSF 2.0 is underway and runs til 26 May."

The new java.net Poll asks: "How closely will you follow JavaOne 2009?" Voting will run through next Thursday, May 21.

This week's Spotlight is Ed Ort's article JavaFX App-O-Rama: Applications From the Community: "Although the JavaFX platform is only a few months old -- its initial full release was in December 2009 -- people are already building some very interesting applications with it. This is a vibrant, creative, and extremely productive community..."

In the Forums, freaksta has a problem involving Marshaling of a JAXB Object (with another JAXB object inherited): "Hello everybody! I have used JAXB in plenty of works now, but now i have a problem, and i don´t know exactly how to solve it. I'm working at a database middleware system. I\'m using the newly released query language standard MPQF. This standard provides a xml schema in order to create the needed objects. I want to build a QueryByDescription query. For the background. In this query type you can use any metadata schema based on XML. We are using some kind of DICOM xml schema. Ok, enough theory. In my first processing step, i´am building the DICOM object with the needed informations. This DICOM object will then be inserted in the corresponding element of the MPQF query..."

maximusjc has some issues in a project involving Glassfish + JPA + Maven +EJB: "Hi, I'm trying to develop an application in JEE using maven and Glassfish, but I have a problem that I can't solve by myself. I'm doing an appclient make a request for a Stateless Session Bean, well I'm getting the answer at first request, but if I try to do a second request I got an Exception saying my EntityManager is closed, but I'm not closing it in my hard code. After if I try to do a third request I get a right answer, if I try fourth the exception appear again, and so on. What I mean I'm getting correct answer on odd request but on even request I'm getting that exception. This is the Exception I'm getting ..."

And kibibyte asks about glassfish cluster + j2ee policy agent ?: "Hi. I have glassfish cluster on 2 separate machines.
My question is how secure it with j2ee agent? with no cluster i would do it with specifying /opt/glassfish/server/glassfish/domains/domain1/config as configuration directory. however no im puzzled where to install j2ee agent on cluster. I tried specify config directory as : /opt/glassfish/server/glassfish/nodeagents/node1/node1-instance/config on each instance, but it doesnt work ... "

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A quick glance at the results of last week's java.net poll might make you think the java.net community has a clear opinion about the future of JavaFX...
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Comments

by sfitzjava - 2009-05-18 16:34

@Dutchiedave, Psynixis: Hahaha, Just because you put a new version number and call it 1.0 does not mean you get to restart the clock on a products life. This isn't microsoft. In 07 we were allowed to download and start writing apps using something called F3Pad or JFXPad and the initial public release of JavaFX. So I am an early adopter of JavaFX, used it and realized more secret sauce needed to be added. Here is a link to the announcement in 2007 JavaOne (which I was at) . http://java.sun.com/javaone/sf/2007/articles/javafxmobile.jsp So "2+yr" a bit rich?! I don't think so... calling 52.5% responding negatively a positive sign and that javaFX has only been in the market for 5mo, now that is more than a bit rich. @psynixis: I would agree the licensing is a big issue, it has stopped the use of their product in the real world which means they are killing their own success. As a point of technology adoption: I did not say "[I'd]expect more momentum in JavaFX adoption because it's been around for 2+yr", I said "after 2+yr ... I would expect more momentum" . The momentum I spoke about was the support from within, and from external supporters to push the language against the critics ramblings. Case in point, Java itself. Java was announced in May of 1995, and in Dec 1996 it was up to JDK1.1, by 1997 I was already working on consulting contracts developing systems in Java. I was pushing companies and critics to accept the language. Not by quoting some PHD dissertation or how the progress of computer languages logically would take the industry to this final selection, but by developing code, systems, solutions and showing them how useful, powerful, and meaningful java is. Another Sun product called JDS was announced in 2004, and highly supported by big business and the Sun execs as the answer to everyones question for the desktop. Here we have momentum but at top level and through papers and reports of how wonderful this new (repackaged linux) and support contracts would be. However using the product quickly demonstrated it was a rough cut, and in 2 years little to none of the critics issues had been addressed. I believe 2006-07 was it's EOL. Which pattern do you see JavaFX following?

by nsigma - 2009-05-18 10:08

Personally, I think it all comes down to the future licensing model for JavaFX. Early signs were that JavaFX was going to be developed in the open and be GPL'd. JavaFX needs something to clearly differentiate itself against the incumbent technology (ie Flash) and this could have been it. With the uncertainty surrounding Oracle's plans, JavaFX needs the security of being out in the open. I for one am not going to spend my time learning a fledgling technology that could just disappear within a year. Open it now and it may still stand a chance!

by psynixis - 2009-05-18 09:13

@sfitzjava Well, you say you know about technology adoption; but then you say you'd expect more momentum in JavaFX adoption because it's been around for 2+ years. I'm not sure both those statements are consistent. As others have said, JavaFX was only ever going to begin to attract the early adopter community in December 08 - around five months ago. The current state of the technology i.e. version 1.1.1 is not sufficient to attract the early majority community The bottom line is: JavaFX adoption is exactly where any reasonable person would expect it to be. The big question is: will the 1.2 release be good enough to enable JavaFX to go to the next level in terms of developer adoption? The answer to that should be clear in the next four weeks or so...

by dutchiedave - 2009-05-16 23:53

To say that JavaFX has been around for 2+ years is a bit rich. Version 1.0 was launched about 5 months ago. This version was really rushed out the door without being feature complete so adoption was always going to be for experimental use only. Version 2 should be different. I was highly sceptical about JavaFX and really thought it would be better to invest in improving Swing, but, having used Illustrator to design and JavaFX to render is really powerful and fast to develop highly interactive applications and browser applets. When the JavaFX team add components (Trees, tables, lists etc) and layouts (hopefully adding MigLayout) to JavaFX there will really be no reason to use Swing directly for new applications, especially if you want the interface to look unique. On a side note, let's face it JavaFX also has all the features that lots of people wanted added to Java but hasn't because it would break backwards compatability. The most important aspect of whether JavaFX will be successfult is whether its install base can get within a couple percent of Flash's install base. The only reason people use Flash is because 95%+ people have Flash installed. Java has a high percentage install base but it is still short of Flash. This has to be overcome if JavaFX is to be competitive.

by sfitzjava - 2009-05-15 23:20

@psynixis, "You know, there's more than one way to interpret data". Yes, I think that was my point in the first place. Time will tell who is right. But after 2+years since it was introduced I would expect more momentum. FYI... Yes I know a thing or two about Tech Adoption, I've been through a few. :) There was another UI toolkit that was all the rage once upon a time called SWT.

by psynixis - 2009-05-15 21:43

@sfitzjava You know, there's more than one way to interpret data. Perhaps you don't understand how technology gets adopted. It's a dynamic process, not a static one - that is people's opinions of technologies change over time. So, this poll represents a snap-shot in time. Here's a link that gives a starting point for you in thinking about technology adoption: http://www.valuebasedmanagement.net/methods_rogers_innovation_adoption_c... According to this model, you will see that, in the very early days of a new innovation, 2.5% of people really get behind a new technology. These are the so-called "innovators"; and are people who really understand the fundamentals of technologies, and how they could possibly fit into the competitive landscape. These people's social networks include people with a slightly different character - the so-called "early adopters". These people really enjoy trying out new technologies, and can put up with bugs, lack of features etc. They are able to imagine the possibilities of what they could do with a new technology. Early-adopters tend to be influenced by the innovators. In the model, the early adopters represent 13.5% of people. Taken together then, the innovators and early adopters comprise 16% of the population. In the Java.net survey, you will notice that about 17% of respondents were strongly enthusiastic about JavaFX. This suggests that the technology is currently in the early adoption phase. Now, back to the technology adoption model, you will see that people who are extremely anti new technology - the so-called "late majority" and "laggards" - comprise around 50% of the population. This compares the 60% of people in the Java.net poll that don't believe Java.net will ever be widely used. This part of the poll further supports the idea that JavaFX is currently perceived in the developer population as a new technology. The bottom line is: JavaFX is clearly at the early adopter stage when it comes to technology adoption. The next phase of adoption needs to be getting the so-called "early majority" on board. What are the things that will convince the early majority to start using JavaFX? The early majority will: be influenced by their social interactions with early adopters; and will also wait until JavaFX can exactly meet their needs for particular projects. The early majority lacks the imagination to see the possibilities in a new technology *before* those possibilities are entirely tangible. So, the early majority will need to see things like GUI components, and perhaps reasonable tool support, in place and working well, before starting to consider using JavaFX. They will also need to see a few real applications built by using JavaFX in order to be convinced.

by kfarnham - 2009-05-15 21:05

sfitzjava: I think the main difference between our interpretations is how the response "It will endure as a secondary option" is viewed. To me, if a technology endures, that's success -- since most new technologies end up being temporary blips that never have any real impact whatsoever. Meanwhile, you view "It will endure as a secondary option" as meaning JavaFX "nothing more than second fiddle" -- which you view as a kind of failure, a waste of effort that could have been put to better use elsewhere. If you consider only the technologies that dominate their market realm as "successful," then, sure, the poll results show what you say. A large majority clearly thinks JavaFX will not become the dominant RIA technology platform. But if you consider "success" to mean: "the technology will still be viable 10 years from now" -- used by a certain community of developers, still growing and evolving with the times -- then the poll results imply what I said in my post. As always, words and statistics can be validly interpreted in multiple ways. Thanks for your comments!

by sfitzjava - 2009-05-15 20:02

Oh please, let's look at the numbers in a real light. 74.9% of voters said that JavaFX was either a total waste of time/money or just a major distraction resulting in nothing more than second fiddle to (i'll assume) FLEX. Not to mention that after 2+ years there is still 7.8% who have never heard of it. That's over 82% that don't know or don't care for it because of missing information, tools, support on OSes, or because there are alternative that do a better job and are more understandable. The amount of energy that Sun expended into this while letting other technologies wither (JavaME comes to mind) is sad. It should be called Super Nova, in that there was such a build up of hype to a big explosion of noise resulting in an inward collapse destroying everything in close proximity which ultimately leaves just a small meaningless spinning flash of colorful light.