[CentOS] bug submission justified for distribution of obsolete java software?

Tue Jan 10 16:32:34 UTC 2012
m.roth at 5-cent.us <m.roth at 5-cent.us>

Les Mikesell wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 8:47 AM,  <m.roth at 5-cent.us> wrote:
>>
>>> Would someone advise whether the distribution of an obsolete version
>>> of java should be reported as a bug;
>>> http://icedtea.classpath.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=827
>>
>> One *could* argue that Java is a bug, being a) so error-prone, b) so
>> vulnerable to attack, and c) so huge and slow, and shouldn't be
>> allowed....
>
> But you'd be wrong on all counts.  I'd argue the opposite - that you
> should only be allowed to use languages that work across CPU types and
> OS's so as to never be locked into a monopolistic single vendor.

No, I wouldn't. You argue wrongly. For one, by your first sentence, you
deny all of my arguments, with no reasons for that denial. As someone
who's worked more as a programmer than an admin, and both for a long time,
in a lot of languages, I see almost all java programs as huge. I also know
that *if* you write your code correctly, the code will compile and run on
pretty much anything, unless you're writing windowing-system specific
stuff.

Then there's java, that in everything I read from the mid-nineties through
the mid-oughts, was presented as being free from memory errors, etc, etc,
but as one huge counter-example, just about every time I see a tomcat app
crash, the stack traces are 150-200 calls deep, and there are, indeed,
memory errors.

Further, it's nothing more than a re-imagining (as they say) of Pascal
p-code (quick: what other language besides java used the command
writeln?). The difference between recompile and run on a vm that's
compiled for that machine is? Oh, right, it is, in effect, another layer
that sits on top of the o/s, like a pseudo-os, or windowing system.

I can go on... but I really need to get around to writing my article to be
entitled, "The Failure of OOP in General, and Java in Particular".

          mark