Publication Date: October 4, 1996

Related article - Java Wins Praise, But It's Still So New

From the Web to the Microwave: Java Positioned for Consumer Market

By Sue Mellen

The average household is outfitted with four or five computers. And in just four or five years the ordinary consumer will own 20 computers, says Curtis Sasaki, product line manager for JavaOS at JavaSoft, Sun Microsystems, Inc.'s nine-month-old, fast-growing operating company.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that urban townhouses and suburban split-levels are filled to the brim with desktops and laptops. Rather, Sasaki points out that all kinds of products—a microwave oven is a good example—now have embedded microcomputers controlling their operation. An increasing number of these microsystems are being programmed with the Java language. And Sasaki predicts that, as time goes on, Java will prove as great a boon to the embedded market as some analysts say it has been to the World Wide Web.

"The embedded market is where Java really gets interesting, especially now that time-to-market has become such a critical issue in product development," Sasaki observes. Traditionally, he says, programmers have rewritten code for each new product development. But Java’s portability and object-orientation allows programmers to re-use code over several different applications without necessitating a rewrite, Sasaki says. This is a critical attribute at a time when products often live or die based on developers’ ability to get them out to the marketplace ahead of competitors.

"With Java, you can use the same code for a microwave oven or desktop phone. It’s a tremendous time-saver," Sasaki says.

And the recent development of JavaOS has given the language a big boost into consumer markets, say developers at JavaSoft. The company describes JavaOS as a highly compact operating system designed to run Java applications directly on microprocessors in a countless number of devices—anything from network computers and printers to personal digital assistants and cellular telephones.

At the end of April, several of the biggest names in the business—Apple Computer, Inc.; Hewlett- Packard Co.; Hitachi, Ltd; IBM Corp.; Novell, Inc.; and Silicon Graphics, Inc. among them—announced that they would be embedding Java into their operating systems. Not only do these companies represent more products in which to tuck the language, the attendant multiple licensing agreements also ensure further proliferation of the language by making it readily accessible to an ever-increasing population of developers.

In Atlanta, Dun & Bradstreet Software is creating Java-based applications as part of its CyberStream product line (formerly known SmartStream). The first applet, released in May, allows both local and remote corporate intranet users to complete purchase requisitions. Future products will employ Java’s interactive capabilities "in the human resources space. We're developing products that will allow employees to update human resources information over an intranet. These advancements give employees a great sense of control, while reducing HR costs," says Steve Ely, vice president for market development at D&B Software.

Actually, it only makes sense that Java should find its way home to the embedded market. The language (which almost hit the marketplace with the name "Oak") really grew out of a larger project to develop advanced software for consumer electronics. Sun developers had intended to use C++ to build the software for the embedded systems, but they found that certain elements of language were complicating their task. Because programmers are familiar with C and C++, the Sun team couldn’t scrap the basic structure of Java's predecessors. But they realized they could omit certain difficult features including multiple inheritance, operator overloading and extensive coercions. On the other hand, developers added garbage collection to help solve one big C++ problem: lack of contiguous free memory at run time.

The Evolution of C++?

"As a technology it’s C++ stripped down, but it retains the benefits of the object paradigm. It makes use of distributed objects, simple inheritance and assembling components. It runs on both server and client and has the ability to create a small footprint and interpreted code. It also does just-in-time compiling," explains Donald DePalma, a senior analyst with the Software Strategy Service at Forrester Research.

The only problem with the hot new language, he says, is just that: It's so hot that programmers come to the language with greatly inflated performance expectations. "There's an incredible amount of hype. In fact, Dave Litwack, president of Powersoft, jokingly says that he's working on an application called 'Decaf'—Java without the hype," says DePalma.

Dan Mezick of New Technology Solutions, a developer training company in North Haven, Conn., calls Java "C++ incremented by one." He doesn't, however, see the new kid on the programming block replacing either its immediate predecessor or other formats. Like Forrester’s DePalma, he says that the language sometimes fails to live up to the hype swirling around it. For one thing, he says, its often formidable syntax creates a lofty learning curve many programmers are unwilling to climb. "A developer has to invest anywhere from 20 to 30 hours to gain mastery of the language, where with Visual Basic you can pick up the language and begin to bang things out very quickly," he says.

Interestingly, Mezick also points out that Java’s ability to jump across many platforms has its dark side. "In order to make the language functional across multiple platforms, it has been built around the lowest common denominator. It lacks special built-in adornments, creating a very basic set of user interfaces," he says.

What Java needs to be a truly full-bodied brew, says Mezick, is a more visual environment, one that combines the multifunctionality of the language with the virtues of C, C++ and Visual Basic. "Imagine Java in a real visual environment, without some of its performance bugs, but retaining its better features like garbage collection and memory management. Now that would be a different development," he says.

One Different Development

Certainly, other companies have taken an approach different from Java. Nombas, Inc., a 15-employee company in Medford, Mass., for example, has developed a scripting language called ScriptEase that retains many of C's features and simplifies others. Byron Bollas, the company's vice president for sales and marketing, touts the language as being "as easy as BASIC but as powerful as C. We like to think we’ve taken all the major C features and made them immediately available."

Bollas says that ScriptEase (formerly known as Cmm, or C-minus-minus) imitates C, virtually eliminating the learning curve for any reasonably competent C programmer. He points out that the language provides the expected garbage collection, memory management and data typing. And it is far less complex than the C++-derived Java.

But Java isn’t likely to move too far out of the spotlight just yet. Sun/JavaSoft has done its job well in negotiating license agreements across the industry, ensuring that thousands of products and operating systems will be host to the language. You might say that Java is deeply "embedded" in the marketplace.

Sue Mellen writes from Tyngsboro, Mass.

---

DCI has teamed up with Sun Microsystems and Innovative Sales Solutions to introduce a special conference, Java Jolts the Internet, to DCI's Internet Expo. Please see the online Internet Expo brochure for details about this event. For a hands-on look at Java, consider DCI's Intensive Java Programming Workshop.

Related article - Java Wins Praise, But It's Still So New

---