Sun, IBM, Oracle, Netscape and other companies are vigorously promoting the application of Java. Java chips aimed at improving the running speed of Java are also in full swing. It is predicted that in the near future, Java code will run as fast as C++. After the status of Java in WWW application was affirmed, Sun expanded the application of Java in the field of household appliances in turn, and the application of Java has the trend of expanding to a wider field. Sun executives said, "The potential of Java far exceeds the benefits of being a programming language. In fact, Java is an enabling technology for a new computing mode. " It seems that the future of Java is limitless. As a language, Java has made unparalleled achievements in the past ten years. In China market, although the technology has been able to keep pace with the international market, its application is always slightly lagging behind. Reflecting on the ten-year development of Java in China, apart from praising and celebrating, it is more practical to seriously consider how to continue soil and water conservation for the future development of Java in China. Wheat straw from abroad is in full bloom in China. If we randomly pull a person with a mobile phone on the street in Beijing and ask, do you know MMS? Everyone should say that he knows; But by the way, do you know Java technology? Very few people can answer-in fact, multimedia messaging services use this Java technology that is not well known to ordinary people. As many Java technicians have repeatedly stressed-Java is around you and everywhere. From a global perspective, stories about Java are full of legends, such as those incredible successes, such as missed opportunities and more tangled lawsuits. In the past ten years, Java programming language and platform have been successfully applied in various application fields such as network computing and mobile, such as mobile phones, personal computers, transnational financial systems and satellite communications. There has never been such a widely used platform as Java in history. At present, the global economic value of Java has exceeded $654.38+020 billion. When Sun launched Java, its slogan was "Write once, run everywhere". In the past decade, Java's cross-platform and open features have been recognized. In addition, Java language also has excellent features such as object-oriented, expression syntax similar to C and C++, and good security. In many aspects, it has become the successor of Cobol and C++ languages, favored by developers all over the world, and become the first choice development platform for enterprise applications. Just in July this year, IBM and Sun just announced that they would extend the Java technology agreement signed by the two companies by 10 year, with the goal of providing long-term and stable guarantee for nearly 4 million developers in the global Java community. BEA also announced a package plan to develop the industry's first J2EE application environment that fully supports various major open source frameworks. These measures affirm the value and necessity of cross-platform Java compatibility. In China market, Java has made great progress in enterprise-level applications and public-oriented services, especially in key businesses such as telecommunications and finance in China. At present, with the support of relevant government departments in China, China Mobile and China Unicom have officially launched wireless value-added services based on Java, and are actively preparing for 3G value-added services based on Java. With regard to Java cards, Sun Company and China UnionPay jointly established a joint laboratory for Java cards, which cooperated comprehensively from technology to scheme. In addition, many companies in the industry have also developed a considerable number of application software based on Java standard system. For example, UFIDA has been developing on Java since 1998. At present, UFIDA's ERP 5 is under development and will be launched next year. However, if we make a global comparison, we can only say that China Java never seems to attract enough attention. Jonathan Schwartz, president and chief operating officer of Sun Company, once said at the 10th anniversary celebration of Java: "Java is developing like a rocket, and no one thought it could fly so far." . However, while celebrating, we should pay attention to the fact that compared with the development of Java at home and abroad, we seem to see a situation that "foreign countries dried up and domestic flowers began to blossom". Shortly before the Java Developers Conference in China in 2005, Gong Li, President of Sun China Engineering Research Institute, was transferred to the general manager of Microsoft Internet Technology Department (China). As one of the most representative figures of Java in China, his departure may reveal a trace of gloom in the development of Java in China. Java will be hard to get. The Director of Software, ISV and Java Business of Sun Greater China believes that Java is easy to get started, but not easy to master. This is like a lot of people who can draw Chinese paintings and a lot of amateurs, but few can really become painters. In China, it seems that there are not enough Java talents, and the number of enthusiasts who are really willing to learn to use the Java language is not optimistic. Xiao Li, a graduate student in the computer department of a university in Beijing, has a deep research on Java technology, and once served as the moderator of the Java technology discussion board of the school BBS forum. But he said he was not going to take the Java certification (that is, the Java developer qualification exam) because he didn't want to pay the certification fee of 1500 yuan. In fact, there are quite a few technicians like Xiao Li who can use Java but have not been certified. This situation makes it always inaccurate to count the number of domestic Java developers today. The data shows that there are 4.5 million Java developers in the world this year, while in China, the number is less than 654.38+10,000. In this regard, Wang, a professor of computer science in Tsinghua University who is known as the "father of Java in China", said that if the statistical scope is strictly defined on "developers" (even counting technicians like Xiao Li), there may be only about 50,000 real Java developers in China. Compared with China, a big country with a population of 654.38+0.3 billion, and the huge market potential of Java, this is extremely disproportionate. So why are there so few Java developers in China? Professor Wang is one of the earliest experts who paid attention to Java in China, and he is also one of the experts who can persist today. He said that, on the whole, Java is not favored by "academics" in China. For example, until now, the computer department of Peking University has not systematically taught Java courses. From a national perspective, less than half of the computer departments in more than 500 universities offer Java courses. However, when Java 1995 was first born, it was not like this in China. Professor Wang described that at that time, scientific and technical personnel were "in hot pursuit" of Java, and even set off an upsurge of "learning, using and popularizing Java" throughout the country, and the national Java technology exchange meeting was held for seven times. At that time, the newspaper Network World (then called International Newsletter) held a series of lectures on Java technology and a national Java competition. Since then, Wang, Professor and others have published a series of technical articles to promote the development of Java in China. However, only a few years later, many people who participated in the Java contest in that year stayed away from Java. Professor Wang believes that these people choose to give up for three reasons. One is because of the internet bubble in 2000; The second is that Java is not fast enough (of course, the development speed and running speed of Java have made a qualitative leap today), and the third is that there is no convincing actual case. Today, some people even think that Java is just a "toy". Professor Wang said that compared with foreign countries, the number of Java students in China is small, and the gap is also reflected in the fact that there are not many training units that can offer high-end Java courses (such as Web Services), which is difficult to meet the needs of cultivating advanced Java talents. Secondly, the lack of media coverage of Java has restricted the development of Java technology in China. Of course, there are different views on the number of Java talents in China. Jiang, senior technical community manager in charge of Java online community in Sun China Company, said that at present, Java-related communities in China are booming, such as Java research and Java version community. The largest Java community is Sun China Technology Community, with registered users of 1.6 million; CSDN registered 800,000 people, half of whom are Java users. China Java Users Association has set up user branches in more than 200 universities across the country. In terms of specific figures, Jiang believes that there are about 450,000 people in China who use Java for commercial development. For example, 80% of the software in China telecom industry is written in Java, and all services such as SMS and mobile games are written in Java. According to Huang Zhen, at the Java China Conference in September, more than 65,438+040 experts will come to China directly from the United States for technical exchange. In his view, what China lacks at present is such opportunities for Java technology exchange and learning, while what China's partners require most is training. In any case, whether there are more or less Java talents, the position of technicians is to find enough users. Perhaps the truth is as Huang Zhen said-there are relatively few creative Java developers and creative users in China. The change between applications is the same as Huang Zhen's opinion. In Professor Wang's view, Java is not favored by "academic school" in China, on the one hand, it is the fact that Java is not favored by "market school" in China. At present, Chinese mainland is not only inferior to Europe and America in the breadth and depth of Java application, but also slightly inferior to China, Hongkong and Macau. In the course of our interview with Professor Wang, Professor Wang took out three business cards, among which, besides the title of Professor Tsinghua University, the title of director of "Tsinghua -iT Frontier Joint Laboratory of Knowledge Engineering" is more noteworthy. The story begins with the national Java competition held by 1996 newspaper network world (then called international communication). What is even more unexpected is that when the development of Java in China was slowly dying, the Japanese met Wang and others through that contest. Soon, Japan iT Frontier Co., Ltd. sent someone to find Professor Wang. This joint-stock company is a software enterprise whose main business is information system integration. It was established by Japan's Mitsubishi Corporation and Japan's IBM in 200 1 after merging five companies mainly engaged in information industry, including the former AST. Subsequently, the two sides established the "Tsinghua -iT Frontier Joint Laboratory of Knowledge Engineering", with Wang as the director. Since then, the two sides have started international cooperation for eight years. Professor Wang was very excited when he talked about the use experience of Java technology in some domestic enterprises. He said: "If our technology is not good, the Japanese will not come to us. But why is such a good technology not applied and valued by some domestic enterprises and users? " For example, Webform (electronic form automatic generation system and its visual development tool) developed by Professor Wang adopts Java standard, which facilitates the network transmission of electronic forms and solves the printing problem under the application environment of browser /Web server. The Ministry of Construction of Japan has adopted this system and requires all personnel to learn and master it. However, in the process of popularizing and using this system in China, some departments and enterprises received a cold shoulder. Wang attributed the main reasons to channel problem and relationship problem (or mechanism problem and concept problem). However, as a pure technician, Professor Wang obviously doesn't want to waste precious time on these things. Professor Wang believes that there are not many applications developed in Java in China. It can be said that in China, the situation of application promotion has not been fully opened, especially in the fields that can fully reflect the characteristics of Java (cross-platform, multithreading), such as financial information management, e-government and e-commerce, distance education and other industries, mature Java applications are still rare. As for some cooperative enterprises, Wang disagreed with their own research results. He said: "Some enterprises (even school-run enterprises) have approached us to discuss related cooperation matters, but their condition is to buy out the intellectual property rights of products at one time. This is a typical' don't come when planting trees, but do well when picking peaches'. Of course, we will not agree to this cooperation. " It should help you.