Oracle and the fall of Java EE
Amen.  Be it Hacker News, or the &#x2F;r&#x2F;java subreddit, or wherever, it feels like the bulk of Java chatter revolves around...<p>1. Security vulnerabilities<p>2. The Ask.com toolbar<p>3. Oracle abandoning Java EE<p>... which is extremely frustrating because...<p>1. Virtually all of the &quot;security vulnerabilities&quot; deal with the browser plugin for using applets, which hasn&#x27;t been widely used in 15 years<p>2. The toolbar malware, while stupid beyond measure, only applies to the consumer Java installer, which nobody installs anymore due to item #1 above.<p>3. Java EE is legacy tech.  While deeply entrenched, most of the work out there for it today consists of maintenance or migration to more service-friendly approaches like Spring or Dropwizard.<p>Java is certainly not perfect.  It&#x27;s also long in the tooth, and is associated with &quot;the enterprise&quot;, and so it&#x27;s not seen as &quot;sexy&quot; by young developers.  But for business software, large-scale data processing, and web&#x2F;REST backends, I&#x27;ve yet to find anything on the horizon that seriously competes with it.<p>Every year I get bored and go exploring a new alternative language in side projects.  Every year I come back, more appreciative of what I have.  Python&#x2F;Ruby&#x2F;Node have their beginner-friendly charms, but are limited by the lack of type checking and&#x2F;or chaotic ecosystems.  Golang seems really promising, but has a long way to go.  C# seems like the most credible challenger for business systems, but the .NET Core ecosystem is probably still years away from being where Java was in 2005.<p>I don&#x27;t mind discussing Java&#x27;s shortcomings.  But I&#x27;m tired of hearing about <i>irrelevant</i> shortcomings such as applets and Java EE.  Because that&#x27;s just a way to keep a &quot;language war&quot; going without having to point at a serious alternative.