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Schizophrenic Development

By SD Times News Team

October 15, 2004 — (Page 1 of 2)
It’s possible to develop a server-side Java app on Windows and run it on Linux, but it’s best to develop and test on the same platform. Platform-related inconsistencies (such as threading behavior) make any other approach too risky, and I test too often to develop on one system and test on another. Nonetheless, I don’t want to have a dedicated Linux development system. I need to run Quicken, Visio, and other commercial apps.

I’ve spent the past couple weeks fooling around with one solution to this problem: A desktop machine running both Windows XP (with Service Pack 1) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS under the VMware Workstation “virtual-machine” environment A VMware “virtual machine” is not a Java virtual machine; it’s a “swapper” mechanism that lets two operating systems run simultaneously on a single machine, each thinking that it has the hardware to itself.

I also had an ulterior motive. I wanted to see if the latest Red Hat release could actually work as a consumer operating system. Many Java developers seem convinced that that’s possible. I don’t agree. If you want a solid Unix implementation that makes a great consumer operating system, fitted with a gorgeous graphical UI and able to run commercial applications, go buy a Mac. Linux is not, and never will be, a platform suitable for use on the average consumer desktop. It’s a great server-side operating system, but the very things that make Linux so strong on the server side are a death knell on the client side.

Linux demonstrates why you shouldn’t let developers specify products. Linux is too complicated and too hard for a non-developer to use. The existing graphical front ends don’t fix this problem. Apple’s solution—to write what amounts to a robotic system administrator—works fine, but the Linux community doesn’t seem to have either the will or the ability to go this route. The only way to solve this problem is to get the UI specification process out of the hands of developers and into the hands of end users, something that’s not likely to happen.

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