Java Reference
In-Depth Information
The core of the platform—language and JVM—is and remains one of the fastest
general-use environments available to the developer.
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Insecure
During 2013 there were a number of security vulnerabilities in the Java platform,
which caused the release date of Java 8 to be pushed back. Even before this, some
people had criticized Java's record of security vulnerabilities.
Many of these vulnerabilities involved the desktop and GUI components of the Java
system, and wouldn't affect websites or other server-side code written in Java.
All programming platforms have security issues at times—and many other lan‐
guages have a comparable history of security vulnerabilities that have been signifi‐
cantly less well publicized.
Too Corporate
Java is a platform that is extensively used by corporate and enterprise developers.
The perception that it is too corporate is therefore an unsurprising one—Java has
often been perceived as lacking the “free-wheeling” style of languages that are
deemed to be more community oriented.
In truth, Java has always been, and remains, a very widely used language for com‐
munity and free or open source software development. It is one of the most popular
languages for projects hosted on GitHub and other project hosting sites.
Finally, the most widely used implementation of the language itself is based on
OpenJDK—which is itself an open source project with a vibrant and growing com‐
munity.
