[Embedlets-developer] RE: W hy Embedded Java is floundering

[Ted K. <tk...@ya...>]

Chris,

> in the
> development world things do change in a positive-feed-back manner ie:
> rapidly once initiated.
> 
> I recall getting the first 'C' compiler for the 8051, way back in the last
> century, when the only way to program the damn things was with the
> manufacturers' assembly language tools. There was a fair amount of
> resistence because engineers were comfortable twiddling bits and were not
> interested in going back to school to learn to program.
> It took a while but now 'C' is King and most engineers can deal with it
> pretty well.
>
> The same thing will happen with embedded Java [snip]

How confident are you that the analogy of the Embedded systems developer
movement from assembly language to C holds true for their potential movement
from C to Java?  My background is in computer electronics and industrial
control systems and most of these type of curriculums usually only teach how to
program in assembly language, C (not C++) and perhaps Visual Basic.  When I
went through it was only assembly language and BASIC.

I had to teach myself how to program in C after I graduated and it took me
about 3 weeks because regular C is fairly straight forward and it is so close
to the hardware that it is almost like a portable assembly language.

When I started to teach myself Java my experience with C lead me to estimate
that it should also only take about 3 week to learn but I was in for a very
rude awakening!  It took me a full 3 years of pounding on Java almost every day
and at least 3 hours a day to become proficient in it and the culmination of
this process was my passing the Java Developer's exam in the Spring of 2002.

In addition to this, I taught C to beginners for about 5 years and then I
started to switch to teaching Java.  I have found that Java is an order of
magnitude more difficult to teach to beginners than regular C is.

With C, things are so simple.  One covers variables, functions, loops, decision
blocks, pointers, pass-by-reference, pass-by-value, cover the #include
statement, show them some library functions, show them the compiler and off
they go.  Beginner's can work themselves up to developing reasonably
sophisticated applications in about one quarter.

With Java one needs to understand a wide range of extremely abstract and subtle
concepts before one can develop code that is even close to being usable.  For
example, when teaching Java to beginners one needs to cover classes, class
methods, class variables, instance methods, instance variables, constructors,
instantiation, objects, inheritance, polymorphism, composition, interfaces,
abstract classes, encapsulation, an object's public API vs. its private methods
and threading.  On top of this one needs to explain the JDK and its relation to
the JRE that is inside of it, classpaths, packages, Jar files and the JavaDoc
documentation.

Now comes the task of introducing them to the huge Java standard class
libraries and how to determine which classes they can start using now and which
ones they should save for later.  As soon as one introduces Swing components
then one need to cover the event mechanism and how interfaces are leveraged to
enable this event mechanism.  This soon leads to things like MVC and the need
for proper object oriented program design and how to start architecting a
system.  Of course these type of concepts are extremely difficult to see by
just looking at the code so one needs to introduce UML in in order to more
easily get these ideas across.  Being able to view UML representations of
object oriented applications raises more questions than it answers and this
inevitably pushes one into discussing the need for things like design patterns.
 Beyond design patterns techniques for enhancing the robustness and flexibility
of a system must be understood and so things like unit testing and refactoring
are introduced.

If one is successful in getting them to develop reasonably well done desktop
style applications then one needs to break the news to them that unfortunately
there is not a market for desktop programmers and that they will need to learn
how to do n-tier Enterprise programming if they want to make a living doing
this stuff.  So now one needs to cover the differences between J2ME, J2SE and
J2EE and that the J2EE world consists of application servers, Servlets, JSPs,
EJBs, databases, directories, messaging, etc., etc, etc.  Somewhere along the
line you also need to open their eyes to the fact that if they do not have a
firm grasp of XML and its related technologies they are dead in the water and
so one needs to introduce them to SAX and DOM parsers, DTDs, Schemas, XSLT,
XML-RPC, XSLT, etc.

This does not even begin to take into account all the extra stuff one needs to
learn in order to deal with Embedded Java.

It has been my daily experience that it takes years of extremely hard work for
a person to become a competent Java programmer.  At one point in time I naively
thought that teaching Java from an embedded systems perspective through free
online classes was the way to quickly increase the pool of Embedded Java
developers but years of effort in this area have effectively cured me of this
way of thinking.  Teaching will definitely help but it is going to be a very
slow centimeter by centimeter process.


After having taught Computer Interfacing to beginners for over 12 years now I
could also give an equally long description of the hell one needs to go through
in order to teach these skills to beginners, but I will spare everyone the
additional pain. ;-)  Suffice it to say that it is equally as difficult as
learning how to properly program in Java.


My point in laying this out in such a protracted way is to illustrate precisely
why I do not think that we are going to see existing C and assembly language
oriented embedded systems programmers move into Embedded Java in significant
numbers anytime soon. The reason for this is that Java is an order of magnitude
more difficult to master than plain C is and this is a very effective barrier
that no amount of enticing can easily overcome.

The lack of computer interfacing skills provides an equally insurmountable
barrier that prevents existing Java programmers from becoming Embedded Java
programmers.


Again, my conclusion is that we Embedded Java developers represent a small and
very slowly growing group that has an extremely powerful technology at our
disposal.  Hopefully Embedlets will enable us to unlock some of this power, one
way or another.


Ted


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