by Peter Phillips, University of Manchester
Despite a rather overheated room, made worse by a humid day, those of us who decided to learn
more about this strange new beast Java had a most informative visit to the computing labs at
Durham on 12 July.
Of course the location makes a big difference. It was my first visit to this truly beautiful city,
and I made the best of the opportunity to visit the magnificent Norman cathedral after the
seminar had finished. I could have spent the afternoon applying what I had learnt, of course, but
workaholism is not one of my many faults.
My visit to Durham started on the previous evening, when I arrived hot-foot, or rather hot-tyre,
from Manchester, just in time to join Helen, John and the other overnight delegates for dinner.
We went to Helen's favourite haunt (she has one, at least, in every town HP/Works visits), a
restaurant called Stone's which Mike Ellison, our Durham host, had never before graced with his
presence. It turned out to be a good choice, with an extensive menu and portions which defeated
the heartiest of our appetites. We lingered until late, as the weather had deteriorated into a steady
downpour and Helen had decreed that we should all walk, since she had bought a new pair of
flip-flops for the occasion! Luckily, by the time we staggered back to our beds in Van Mildert
College, the rain had eased to a fine drizzle.
The accommodation arranged for us by Mike was truly excellent, by University standards. No
cramped rooms, lino floors and shared loos for us, but shag-pile carpet, large en-suite bathrooms
with showers, and even, wait for it, a tv in every room! I'm sure that we have nothing in
Manchester University to beat that. Breakfast in the College Hall was plentiful and good, apart
from a jug of soured milk, the result no doubt of the very humid night, and the pale yellow liquid
optimistically referred to as "tea" on the front of the dispensing machine.
Then it was off to the Science site, a five-minute drive, and the computer lab set aside for the
seminar. I must admit to feeling great trepidation at this point, since I was acutely aware that I
did not meet the criterion for attendance of familiarity with C++ or a similar language. HTML, I
thought, was not a problem, but I had never, as a Admin Computer Manager, actually used a
Unix workstation myself; my desktop houses a boring 486, and it is the Oracle Programmers
who use the HP workstations. My interest was specifically the use of Java to program WWW
screens.
In one sense my fears were justified, because it became immediately obvious when the hands-on sessions started that my unfamiliarity with the workstations would slow me down too much to allow me to take part effectively. However, lack of knowledge of C++ was not a great problem in understanding the principles of the language, and our excellent lecturer, Barry Cornelius, took pity on me and allowed me to look on with my neighbour whilst we, or more fairly, he made valiant and ultimately successful attempts to master a couple of the exercises that Barry had prepared for us. There was very little time to cover a lot of ground, but Barry had prepared a full set of notes and was able to give us a very good introduction to the language. Certainly, I felt that, despite my inadequate background, I could now make a start on Java programming, if I had the correct hardware and software environment.
This, however, is a bit of a problem. Sun provide Java Developers Kit versions free of charge for Solaris 2.x (both sparc and x86), for Windows 95, for Windows NT and for System 7.5 running on Power Macs and Macs with at least a 68030 processor. Most of the other ports of the software are only becoming available this year. In particular, although HP have ported the JDK to HP-UX 10.x, they say that this "is NOT a commercial product release" and that they expect to have an integrated HP JDK Product available "in the future".
It is clear, however, that Java has a great future. It is independent of hardware architecture, and
comes with many packages of code which prevent the programmer from having to "re-invent the
wheel". In particular, GUI programming is made easy by use of one of these packages. Java
source code can be executed as part of viewing a WWW page, thus making it possible to write
sophisticated web-based systems.
Oh, and my reference to the "taste" of "hot Java" ? .... "Java" is apparently US slang for coffee,
and references to coffee come with the territory.
For more information mail kernel@hpworks.demon.co.uk
