IBM's Patricia Sueltz on Java (Continued)

Fawcette: From your customers' vantage point, the clients are more homogeneous than the servers. Windows 95 has huge market share. But on the server side you have Solaris, AIX, NT, ...

Sueltz: ... HP, Unix, AS/400 ... that's where the power is. It is all about choice. You may say you're not interested in choice, but if you can put the integrating layer in, with the performance you need [that's ideal].

Fawcette: Isn't the performance even more critical on the server?

Sueltz: It is. Java is not going to supplant the compiled environments. You will see continued good performance from them. What we need to see is the marriage of [compiled languages and Java]. That's where IBM is doing a lot of work, not only with the precompiled state, JITs, but where we use Java. We're not going to rewrite CICS in Java. What we are doing is writing the pieces that make sense in Java. And we're going to use Beans in Java.

Fawcette: Will we see native compilation across all your VMs?

Sueltz: That is still a debate. It depends on the cost/benefits. As we go forward, you may see some that go more native. You see that already with the AS/400, which is quite integrated. That might not happen in other environments. But there are still benefits to getting that straight byte code. We had it out on AIX in two days after the Solaris code came out.

Fawcette: I asked Paul Gross, Vice President of Developer Tools at Microsoft, if C++ wasn't squeezed between VB's RAD productivity on one side, and Java's richness of expression on the other. He replied that Java was the one squeezed in the middle.

Sueltz: That sounds like a sound bite. C++ will be supplanted a lot by Java, [because C++ was created by] taking what was hacked C code and creating an object base, while Java gives you a more pure object-oriented language.

That's why programmers are so excited about Java. They see that they can build on their skills, but without the vagaries of having a hacked language. I think you'll still see the RAD languages like VB continue, because there is a strong push for that kind of productivity, and I think you'll see Java playing [in the RAD field as well].

Fawcette: Maybe you'll disagree with me, but almost all of the early adopters of Java come from the C++ world, where they already understand the syntax and the benefits of OOP. But C/C++ programmers only comprise about 15% of all professional developers. There are far more developers using RAD tools. What does Java have to do to compete with the RAD environments?

Sueltz: Or, they come from academia where they learned to program in Java. Java will [get more RAD] and bring that to a higher level. And Java will change even Visual Basic, by making the executables more portable. Look at Visual Age for Java; I think you'll be impressed.

Fawcette: Is Java linked to the success of CORBA? Given the quiet demise of Versit and the failure of OpenDoc, there is a good deal of skepticism about CORBA. I visited SAP yesterday, where they told me they can't get ORBs from different CORBA vendors to talk to one another, which is the main reason for the standard.

Sueltz: I think so, to some extent, although that debate is still not settled. There is not the lock-in through CORBA that you get from DCOM. CORBA and Java will benefit from each other's success.