Java can do stuff and people use it which is fine. The con was that it was inherently portable and secure and can be used for client software. None of that is true. Today if someone told me that our new client interface was going to be java that person would be reassigned to a role where their awful judgement would not resurface.
Java today is basically the slower edition of C++ which isn't that amazing of a niche.
It is inherently portable, because the bytecode can be run everywhere you have a JVM. You don't need to compile for every platform you wan't to run your software in, or muck around with cross-compilers. True, you can do plattform-spesific things in any language, but the Java standards library is almost entirely cross-plattform. In this way, Java really is as cross-platform as it gets.
The language itself is more secure. Buffer overflow? Forget about it. Undefined behaviour? Forget about it. Wierd stuff happening due to pointer arithmetick. Forget about it. Memory leaks? Forget about it, (well, almost).
Why can't it be used for client software? A JVM language can be used for anything that doesn't require minimal use of memory or short start-up time. Any program you write that will be running for more than 10 seconds and don't run in a memory strained environment, fits Java rather well.
Java is also easier to learn and reason about IMHO than C++.
Java today is the easier, safer, more portable but slower and memory-hungry edition of C++. Which is why there is a hype. Altough that hype is slowly dying, due to Java (the language, not the vm and ecosystem) being outdated compared to it's competitors.
> Altough that hype is slowly dying, due to Java (the language, not the vm and ecosystem) being outdated compared to it's competitors.
This part I have some issues with: the language is still quite modern (compared to C, for example). There are several other reasons for its slow demise: its licensing issues and initially problematic Linux implementations put it at a disadvantage on the server side and in circles where open source was important. It is quite verbose and not well-suited for web development - not the best proposition at a time where scripting languages and rapid web prototyping were on the rise. Finally, the enterprisey orientation of later developments around Java and heavyweight ecosystem really put off beginners - editing XML (build.xml bigger than the whole program...) sucks.
I'm comparing Java to languages like C#, C++ and Go, and Java is definitely falling behind. Java 8 will be a big improvement, but I'll still miss having variable type-inference (auto in C++, var in C# and Go).
C is supposed to map very easily to what actually happens under the hood. Thus C will never have closures, type-inference, generators and the like as a part of the language. This is a part of the languages design, which is why you shouldn't compare it to feature rich languages like Java or even C++.
Hmm.. I'm not a Java fan by any means but as it turns out that Java is now actually a very popular language for client side programming. Maybe one of the most popular client side[1] programming languages in existence today.
There is nothing wrong with hype if that hype is warranted, and Java certainly has an unmatched track record in terms of delivering solid, portable and easy to maintain code bases that power millions of applications today.
> The con was that it was inherently portable and secure and can be used for client software.
Java hasn't been pitched for client software since the death of applets, circa 1999.
Java is so good in so many domains that it's easier to name the areas where it's not the best: graphical applications and CPU intensive programs (games, numerical calculations). That's about it. For anything else, Java is most likely to be a very solid default choice.
In my opinion Java is pretty good at CPU intensive tasks. Where it falls short is memory usage and memory management. A lot of software is being written in C++ because Java cannot use much of a machine's memory without incurring rather large garbage collector pauses. What Java needs is structured value types and an affordable implementation of pauseless garbage collection.
"There was and continues to remain NOTHING that compares to the Java platform."
... today. Thrownaway2424 said (my emphasis) "Java in the 90s was a spectacular con job that millions of developers and managers bought hook, line, and sinker."
This was true. Sun purchased Java's popularity. It did not even come close to living up to the hype in the first few years. I could segfault it without much difficulty using Swing, and I was hardly using it for anything (school assignment!). I was not a sophisticated developer at the time. I should not have been able to do that.
It is also true that through tenacity and dedication, Java eventually did live up to its promises. But that came later.
There was and continues to remain NOTHING that compares to the Java platform.