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Its the shadows and reflections cast from the future that interest me.

Who : Charles Ditzel

Email: cld9731@yahoo.com



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Oracle's Missed Opportunity - Part 2

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posted Monday, 9 November 2009
In reflecting further on this topic (started in part 1), there are even larger aspects to this that don't have anything to do with the small population of JDeveloper users (that was about size mattering), there is another aspect to all this that deals with scope. And that in the end matters just as much.
 
Let's take a look at a jobs chart.  A while back I gave up on the usefulness of  comparing the number job numbers of one IDE versus another relative to jobs. The vast, vast  overwhelming majority of Java job postings don't bother specifying an IDE.  In the chart below you can see the red line is Java jobs and the others relate to specific IDEs.  In fact, the only ones that do specify an IDE is if they have something very unique that needs to be done - something like Eclipse plugin development, NetBeans plugin development or JDeveloper ADF development. Otherwise why should they ?   The total number of jobs that are using Java dwarfs those jobs needing specific Eclipse, JDeveloper and NetBeans needs.  If you look at the chart it is staggering - it is literally as if IDE specific jobs don't exist. Now if you remove the overall category of Java jobs and compare them to each other - they look interesting only because you have lost the real context of the comparison.  The main context is Java in this chart - remove it and you lose perspective of how many developer jobs specify Java and don't specify an IDE.

The majority of that big number of Java jobs either are using Eclipse or NetBeans or IntelliJ.  Most JDeveloper developers are pushed into using JDeveloper by the need to do an Oracle product.   For example, It is unusual to see a mobile developer freely choosing JDeveloper over Eclipse or NetBeans.  It's not that it can't happen - it just is that for all practical purposes it doesn't happen with any meaningful numbers because that is not a particular strength of JDeveloper.  This unfortunately for JDeveloper happens across other topic areas.  JDeveloper as seen from the Google trendline in the previous blogposting is not a choice of the vast numbers of developers. 

Select to see results

That chart was only for Java where NetBeans, Eclipse, IntelliJ and JDeveloper compete.

This next chart (with the exception of the Java red line) is where JDeveloper is nowhere to be found and NetBeans has support .

select to see data


So it  really does get more interesting - NetBeans and Eclipse also have a presence in other languages - let's pick C, C++ and Fortran.  How many people use JDeveloper for C and C++ ?  Eclipse  and NetBeans C/C++ developers do that everyday of the week. Besides the NetBeans C/C++ plugin, even more interesting is Sun's Studio, a sophisticated development environment for C, C++ and Fortran, it is written using the NetBeans core platform APIs.  By the way - this is an example of the notion of platform that JDeveloper misses - Sun Studio is not simply written with the NetBeans IDE - it is written to use the core Platform APIs that allow it to use a huge number of the core platform infrastructure that is found within NetBeans itself.

Now let's look at Ruby - does anyone spend anytime at all (is it even possible) to do Ruby development on JDeveloper  ?   They do on NetBeans.

Or PHP ? Check out NetBeans IDE for PHP.   Want to catch a movie about it ? Check the blog.

Even if you go and look at the Grails website of IDE's to use (as of this writing) - where is JDeveloper ?   Yes in one of the few areas JDeveloper allows you to write in nobody thinks to even put JDeveloper down because there are better choices in the form IntelliJ, NetBeans and Eclipse. You can find a NetBeans Groovy/Grails example on the Grails site

An then there are a large number of other languages where JDeveloper doesn't even have any IDE support.  Where is JDeveloper's support for Scala ?

In effect, developers that are forced into using JDeveloper are stuck on the ship of Oracle products and APIs - there is no getting off because they need support of those products and APIs.  It's not that JDeveloper is an awful product, it is a highly competent product for what it does - it is very good for a number of things - it is simply that there are better IDEs out there that have much larger, vibrant communities, that do more and support a larger set of developers and languages and offer core platform APIs.  It is that simple.  Oracle has an opportunity to create a set of Oracle plugins and features into NetBeans that support the Oracle product set and gain the support of a large community of developers.

This is why Oracle has missed a huge, huge  opportunity.

 

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