Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

[Thomas Shey]

Java is huge in the enterprise software and backend system world... there is just little to no need for it to be installed willy-nilly on folks' PCs nowadays.

Its sufficiently uncommon that Maptool no longer assumes you'll have a separate installation of it, so it bakes one into its own install.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

Its sufficiently uncommon that Maptool no longer assumes you'll have a separate installation of it, so it bakes one into its own install.

As do modern Minecraft installations apparently. My eldest daughter was heavily into Minecraft a decade or so ago and back then, installing Java was required to run Minecraft. Today, (according to what I just looked up) the game installation comes bundled with its own JRE, so no need to install Java separately (JRE -> Java Runtime Environment... the program that runs Java programs).

 

[trappedslider]

Superman attempting life insurance fraud also committing psychological terror.

 

[Ryujin]

Superman attempting life insurance fraud also committing psychological terror.
View attachment 410233

The cover art almost never reflected the truth of the story. It was like '60s/'70s version of clickbait.

 

[soviet]

Superman is evil anyways.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

If 'Java asks you to uninstall itself', one possibility is that you're installing a current version and the installer is asking you if you would like to uninstall older versions you have installed.

The other possibility is best explained with a little background...

Once upon a time, Java was common on desktops/laptops, for amongst other reasons, to run Java applets. A Java applet is basically a piece of Java software running on your desktop within a browser. Java applets were big in the early days of Java (say around the year 2000, give or take). They were important back then as web browsers were much limited in what they could do and communication with a back end server wasn't as simple/elegant as it later came to be. In other words, applets gave you the power of an application when web browsers were in the horse and buggy stage of their evolution. (For example, I was into the Washington Post crossword puzzle for a while back then... it ran as an applet.)

Applets became outdated and unnecessary in the last 15-20 years as other web technologies arose to fill the high-end functionality gap (HTML5, CSS3, WebSocket, JavaScript evolution, etc. if you care about the details). As such, the need for your everyday Joe to have Java installed on their desktop or laptop today is virtually non-existent.

All that to say, the reason that you run across this prompt outside the context of installing a new version of Java as I mentioned earlier, is that the Java installer will periodically wake up and check to see the last time you ran Java. If it's been a while (e.g. you are not using your PC for Java development), it'll ask you 'Do you still need me hanging around? I've been crashing on your couch for, like, six months man.'.

Like all software, an older version of Java might have a security hole that is fixed in a newer version; another reason for the occasional reminder if you aren't on the latest and greatest version.

Java is huge in the enterprise software and backend system world... there is just little to no need for it to be installed willy-nilly on folks' PCs nowadays.

The message here, @Ryujin , is, like in all things in life, demonising something you don't understand never leaves the world in a better place.

 

[Deset Gled]

The message here, @Ryujin , is, like in all things in life, demonising something you don't understand never leaves the world in a better place.

In defense of Ryujin and all that would disparage Oracle, it's worth noting that this background you give is entirely from the dev standpoint. Let me fill the people in on what this was like as a user experience.

The other possibility is best explained with a little background...

Once upon a time, Java was common on desktops/laptops, for amongst other reasons, to run Java applets. ...

Like all software, an older version of Java might have a security hole that is fixed in a newer version; another reason for the occasional reminder if you aren't on the latest and greatest version.

Java is huge in the enterprise software and backend system world... there is just little to no need for it to be installed willy-nilly on folks' PCs nowadays.

So let's start from a critical point: no regular users ever wanted to install Java, but we had to because of it's prominence on the back end. And Oracle has only cared about enterprise customers (i.e. the people that pay them), never the end user experience.

From the get-go, there were problems with Java. It was a huge vector for viruses and other types of malware. Forget worrying about "older" versions of Java, in the 2000s you had to worry about the current version of Java having zero day exploits. But of course those were problems for your anti-virus software, not Oracle.

Java would also constantly want to update. Did Java update itself? Was it a quiet suggestion in the background? No, it required manual effort to handle and was as intrusive and annoying as possible. You can still search for memes of Java updates requests popping into Windows at inopportune times (example: When Java wants to update)

Would Java at least update on a regular schedule? No, you got a popup on whatever schedule Oracle pushed them out. Was it a fast update? It was a surprise! An update could be anywhere from a megabyte to a hundred megabytes. Sometimes, it might even require a reboot to your system (and remember, this was often in the days where us plebeians had to boot off of spinning hard drives).

Let's assume you're tech savvy enough to know Java updates are important, but don't want to stop what you're doing, download an update, and restart your computer constantly on someone else schedule. Is there any way to know when an update is an important security update, or something minor for a system you'll never ever use? Sorry, that's for Oracle to know, not end users. An update is an update; there's no way to know what's inside it. I suppose you could go online, manually hunt down the change log, and read every single line to find out, but it's not like Oracle would go out of their way to make that information easy to find or read.

And, just to add insult to injury, there were times that after you rebooted from a Java update, the first thing you saw would be... another Java update. If you got enough updates behind, you might need multiple updates just to get the darn thing to shut up.

TLDR; people who lived through those countless years of living with "Java update available" randomly popping up have earned the right to demonize that hellspawn, even if we don't know or care what it does behind the curtain. Oracle was an innovator in terrible UX, and has earned their reputuation with years of consistent work at it.

 

[trappedslider]

The cover art almost never reflected the truth of the story. It was like '60s/'70s version of clickbait.

yes, i know, stop trying to ruin the funny

 

[dbolack]

In defense of Ryujin and all that would disparage Oracle, it's worth noting that this background you give is entirely from the dev standpoint. Let me fill the people in on what this was like as a user experience.

As much as I enjoy disparaging Oracle, Java was a Sun product, and as a former Sun employee, I don't think we can ever apologize enough for the way things occurred.

 

[overgeeked]

Honestly getting to the point where almost all conversation with other humans is either this...

Or this...

“Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.” ―Robert E. Howard