Flutterby™! : Java marketing madness 2007-05-31 23:12:18.090794+00

Java marketing madness

2007-05-31 23:12:18.090794+00 by Dan Lyke 2 comments

I'm setting up a mirror of the server that crashed yesterday on my little home server. This involves setting up Scarab which means setting up Tomcat which complains that it couldn't find a Java Development Kit. Not wanting to make my life any harder than it has to be, I say "Okay, I'll run over to java.sun.com and download their installer." So I go there, and see:

Java SE
Java EE
Java ME
JavaFX
See All

Uh. Right. This "super duper" language and apparently they don't have a CPAN like structure for it, so they have to make me, a guy just trying to install some bloody software, educate myself about five different versions to see which one I need.

Huh. Okay, maybe one of the Java clones will do the job better. Back to the package manager.

Yes, much of the Java world leaves a lot to be desired as far as learning curve goes.

If you haven't figured it out yet, you need Java SE. Since Tomcat 5.5 you're only supposed to need the JRE, not the JDK, as it ships with the Eclipse compiler.

Also, what OS are you running? Ubuntu has Sun Java and Tomcat in its repositories now so you can just 'apt-get install tomcat5.5'.

Ubuntu. I did install the tomcat5.5 package and it complained about a missing JDK (yep, its words), but I went through and randomly tagged some other packages with "Java" in their names and now it starts [grin].

I just found it annoying that someone thought that front-loading the learning curve was good product marketing strategy.