Only Java developers use Java desktop applications

Chris Adamson talks about the strange fact that the number one use of Java desktop applications is to run tools used to create Java server applications:

We know the big use for AWT and Swing, and it’s a terrible irony: measured by app launches or time spent in an app, the top AWT/Swing apps are surely NetBeans and IntelliJ, IDEs used for creating… other Java applications! The same can be said of the SWT toolkit, which powers the Eclipse IDE and not much else. This is what makes this white elephant so difficult to dispose of: all the value of modern-day Java is writing for the server, but nearly all the Java developers are using the desktop stuff to do so, making them the target market (and really the only market) for Desktop Java. If there were other viable Java applications on the desktop, used by everyday end-users, Apple couldn’t afford to risk going without Java. There aren’t, and it can.

This is sort of a weird result of how Java evolved. The original idea behind Java is that it would be a replacement for platform-native GUI toolkits, but of course that didn’t work out particularly well. However, it did make it easy for Java developers to write their tools in Java, and those tools wound up being write once, run anywhere.

That, in turn, contributed to the resurgence of the Mac. If you were a Java developer who used Eclipse, it was very very easy to move from Windows to the Mac. When it became obvious that using the Unix-based OS X was a better deal for Java developers than using Windows, you could just get a Mac, download Eclipse or whatever Java IDE you enjoy, check out your source, and get started.

Adamson’s prediction is that you soon won’t be able to run your favorite Java IDE on a Mac, but I don’t think he’s correct. At least I hope not. The strong negative reaction we’re seeing from the Java community is, for the most part, an expression of this worry. They don’t want to have to choose between their favorite tools and their favorite operating system, especially when they don’t have to right now.