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IT Runs on Java 8

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Re: IT Runs on Java 8

#181

Post by chvid »

pron wrote: post #85

The funny thing is that from a purely technological point of view, Java (even the 5-year-old Java 8 and certainly recent versions) is far ahead of most other stuff hyped on HN (as well as less hyped stuff). Virtually no other platform comes close to that combination of state-of-the-art optimizing compilers, state-of-the-art GCs, and low-overhead in-production profiling/monitoring/management. And much of the cutting-e…

Yes! Java 8 is good. And Excel is by far the best spreadsheet out there. I don't know enough about Sharepoint but it seems like the normal world has actually chosen very well when it comes to technology.

Re: IT Runs on Java 8

#182

Post by rsanek »

wolf550e wrote: post #141
stingraycharles wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that the parent is talking about the JVM's JIT, where it compiles java bytecode into machine instructions after loading the application. This is why the first few requests on a JVM are usually considerably slower than the rest. Parent is obviously exaggerating with the 5000x, and he could have made his point in a different way, but there's some truth to it.

5000 refers to number of times a method needs to be called before the JIT decides the method is "warm" and needs to be compiled by the expensive to run C2 compiler which produces good quality machine code. If you're benchmarking java code and the method was not called enough times before you measure, you're measuring code compiled by C1 (or even interpreted). The performance gap between Java and C is on the order of…

Why not just pass -Xcomp? From the docs[1]: "You can completely disable interpretation of Java methods before compilation by specifying the -Xcomp option."

[1] https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/technotes/tools/window...

Re: IT Runs on Java 8

#183

Post by wildermuthn »

dcole2929 wrote: post #49

In the majority of companies it's simply not possible to operate on the bleeding edge the way HN articles would have you believe you should. Besides the obvious issues around the value of rewriting stable legacy systems on new platforms, there are also man power issues. You need tier 1 developers to live on the bleeding edge because any problem that comes up (and they will come up) largely requires you to solve it yo…

Good points here. Which is why HN is oriented toward startups with Tier 1 engineers. PG and his cofounders invented the web app, using a combination of old tech (lisp) and new (the internet).

There are plenty of other forums and sites to read about conventional tech. HN is where I find the bleeding edge. 90% of it is just fascinating. But the other 10% offer tantalizing possibilities for making something novel, which is to say: solving an unsolved problem.

“How to Become a Hacker” puts it plainly: no problem should have to be solved twice. Drudgery is evil. And by those axioms, a ‘Hacker’ is just uninterested in old solutions to old problems. We need to live in the future so that we can build the future. Although HN’s content has suffered over the last 5 years with the influx that accompanied a wider awareness of startups, it still is the best place I know of to dip your toes into the various futures we may one day encounter.

Having said that, lately I’ve found that Google Scholar is often more thought-provoking. If only there was a HN for Google Scholar.

Re: IT Runs on Java 8

#184

Post by pron »

paulmd wrote: post #125
mfatica wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this compare to the .NET ecosystem?

C# is a better language. Java 8 started to catch up with some of the quality-of-live niceties, but Java has a lot of mistakes baked into the language and interfaces that can't be removed without potentially breaking a lot of stuff, which the consortium is not willing to do. C# and DotNet were designed with the wisdom gained from the early days of Java implementation and sidestepped a lot of these messes. Java has a s…

> but Java has a lot of mistakes baked into the language and interfaces that can't be removed without potentially breaking a lot of stuff

Absolutely true, but so does C#. In the end it turned out that .NET's reified generics were a mistake (which makes language interop on .NET painful), and more recently async/await.

Re: IT Runs on Java 8

#185

Post by jum4 »

I have seen some Excel files from end users which grows into a whole application. The users wanted more functionalty and didn't get through all the management levels to reach someone from corporate IT and just start doing it by themselve with the tools they know and develop from Excel to Macros to VBA to VBA with SQL Database (because they have a standard process in the company to request a new SQL Database and the data was to big to be just in the Excel file directly). And then the company have this whole mess of "application" which is already business cricitcal because a lot of other users just use it as the fastet way to get their job done and the person who develop it is the only one which someone knows to handle it and maintain the application.

At some point in time the original person isn't available anymore and whole setup will have troubles because of upgrades of the basis (e.g. Excel) or just performance problems. They are even consulting companies specialize in optimizing or migrate to new Excel version for such kind of applications.

The corporate IT have to pick up the users early to help them to solve their current problem or help them to be more efficient with IT. If nobody helps they will develop their own solution which the knowledge/tools the have.

Re: IT Runs on Java 8

#186

Post by sound1 »

jonenst wrote: post #76

Using java8 in 2019 is pretty normal. It's "only" 6 years old (released at the beginning of 2014), nothing like the cobol horror stories. The 6 years old java is not very different from what software you get from debian stable. The next lts java11 was released at the end of 2018 and does break some things so you need time to update. It was supported by oracle until Jan 2019, while other vendors have pledged support u…

what cobol horror stories?

Re: IT Runs on Java 8

#187

Post by sebazzz »

crimsonalucard wrote: post #97
pron wrote: post #85

The funny thing is that from a purely technological point of view, Java (even the 5-year-old Java 8 and certainly recent versions) is far ahead of most other stuff hyped on HN (as well as less hyped stuff). Virtually no other platform comes close to that combination of state-of-the-art optimizing compilers, state-of-the-art GCs, and low-overhead in-production profiling/monitoring/management. And much of the cutting-e…

True, but java carries a lot of legacy.

Once you write code, it is legacy.

Re: IT Runs on Java 8

#188

Post by thrower123 »

ar_lan wrote: post #68

I don't know why, but Scott's comments in here came off pretty condescending. If you're a developer on Twitter, it's really easy to fall into the trap of believing that the only developers that matter are front-end engineers. Just because helping develop the kernel, or integrating a new product on an already existing, proven stack that runs Angular for the front and Spring in the back, does not provide shiny things t…

Sometimes it can be mind-blowing the lengths front-end devs will go to avoid writing a little html file with self-contained script tags for a one-off throwaway page.

Re: IT Runs on Java 8

#189

Post by lenkite »

dlandis wrote: post #164
pron wrote: post #85

The funny thing is that from a purely technological point of view, Java (even the 5-year-old Java 8 and certainly recent versions) is far ahead of most other stuff hyped on HN (as well as less hyped stuff). Virtually no other platform comes close to that combination of state-of-the-art optimizing compilers, state-of-the-art GCs, and low-overhead in-production profiling/monitoring/management. And much of the cutting-e…

> So Java is not only the safe choice for serious server-side software; it's also the bleeding edge. Sure for core Java (OpenJDK), but what the future of JEE licensing and development? Even non-"enterprise" apps typically make use of some JEE stuff like servlets and JDBC. Is it really the "safe" choice when, apparently, the trademark agreements have just fallen apart? https://headcrashing.wordpress.com/2019/05/03/neg…

JDBC is not JEE - it is core Java. Servlets are the original web-container Java spec, independent of JEE. Both are great specs supported by several stable and performant implementations - rock solid tech compared to a lot of the flaky stuff you find advertised today.

Re: IT Runs on Java 8

#190

Post by chvid »

paulmd wrote: post #125
mfatica wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this compare to the .NET ecosystem?

C# is a better language. Java 8 started to catch up with some of the quality-of-live niceties, but Java has a lot of mistakes baked into the language and interfaces that can't be removed without potentially breaking a lot of stuff, which the consortium is not willing to do. C# and DotNet were designed with the wisdom gained from the early days of Java implementation and sidestepped a lot of these messes. Java has a s…

The JVM has multiple languages such as Kotlin, Scala and Groovy. Each of them arguably being a better language than Java. That most people still prefer to build projects in Java shows that other things such as backward compability, how many developers know the language, tool chain and so on matters more than the isolated technical merits of the language.
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