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IT Runs on Java 8

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Re: IT Runs on Java 8

#301
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Technically there is nothing I don't like about JVM right now, everything that seems impossible 15 years ago is now solved. AOT used to be bag of hurt with GCJ ( I know I could use Excelsior, not sure if it was free in my time though ), but now even that will be an supported option from Graal. Java the languages still isn't pretty, but it has been much improved. OpenJDK is GPL and apart form the trademark ( ? )…

Support for native code is very bad. The JNI is a pain to use and very slow, IPC is often faster. High performance numerical code often suffers because of poor vectorization. Not to mention tuning the JVM is often needed for critical tasks. Modern GC'd languages like Go have much better memory footprints and the penalty of fast numerical code is much smaller.

I thought everyone was using JNA [1] for native access these days. JNA overhead is pretty low, and it’s much simpler to use versus JNI.

[1] https://github.com/java-native-access/jna

Re: IT Runs on Java 8

#302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great points, but it's actually much simpler than that: if you want static types, you have already eliminated the majority of HN darlings (JS, Python, and Ruby). Where do you? Most developers turn to C++, Java, or C# (not Haskell or F#, for example), and of these, Java and C# are both great for productivity and not daunting for someone just starting out, unlike C++. There was a period after 200x where developers mana…

> eliminated the majority of HN darlings (JS, Python, and Ruby) Those were the darlings ten years ago (along with CoffeeScript and Clojure). The pendulum has swung back towards types and now the hip ones are Go, Kotlin, Swift, TypeScript, and (to a lesser extent) Haskell, Hack, Reason, and OCaml. > Java, UML, SQL, and everything else that was used in 199x. There was the whole no-SQL fad, but lately, even here, I see…

Asking as someone who cares about aesthetics a lot more than most developers, what does UML have to do with aesthetics? UML is for modeling systems and relationships through agreed upon conventions, and sometimes generating code stubs based on those diagrams. As long as you adhere to the conventions, the aesthetics can be changed as necessary.

Re: IT Runs on Java 8

#303
There is nothing that «most people do». When will people realize this? Yes you have trends on HN that are different from trends in, say, the oil prospecting industry or something. And yet they overlap sometimes. You also have vastly different needs. Some beed to optimize for execution speed and some for development speed. Some need high parallellization some need single thread performance. Analytics demands writing code in minutes or preferably seconds while aircraft software may require years of testing for correctness. Even the level of experience will impact how well you can perform on any level with any tool. I mean stop discussing how many teeth a horse has and just count them. We should spend time defining what problems current and old tools can solve, not discussing what tools solve one problem better because no two people will ever have the same exact problem let alone have the same exact understanding of it.

Re: IT Runs on Java 8

#305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> copywritten copyrighted "Copywritten" probably means nothing, but if it did, it would have something to with copy writing, the act of writing for publication (usually commercial, usually not long-form). Added: FYI "copyrighting" is not a conscious decision, or an action you can take. Copyright emerges automatically when you create a work, what they've done is defend their copyright in court, and the courts have mix…

Yes, copywritten isn't a word, but their point was that Oracle pushed for API's to be copywritable, which was not the case before their suit. It's an incredibly bad result with many shitty implications that are currently mostly being ignored but could lead to legal nuclear war at any time.

Not to belabor the point, but... "copyrightable".

Re: IT Runs on Java 8

#306
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…

Isn't Minecraft written in Java. Many Fortune XX have their entire product lines written in it. Frankly, I don't understand the hate it gets on HN.

Most of AWS, a lot of Google - as far as I know.

Re: IT Runs on Java 8

#307
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…

I was never super into Java development. I started working in 2014 and was introduced to Weblogic, Jenkins, huge Maven POMs and all the rest, then went into Cloud consulting. When I sit down to do anything I get so wrapped up in all the stuff that comes along with Java and feel like I have to use some huge IDE like Eclipse (I hate) or IntelliJ (I If I could just write code and have a simple package manager like NPM or even Go packages and not be hindered by trying to get VScode to work I would never look back. I just waste so much time trying to understand the ecosystem. I know that isn't a great excuse (not wanting to take the time to become an expert on tooling), but people who came into the professional space in the same time frame likely also just see it as an obvious path to just avoid all the cruft.

What I really want is to get a "lite" Java project like this up and running with all of the smart people's opinions in place that I can develop entirely in a lite editor (preferably without XML anywhere). Maybe something like Spring Boot would solve that but I have not investigated that yet.

Re: IT Runs on Java 8

#308

It's a bit disturbing how much people in this industry are focused on tooling. It's a biproduct IMO of working on boring problems or supporting morally ambiguous corps. That thing that you need to keep yourself busy and keep going in the rat race.

It's a bit disturbing how much people in this industry are focused on tooling. That strikes me as such an odd critique, and I can't make it work for any other industry; you certainly wouldn't apply it to something like dentistry, or oil refinery, or plumbing. If I went in for a root canal and the dentist said "We're gonna kick it old school today, sniff this rag of ether, I'm bored with all these tools!" I would grab…

>>That strikes me as such an odd critique, and I can't make it work for any other industry; you certainly wouldn't apply it to something like dentistry, or oil refinery, or plumbing.

A software developer's job is to create software. Almost like an author. Some more than others. At the end of the day, no matter how good your pen is, it will not write a great book for you.

Re: IT Runs on Java 8

#309
post #272
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am just a little uneasy with Oracle lurking around, I just don't know what they are going to do next. What do you mean by "lurking"? Oracle is the company developing OpenJDK, and it will continue to do so. All our projects are done in the open, with lots of communication.

By "lurking" people mean that the executives who care nothing about open source are firmly in control, and some day may try to assert their control in ways that nobody else likes. You may not remember incidents like why Jenkins was forked from Hudson, but Oracle is run by people driven by what they think they can get away with, and not by what is good for the projects that they have power over.

> the executives who care nothing about open source are firmly in control, and some day may try to assert their control in ways that nobody else likes.

I have no idea what Oracle may do tomorrow, but Oracle has been in control of Java for a decade, and what it has actually done is 1. significantly increase the investment in the platform and 2. open source the entire JDK. So I don't know about the next ten years, but the past ten years have been really good for Java (well, at least on the server).

> Oracle is run by people driven by what they think they can get away with, and not by what is good for the projects that they have power over.

I don't share your romantic views of multinational corporations. Corporations are not our friends, and while they're made of people, they're not themselves people, despite what some courts may have ruled. But like people, different corporations have different styles, and it would be extremely hard to call any of them "good." I have certainly never heard of one is driven by caring (although what you do when you don't care may differ; some may be aggressive with licensing, some are in the business of mass surveillance, some help subvert democracy, others drive entire industries out of business through centralizations and others still drive kids to conspiracy theories). When you look at what Oracle has actually done so far for Java, I think it has been a better, and more trustworthy steward than Microsoft and Google have been for their own projects (Java's technical leadership at Oracle is made up of the same people who led it at Sun). And people who bet on Java ten years ago are happier now than those who bet on alternatives (well, at least on the server). This despite some decisions that made some people unhappy. You can like the good stuff and be disappointed about the bad stuff without some emotional attraction or rejection to these conglomerate monsters.

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