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IT Runs on Java 8

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Re: IT Runs on Java 8

#311

Post by new4thaccount »

archgoon wrote: post #288
mevile wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I still like Python, Python and Ruby haven't been darlings of anything in probably the last 10 years. Go, Rust, Swift, and Kotlin are newer statically typed languages that lots of devs on here like though.

Python's relevance got renewed by the ML frameworks (Tensorflow) and notebooks (Jupyter).

This. Jupyter notebooks, Matplotlib, Numpy, Spyder...all that made Python big again as ML and AI became the new hotness recently and the killer app for Python.

Outside AI, Python is a really good scripting language for both Linux and Windows. My entire industry seems to run off of Python for process automation and analysis. It really is a lingua franca in this space.

Re: IT Runs on Java 8

#312

Post by matthewmacleod »

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…

I had cause to use a bit of Java recently, so I could wrap an existing library that did exactly the thing I wanted. I haven't used it since university—back in the 1.4 days—and I was actually pleasantly surprised. Performance was great, concurrency was easy, features like type inference and streams made the experience much more pleasant, and obviously the development tools are still first-rate.

The absence of a package manager like Bundler or Cargo was frustrating for someone coming from that environment – as was the effective requirement to use an IDE. But on the whole, the platform feels like something that totally-hip-and-edgy-clique developers like myself are too quick to discount.

Re: IT Runs on Java 8

#313

Post by sanderjd »

dragonwriter wrote: post #291
vijucat wrote: post #278

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…

> 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). Well, if you ignore mypy and consider TypeScript distinct enough from JS to not count, sure, though TS is if anything more of an HN darling than bare JS (Really, none of those languages has been an HN or developer community darling in years, though Python—…

>> Most developers [from context: who want static types] turn to C++, Java, or C#

> I'd be surprised if more than half (most) developers using static typing use those languages and not others outside that set.

Really? I'd be surprised if it was less than 90%. What is the competition? Go, TypeScript, Swift, Scala, Kotlin, Rust (in rough order of my gut sense for how widely used they currently are)? These are all still very small relative to C++, Java, C#.

If you argue that C has static types, then I guess you're probably right. But it isn't really true that C has static types in the contemporary sense (which I think is perhaps better referred to as "strong" type safety).

Re: IT Runs on Java 8

#314

Post by overgard »

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…

I used to be a Java hater (I'm much more neutral now -- I even find aspects of it pretty pleasant). To me, it was never about the technology of Java (always been pretty impressive), or even the language (a little verbose -- but so is C++ and C# and I like both of those), it was really just about the ecosystem. For whatever reason 2000s era java had soo many libraries that were just insanely over-engineered and had these absurdly deep object taxonomies and trying to figure out how to do something came down to figuring out how 5 or 6 different classes interrelated. It was such a nightmare, especially since the IDEs back then weren't as smart as they are right now. I think it's become a lot better now though, modern libraries seem to have learned a lot of those lessons, and having proper closures makes a huge difference, and things like IntelliJ are really great about making dealing with the verbosity much easier.

Re: IT Runs on Java 8

#315

Post by pron »

munificent wrote: post #295
vijucat wrote: post #278

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…

> Few remember that it was Java that introduced much of the world to garbage collection, memory safety (!), optimizing JIT compilation, runtime reflection, dynamic loading, high quality static analysis IDEs, etc.

Java is still continuing to lead on technology. In recent years it has introduced the world to low-latency, concurrent copying garbage collectors (C4, ZGC), partial-evaluation Futamura-projection optimizing compilers (Graal/Truffle), and low-overhead continuous deep profiling in production (JFR). I think that lots of people remember that, and care about those things, because Java is not only leading technologically but also in market share.

Re: IT Runs on Java 8

#316

Post by new4thaccount »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #169
pron wrote: 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.

In a lawsuit, Oracle pushed for API's to be copywritten, not just their implementation. They also have paid lobbyists. They're also greedy assholes. The combo of greedy assholes and the ability to rewrite the law is a dangerous one. So, I don't use a language unless it's open with patent grants and has a non-malicious owner. At this point, Wirth's stuff is probably legally the safest.

I'm curious about the last part. Are you using Modula 2 or something?

Re: IT Runs on Java 8

#317

Post by ciceryadam »

cbsmith wrote: post #98

What's funny about this is that Java 8 is no longer supported by Oracle, so unless you are using openjdk or some other equivalent, IT is running on a potentially insecure platform. Not being cutting edge is one thing, but being insecure...

There is no longer free Oracle support for Java 8. But Amazon's James Gosling lead Corretto is reviewing updates, and even backports: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/corretto/latest/corretto-8-ug/pa...

Re: IT Runs on Java 8

#318

Post by overgard »

I agree with a lot of what this article is saying, but here's a counterpoint: http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html (Although I think you'd have to call it something different from the python paradox nowadays).

I know personally I prefer working for companies that have these modern tech stacks, not because I'm a tech hipster or because I think these newer technologies are implicitly better than the old ones. Rather, I think it signals that the people there care about their profession and are interested enough to read blogs, keep up to date, etc., and those are the people I want to work with.

That's not a criticism of the people that want to work with what they know and go home and not think about tech at all. Just a personal preference.

Re: IT Runs on Java 8

#319

Post by pron »

pcwalton wrote: post #300
endymi0n wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funnily enough, Go just chose to solve the problem the other way around: While JVM tackled GC with the code equivalent of lightsaber-equipped drones, Go‘s GC is almost embarrassingly simple in comparison (although it‘s pretty decent by now). The major difference is that the whole Go language and stdlib is simply written around patterns that avoid allocations almost magically. The simplicity of the Reader and Writer c…

The byte buffers that Go's Reader reads from and that Go's Writer writes into cannot in general be allocated on the stack because they are considered to escape. Because Reader and Writer are interfaces, calls are dispatched virtually, so escape analysis cannot always see through them. This is now fixed for simple cases in Go, but only very recently: https://github.com/golang/go/issues/19361 Ironically, Java HotSpot h…

> like see that there's only one implementation of an interface and thereby devirtualize calls to that interface

Oh, the JIT devirtualizes and inlines even if there are many implementations, but only one or two at a particular callsite. This has been generalized in Graal/Truffle so you almost automatically get stuff like this (https://twitter.com/ChrisGSeaton/status/619885182104043520, https://gist.github.com/chrisseaton/4464807d93b972813e49) by doing little more than writing an interpreter.

Re: IT Runs on Java 8

#320

Post by sanderjd »

mevile wrote: post #283
vijucat wrote: post #278

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…

While I still like Python, Python and Ruby haven't been darlings of anything in probably the last 10 years. Go, Rust, Swift, and Kotlin are newer statically typed languages that lots of devs on here like though.

This timeline is a bit aggressive for Ruby. The core of my career using Ruby was 10 years ago, and I would still call it "darling" at that point, though the rumblings were beginning. Node.js was first released almost exactly 10 years ago, and (from my perspective) over the next few years marked the first real exodus from people who had previously been all in on Ruby. I missed out on that one because I thought node.js seemed like an immature answer to a question I wasn't asking. But over the next few years, I became increasingly disillusioned with writing big software in a language without good static analysis, and was on board with the mindshare (if not actual employment) exodus toward languages like Go and Rust. So I would say it was more like 5-7 years ago that you started seeing more criticism than love for Ruby in places like this.

And yeah, as other commenters have said, Python is back due to data science / machine learning. (Though I'm hoping there will be a wave of adoption of tools like Julia and Swift for this in the near future; good static analysis will be nice for data science for all the same reasons it is nice for other kinds of software.)

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