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Red Hat's top secret Java Killer/Successor: The Ceylon Project

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Re: Red Hat's top secret Java Killer/Successor: The Ceylon Project

#41

Post by wiradikusuma »

rian wrote: post #34

so sad. first of all, nothing about java is good. nothing . can anyone on HN name one single app they use daily that is programmed in java? anyone? no! how is it that a language designed from the beginning to be cross platform doesn't have a single mainstream cross platform desktop app? they even couldn't get it to be a platform for web browser plugins, how pathetic is that! and even when it does run as a web browser…

> can anyone on HN name one single app they use daily that is programmed in java

1. IntelliJ IDEA 2. Eclipse (and its derivative works) 3. My bank's e-portal (ok it sucks, but it's written in Java)

Btw, I'm a Java programmer so my opinion is biased, but I think JVM is different than Java (programming language). I don't really like Java's verbosity, but I'm betting big on JVM. Hence I learn Groovy and Scala (both run on JVM).

Re: Red Hat's top secret Java Killer/Successor: The Ceylon Project

#43

Post by jauco »

rian wrote: post #34

so sad. first of all, nothing about java is good. nothing . can anyone on HN name one single app they use daily that is programmed in java? anyone? no! how is it that a language designed from the beginning to be cross platform doesn't have a single mainstream cross platform desktop app? they even couldn't get it to be a platform for web browser plugins, how pathetic is that! and even when it does run as a web browser…

> can anyone on HN name one single app they use daily that is programmed in java?

Twitter: http://engineering.twitter.com/2011/04/twitter-search-is-now...

Re: Red Hat's top secret Java Killer/Successor: The Ceylon Project

#44

Post by bpodgursky »

danssig wrote: post #40
lsd5you wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say some people don't want to get it. There are plenty of toy languages and interactive calculators such as logo and which allow simple definitions of functions similar to the 'ideal' given. However noone would suggest writing complex software using logo. I'm not going to defend every last aspect of Java, but in practice verbosity and readability are not it's biggest issues. In practice Java is pretty maintai…

>but in practice verbosity and readability are not it's biggest issues. Right. It's biggest issue is inconsistency. Int or int? Equals or ==? Why can class String overload the + operator but I can't? On and on. But Java is very verbose. It's not a big issue in practice because we have IDEs that write most of the endless boilerplate for us.

Actually the == comparison is VERY consistent. == will return true only if the values are identical--in the case of primitives, this means the ints or doubles are identical, and in the case of objects it means the pointers have identical values--meaning they point to the exact same object. But this way I know that if I want to do something like change the way things stored in sets, I have to modify equals(), since that's what maps and sets use to check equality.

Strings are only allowed to use + because strings were traditionally seen as primitive types, rather than the objects they are in Java. It's a small inconsistency, but more of a concession to existing practice.

I'm not sure what else the "on and on" refers to...

Re: Red Hat's top secret Java Killer/Successor: The Ceylon Project

#45

Post by TomasSedovic »

wiradikusuma wrote: post #41
rian wrote: post #34

so sad. first of all, nothing about java is good. nothing . can anyone on HN name one single app they use daily that is programmed in java? anyone? no! how is it that a language designed from the beginning to be cross platform doesn't have a single mainstream cross platform desktop app? they even couldn't get it to be a platform for web browser plugins, how pathetic is that! and even when it does run as a web browser…

> can anyone on HN name one single app they use daily that is programmed in java 1. IntelliJ IDEA 2. Eclipse (and its derivative works) 3. My bank's e-portal (ok it sucks, but it's written in Java) Btw, I'm a Java programmer so my opinion is biased, but I think JVM is different than Java (programming language). I don't really like Java's verbosity, but I'm betting big on JVM. Hence I learn Groovy and Scala (both run…

Plus pretty much every Android app. That's not JVM, just Java, but still. Answers the question and nothing to sneeze at either, I would think.

Re: Red Hat's top secret Java Killer/Successor: The Ceylon Project

#46

Post by bpodgursky »

rian wrote: post #34

so sad. first of all, nothing about java is good. nothing . can anyone on HN name one single app they use daily that is programmed in java? anyone? no! how is it that a language designed from the beginning to be cross platform doesn't have a single mainstream cross platform desktop app? they even couldn't get it to be a platform for web browser plugins, how pathetic is that! and even when it does run as a web browser…

Hadoop

Re: Red Hat's top secret Java Killer/Successor: The Ceylon Project

#47

Post by rwmj »

maayank wrote: post #26

Note to future corporate overlords: if you are going to develop a possible successor to a wildly used programming framework, don't do it in secret for two years while other efforts (Scala, Clojure, Groovy) are gaining massive traction and are ever evolving due to public interest.

Scala, Clojure and Groovy are certainly not gaining "massive traction". There are still millions weenies out there turning out new Cobol ^W I mean Java/.Net applications.

Re: Red Hat's top secret Java Killer/Successor: The Ceylon Project

#48

Post by maayank »

rwmj wrote: post #47
maayank wrote: post #26

Note to future corporate overlords: if you are going to develop a possible successor to a wildly used programming framework, don't do it in secret for two years while other efforts (Scala, Clojure, Groovy) are gaining massive traction and are ever evolving due to public interest.

Scala, Clojure and Groovy are certainly not gaining "massive traction". There are still millions weenies out there turning out new Cobol ^W I mean Java/.Net applications.

I admit I don't have the statistics to back it up, but from my perspective Scala already gained massive mindshare in the set of programmers who both already use Java and actually care about new programming features.

Is it already the defacto Blub language? No.

Do I know anyone in my field who isn't at least aware of the proclaimed advantages of Scala (I'm in industrial computer science research)? Also no. The first camp follows Oracle/IBM (Microsoft if we are talking .Net shops, not related here) and they follow the second.

EDIT: also, forget for a second the "mindshare race" bit. Already people are commenting "why did they do this? it's just like Scala". Now, obviously Scala and the other JVM languages weren't in the same state two years ago. Maybe then it was logical to design your own language with then-new language features and expressibility. But if it wasn't so top secret, people would notice the duplication of efforts and perhaps merge the two projects when this was just an idea. Maybe I'm wrong, I admit I haven't had the time yet to actually see more than several lines of Cylon, but from the comments and the highlighted features there was some obvious duplicated effort.

Re: Red Hat's top secret Java Killer/Successor: The Ceylon Project

#49

Post by eneveu »

maayank wrote: post #48
rwmj wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scala, Clojure and Groovy are certainly not gaining "massive traction". There are still millions weenies out there turning out new Cobol ^W I mean Java/.Net applications.

I admit I don't have the statistics to back it up, but from my perspective Scala already gained massive mindshare in the set of programmers who both already use Java and actually care about new programming features. Is it already the defacto Blub language? No. Do I know anyone in my field who isn't at least aware of the proclaimed advantages of Scala (I'm in industrial computer science research)? Also no. The first c…

I love Scala, but some deem it too "complex". Java's successor needs to be easy enough to understand for the millions of Java programmers that will have to learn it. Enterprises want a language any code monkey can write in...

http://lamp.epfl.ch/~odersky/blogs/isscalacomplex.html

This is where Ceylon / Fantom are interesting: they improve a little on Java, removing the various language warts, while not being too different.

http://www.jroller.com/scolebourne/entry/the_next_big_jvm_la...

That being said, I'd love it if Scala were the next Blub language ;)

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