Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The decline and fall of Java on the desktop

jdeploy.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 362 posts

Re: The decline and fall of Java on the desktop

#341

Post by [deleted] »

tombert wrote: post #93
Tsarbomb wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate the old school way of writing Java more than any other language. I love writing in "modern" Java more than any other language. Lombok, RxJava/Reactor where possible, and monads everywhere. It is beautiful and succinct, though I totally appreciate it may not always be easy to introduce on older frameworks or legacy projects.

Haven't used Lombox, RxJava is great, but it just feel like bandaids on a language that wasn't really designed for it. There's no accounting for taste, but I'll take either Scala or Clojure on the JVM any day of the week. Scala's monads don't feel like a library feature, they feel baked into the language...because they are.

[deleted]

Re: The decline and fall of Java on the desktop

#342

Post by [deleted] »

derefr wrote: post #209
Tsarbomb wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate the old school way of writing Java more than any other language. I love writing in "modern" Java more than any other language. Lombok, RxJava/Reactor where possible, and monads everywhere. It is beautiful and succinct, though I totally appreciate it may not always be easy to introduce on older frameworks or legacy projects.

Can you link an example of a codebase written in this modern-Java style? I've seen parts of it here and there, but I don't think I've ever seen all this used together.

[deleted]

Re: The decline and fall of Java on the desktop

#343

Post by sebazzz »

coliveira wrote: post #313
ChrisLomont wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the start C# was designed to run on any platform, which is why it compiled to IL and didn't use Win32 as the basis for the library. It didn't take long for JIT compilers to exist for other platforms.

You're just believing in MS propaganda. Yes, people created compilers and virtual machines for other platforms, but MS never considered this important. Their goal is to have only Windows as first class citizen in the .net world. If you write C# code you're tying yourself to a closed product that is restricted to a single platform.

No, he is right though. .NET was not only on Windows, but Windows CE as well. Later also via Silverlight.

You think of cross-platform as cross-vendor.

Re: The decline and fall of Java on the desktop

#344

Post by ethbr0 »

kaba0 wrote: post #331
ethbr0 wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For intro computer science students, pointers-as-explicit-references are far easier to comprehend than Java's esoterica. Said as someone who took intro computer science at 2 universities across 3 courses (C/C++, Python, Java), due engineering to art to computer science major switching. I understand why Java did what they did, from a performance standpoint, but that's a poor highest value to hold for education use. An…

> pointers-as-explicit-references are far easier to comprehend than Java's esoterica. What is esoteric about Java’s references? They are basically equivalent to C pointers without arithmetics and marketed as references. It is pretty much the same for most high level languages.

The object/primitive distinction, which seems like something an intro CS student really shouldn't be wasting their time learning.

IMHO, the C-style */& was far clearer when I was first learning to program. Especially since you could just echo out the (virtual) memory address.

Re: The decline and fall of Java on the desktop

#345

Post by kaba0 »

ethbr0 wrote: post #344
kaba0 wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pointers-as-explicit-references are far easier to comprehend than Java's esoterica. What is esoteric about Java’s references? They are basically equivalent to C pointers without arithmetics and marketed as references. It is pretty much the same for most high level languages.

The object/primitive distinction, which seems like something an intro CS student really shouldn't be wasting their time learning. IMHO, the C-style */& was far clearer when I was first learning to program. Especially since you could just echo out the (virtual) memory address.

The object/primitive distinction is pretty much the very short list of primitives (even written with lower case letters) vs every other type.

> IMHO, the C-style */& was far clearer when I was first learning to program

Tell that to the million segfaults that students learning C experience (or worse, they don’t even get it!!)

Re: The decline and fall of Java on the desktop

#346

Post by yyyk »

coliveira wrote: post #193
sebazzz wrote: post #10

As a C# developer I remember the first time I developed a GUI java application. In C# you have a code-behind file with your own code and event handlers, and a "designer file" with the generated code to set-up the GUI itself. Then I used Netbeans for a Java app, and the code file contained weird sections of artificially not editable code, and event handlers were so much more complex and cumbersome - with inner classes…

While Java was designed to be multi-platform, C# was designed specifically to create software that could run only on Microsoft platforms. Any advantage provided by C# is negated by tying your work to a platform that could be abandoned by MS as they did to Visual Basic.

These days MS makes way more from Azure, hurting Linux support will hurt Azure, and they can't afford it.

Re: The decline and fall of Java on the desktop

#347

Post by coliveira »

sebazzz wrote: post #343
coliveira wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're just believing in MS propaganda. Yes, people created compilers and virtual machines for other platforms, but MS never considered this important. Their goal is to have only Windows as first class citizen in the .net world. If you write C# code you're tying yourself to a closed product that is restricted to a single platform.

No, he is right though. .NET was not only on Windows, but Windows CE as well. Later also via Silverlight. You think of cross-platform as cross-vendor.

Not really. A single vender can be multi platform, for example Oracle. MS wants to propel their Windows platform. Windows can run on several types of hardware, but these are variations of the same thing.

Re: The decline and fall of Java on the desktop

#348

Post by ethbr0 »

kaba0 wrote: post #345
ethbr0 wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The object/primitive distinction, which seems like something an intro CS student really shouldn't be wasting their time learning. IMHO, the C-style */& was far clearer when I was first learning to program. Especially since you could just echo out the (virtual) memory address.

The object/primitive distinction is pretty much the very short list of primitives (even written with lower case letters) vs every other type. > IMHO, the C-style */& was far clearer when I was first learning to program Tell that to the million segfaults that students learning C experience (or worse, they don’t even get it!!)

Yes, int vs Integer. It does make sense that those would function differently. /s ;)

And C definitely has some inscrutable errors, but to me once I understood them, they always made sense in computer terms. Whereas Java errors and oddities only make sense in Java terms.

Re: The decline and fall of Java on the desktop

#349

Post by AtlasBarfed »

pjmlp wrote: post #235
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google or IBM would have been better tjam Oracle. This seems like a false choice: Oracle or nothing. Back when Java/Sun were up for grabs: 1) Google by far (they were less evil back then, I think). I mean, they would have saved money and headaches and probably a lot of distracting management meetings. 2) IBM, well ok: they did Eclipse, had their own JDK, and a lot of enterprise customers on locked platforms that coul…

Yes, really Oracle. They were one of the first companies to jump into Java, in fact the first conference talk about Java that we had on the campus back in 1996 was sponsored by Oracle. They also collaborated with Sun on the Network Computer thin clients for Java based computers. In 1999, all Oracle GUIs for their software were converted into Java applications. They also own J/Rockit and BEA, whose core technologies n…

Don't try to gaslight me that Oracle is some benevolent company and the BEA / etc product suite of Oracle was some grandiose idealistic movement of software.

IBM and Oracle have a history of acquiring companies to acquire customers.

The difference between the two is that Oracle acquires software so it can sue them. IBM just wants to sell hardware and licenses. Um, yeah, I'll take IBM.

Oracle of course jumped on Java. What was the alternative? IBM had DB/2 at the time. Microsoft had SQLServer. That's not some great vision or buy-in with the Java ecosystem, it was just economic calculation.

And why did Oracle acquire Java? Oh that's right, they only cared about suing google. There are numerous stories of Oracle asking Sun officials specifically about that potential avenue of litigation, almost to the exclusion of any technical merits or other value to the Java assets.

Oracle bundled Ask.com toolbar. End of story.

Google would have simply outsourced everything. Win win win.

Re: The decline and fall of Java on the desktop

#350

Post by bastawhiz »

hoseja wrote: post #270
bastawhiz wrote: post #211

It's interesting to note that probably the best selling Java application for desktop is owned and maintained by Microsoft: Minecraft. It's a testament to the technology that they still after all these years have not managed to make a definitive non-Java version that replaces the Java edition outright.

They could make it in C#; in fact a survival-focused clone VintageStory does just that.

They've written a version in C++. I doubt they'll ever port it to C#.
Post reply on HN