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It's not clear to me, why does the world needs another JDK? What does this offer that currently isn't out there?
An alternative to the standard JDK that's supported by Oracle. Generally, the less stuff Oracle controls, the better (not to say Amazon having control is inherently better, but imo, it's better than Oracle)
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That was the whole idea of the Dart VM, by the way: to bridge the gap between the maximum performance you could get out of JavaScript and what you could get of a more statically-typed language. My recollection from a few years ago was that there was about a 2x performance gap between V8 and HotSpot. (All three VMs efforts: HotSpot, V8, and the Dart VM, were led by Larks Bak, by the way). I don't know if that gap has…
Yeah, it was a good idea. Given that Typescript is mostly consensus at this point, I'd argue trying to integrate it into the language spec is the better approach vs introducing a new language. But maybe there are technical reasons why it's not feasible
Pretty awesome to watch how languages get faster and faster over time through engine updates. JS/V8 is particularly impressive. I wonder how far we are from the theoretical performance limit on the software side? I would guess we will eventually see deprecations of warts to improve engine performance further. Or integrated type system etc.
That was the whole idea of the Dart VM, by the way: to bridge the gap between the maximum performance you could get out of JavaScript and what you could get of a more statically-typed language. My recollection from a few years ago was that there was about a 2x performance gap between V8 and HotSpot. (All three VMs efforts: HotSpot, V8, and the Dart VM, were led by Larks Bak, by the way). I don't know if that gap has…
The thing Dart "fixed" in terms of performance is it forced consistent typing. It removed the ability to add/remove/change fields/methods on an object at runtime. The Achilles' heel of javascript (at least, when I got hype on dart years ago) is how stupidly easy it is to change the memory shape of any object. That means the VM can't generally lay out memory for an object in a compact form. Further, the VM has to do a bunch of checks before it can go down the optimized path (in case assumptions are invalidated).
For a consistent type system, the only check needed is "is this object shaped like I think it should be?" and then you go from there.
I think the most disappointing part of Dart is that all that effort was spent creating a new language when what the browser needed (and still needs) is a new bytecode. I'd love to see WASM reach the point of a universal bytecode but fear that it painted itself into a corner by first targeting memory managed languages.
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I use Corretto primarily to avoid Oracle.
While using code that is mostly written by Oracle employees. It is incredible how people keep missing the picture about OpenJDK main contributer.
Particularly, that it makes it too easy for end-users to stumble into using components that do not come under its open source licence. This makes it a headache for organisations and users, because it is very difficult for an organisation to police "you can use X, but you musn't pass Y command-line flag that could invoke a non-free part" and other actions that could create a liability for the organisation (and a disciplinary row for the employee)
It's a little like deciding you're going to set up a sweet shop, give out free samples, and lay landmines one foot either side of the entrance.
If they historically used a model more similar to JetBrains or other companies that have a commercial open source product (where the program looks for a licence key in order to activate the non-free features, or where there is a completely separate install process for free and non-free versions) I expect they wouldn't face the same regular criticism. It's the 'Surprise! Lawyers!" aspect that people find stressful and unattractive.
With JDK builds, this separation of free and non-free product is what the community has essentially provided: if you install something like Adoptium Eclipse Temurin, you can be a bit more confident it hasn't bundled non-free programs that could create a financial liability alongside it. You could try to track which Oracle downloads are what, but they've changed their licence from time to time, so some people find it easier simply to differentiate by what organisation provided the packaged JDK.
"Amazon Corretto is a no-cost, multiplatform, production-ready distribution of the Open Java Development Kit (OpenJDK)." I'm not sure how I never heard about this before now. Is anyone out there using this over other JDKs?
We use Amazon Corretto for our bootstrapped, profitable SaaS. The reason is that we host on AWS Elastic Beanstalk, and this is the Java distribution that is supplied by default on Elastic Beanstalk's Java-based images. Amazon Corretto is, for us, unremarkable, in a very positive way. Unremarkable in that we never encounter problems with it.
Because oddly enough Beanstalk only supports Corretto 11: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/latest/platform...
Dumb question: for home/hobby type coding, what is the best JDK to install on my Mac?
I found this website for picking JDKs to be pretty helpful and unbiased: http://whichjdk.com/
It's not clear to me, why does the world needs another JDK? What does this offer that currently isn't out there?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
While using code that is mostly written by Oracle employees. It is incredible how people keep missing the picture about OpenJDK main contributer.
I don't think it's Oracle's coders that people worry about so much as its sales model and lawyers. Particularly, that it makes it too easy for end-users to stumble into using components that do not come under its open source licence. This makes it a headache for organisations and users, because it is very difficult for an organisation to police "you can use X, but you musn't pass Y command-line flag that could invoke…
This is like going for CentOS to work around Red-Hat doing most of the work.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That was the whole idea of the Dart VM, by the way: to bridge the gap between the maximum performance you could get out of JavaScript and what you could get of a more statically-typed language. My recollection from a few years ago was that there was about a 2x performance gap between V8 and HotSpot. (All three VMs efforts: HotSpot, V8, and the Dart VM, were led by Larks Bak, by the way). I don't know if that gap has…
So, what's interesting is that static typing buys you somewhat minimal gains in performance. This is why dart 1 shipped with what they called "optional typing". The thing Dart "fixed" in terms of performance is it forced consistent typing. It removed the ability to add/remove/change fields/methods on an object at runtime. The Achilles' heel of javascript (at least, when I got hype on dart years ago) is how stupidly e…
There are a lot of caveats here. You could potentially claim "minimal gains in peak performance if you can apply adaptive JIT compilation techniques", but even that is stretching it somewhat.
Adaptive JITing comes at a price in terms of warmup, memory usage and implementation complexity. Fixed object shapes help somewhat to reduce the amount of checks needed but they don't take you all the way there. Optimising numerics remains challenging (e.g. think about optimising the case where a field always contains a `double` floating-point value or a field that always contains a 64-bit integer value). Knowing the shape of the container does not yield any information about the shape of elements which implies that some checks have to stay behind in the loops. Yes, monomorphic checks are usually simple (compare+branch) but polymorphic are not. And so on and so forth.
Yes, Dart 1 is easier to compile into efficient code compared to JavaScript. Dart 2 is even easier though - because it is more statically typed.
> but fear that it painted itself into a corner by first targeting memory managed languages.
FWIW WASM GC is coming - and it looks great.
"Amazon Corretto is a no-cost, multiplatform, production-ready distribution of the Open Java Development Kit (OpenJDK)." I'm not sure how I never heard about this before now. Is anyone out there using this over other JDKs?