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Linus Torvalds: Software and Process Patents Don't Make Sense

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Re: Linus Torvalds: Software and Process Patents Don't Make Sense

#2
Linus: "I don't actually know the details. I mean Java I really don't care about. What a horrible language. What a horrible VM. So, I am like whatever, you are barking about all this crap, go away. I don't care."

My respect for Linus just grew 10-fold!

Re: Linus Torvalds: Software and Process Patents Don't Make Sense

#3

Linus: "I don't actually know the details. I mean Java I really don't care about. What a horrible language. What a horrible VM. So, I am like whatever, you are barking about all this crap, go away. I don't care." My respect for Linus just grew 10-fold!

It's rare that I've seen the Java VM described as horrible.

In fact, it seems to be quite highly respected and seems to be working out well for Scala and Clojure. Obviously, there's also Twitter who partially moved to the VM from Rails.

Would you care to elaborate? Has Linus talked about the VM before?

Re: Linus Torvalds: Software and Process Patents Don't Make Sense

#6

Linus: "I don't actually know the details. I mean Java I really don't care about. What a horrible language. What a horrible VM. So, I am like whatever, you are barking about all this crap, go away. I don't care." My respect for Linus just grew 10-fold!

It's rare that I've seen the Java VM described as horrible. In fact, it seems to be quite highly respected and seems to be working out well for Scala and Clojure. Obviously, there's also Twitter who partially moved to the VM from Rails. Would you care to elaborate? Has Linus talked about the VM before?

Intellij, Eclipse and Netbeans, great software written in Java. Haddop, as well. Not to mention Minecraft, but this point I'll leave to Techcrunch[1]

Java is not a great language by all means, the VM does have it issues (it is very old, and has to deal with its legacy), but it is not on a really important piece of software, its quality is quite good.

At the very least, it is, ironically, responsible for LISP's renewed interest through Clojure.

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/15/a-brief-explanation-of-why-...

Re: Linus Torvalds: Software and Process Patents Don't Make Sense

#7

Linus: "I don't actually know the details. I mean Java I really don't care about. What a horrible language. What a horrible VM. So, I am like whatever, you are barking about all this crap, go away. I don't care." My respect for Linus just grew 10-fold!

It's rare that I've seen the Java VM described as horrible. In fact, it seems to be quite highly respected and seems to be working out well for Scala and Clojure. Obviously, there's also Twitter who partially moved to the VM from Rails. Would you care to elaborate? Has Linus talked about the VM before?

It's highly respected by people who are willing to use JVM based software. Frankly, typical JVM startup times alone is enough of a pain that I avoid anything-JVM if I can.

Re: Linus Torvalds: Software and Process Patents Don't Make Sense

#8

Linus: "I don't actually know the details. I mean Java I really don't care about. What a horrible language. What a horrible VM. So, I am like whatever, you are barking about all this crap, go away. I don't care." My respect for Linus just grew 10-fold!

"My respect for Linus just grew 10-fold!"

Why? He just bashes Java using strong language and not providing any arguments. This could get my respect if Java were some kind of sacred cow that nobody dares criticize. This is not the case AFAIK.

Re: Linus Torvalds: Software and Process Patents Don't Make Sense

#9
Well I didn't know that US patent cases can be presented to a jury. I don't envy them on that considering the language these things are written in.

I wonder how many hours are spent 'training' the jury in the legalese required to understand the case? And this would have to be done for each and every case that has a jury!

Re: Linus Torvalds: Software and Process Patents Don't Make Sense

#10

Linus: "I don't actually know the details. I mean Java I really don't care about. What a horrible language. What a horrible VM. So, I am like whatever, you are barking about all this crap, go away. I don't care." My respect for Linus just grew 10-fold!

It's rare that I've seen the Java VM described as horrible. In fact, it seems to be quite highly respected and seems to be working out well for Scala and Clojure. Obviously, there's also Twitter who partially moved to the VM from Rails. Would you care to elaborate? Has Linus talked about the VM before?

The Java VM is quite bad. There just isn't an alternative that meets these criteria:

1. cross platform (windows, mac, linux, mobile devices, embedded)

2. kinda fast

3. reasonably mature

4. bunch of libraries

If you want to create a new programming language today Java is the only viable platform. .NET and Mono isn't quite mature enough (and it's very similar to Java anyway). If you bootstrap from C it'll be fast and portable but you'll have no libraries for the first 5 years or so.

There just isn't a low level language layer, just above C that can be used for interopability between programming languages. What we need, what we really need, is some sort of Java--. A simple bytecode layer that other languages can target. So libraries written in one language can be used (and inspected) from another language. I know it's not going to happen anytime soon, but it'd be nice.

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