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One VM to Rule Them All [pdf]

lafo.ssw.uni-linz.ac.at

41–50 of 90 posts

Re: One VM to Rule Them All [pdf]

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone having an idea why parrot is not more popular?

Because it's associated with Perl 6 which is commenly believed to be vaporware (yes, even if there have been releases). And because they want to make it so perfect that people can't remember why they used to be excited about it.

>Because it's associated with Perl 6 which is commenly believed to be vaporware

Or rather just "because it's associated with Perl".

Re: One VM to Rule Them All [pdf]

#42

Definitely an interesting project. It would be interesting to compare this to parrot[1], which had similar goals. Javascript and the JVM are currently occupying this niche to a certain degree, although neither were originally designed for this niche. 1: http://www.parrot.org/

Anyone having an idea why parrot is not more popular?

Because it's not really a good VM.

It's full of good ideas, but also full of cruft and years of technical debt. It doesn't have a JIT compiler, (nearly) no async IO, threading support is pretty new and not battle-tested nor documented very well.

Re: One VM to Rule Them All [pdf]

#43
post #31
post #7

This looks interesting, but I am generally worried about something being owned by Oracle. Simple example; I own an Openpandora. I wrote a live coding environment in Java with a very basic, lispy language at it's core. Using any free Java implementation it either; did not start (core dump; suspect; not enough memory to get even the VM up) or ran very (unusable) slow. With the Java 7 closed source ARM version from Orac…

There's a lot that can be said about Oracle's stewardship of Java, what it's like and how it should improve; it's a very important conversation. But the tone of your comment (and some of its child comments) seem to take the discussion in a misinformed direction. I don't know how much of the world's important server-side software is written in Java (or runs on the JVM), but I wouldn't be surprised if it's around 80%.…

You are correct that the JVM is ubiquitous in server software but not nearly as much as you assume and there has been a shift away from it in recent years for reasons having nothing to do with Oracle etc. I've been designing high-performance server engines since the 1990s and have watched the architectures and tool chains evolve.

Five years ago most new server engine development was done on the JVM. Since then there has been a shift toward new development being done in C++ such that the vast majority of new server engines I know about are being developed in C++ (mostly C++11) across a diverse range of companies. The reasons are practical and reflect the evolution of hardware.

The short version is that on current hardware C++ is much more efficient, both in terms of throughput per core and can achieve integer factor improvements in absolute performance relative to the JVM. Most of the differences are boil down to two things. First, server performance tends to be bound by memory performance and the JVM is quite a bit worse than what is easily achievable in C++. Second, an optimal high-performance server engine design in C++ is difficult to express within the JVM so basic design of the engine kernel tends to be less efficient as well.

In large-scale systems, that starts to add up in terms of power and hardware consumption and companies are more sensitive to this than they used to be. C++ currently offers significantly better characteristics and using less hardware to do it.

Re: One VM to Rule Them All [pdf]

#45
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot that can be said about Oracle's stewardship of Java, what it's like and how it should improve; it's a very important conversation. But the tone of your comment (and some of its child comments) seem to take the discussion in a misinformed direction. I don't know how much of the world's important server-side software is written in Java (or runs on the JVM), but I wouldn't be surprised if it's around 80%.…

You are correct that the JVM is ubiquitous in server software but not nearly as much as you assume and there has been a shift away from it in recent years for reasons having nothing to do with Oracle etc. I've been designing high-performance server engines since the 1990s and have watched the architectures and tool chains evolve. Five years ago most new server engine development was done on the JVM. Since then there…

I thought I knew most of what is hot and fresh on the software development front, but I've never heard of any "server engines." Mind explaining what it is? Virtualization containers perhaps?

Re: One VM to Rule Them All [pdf]

#46
post #31
post #7

This looks interesting, but I am generally worried about something being owned by Oracle. Simple example; I own an Openpandora. I wrote a live coding environment in Java with a very basic, lispy language at it's core. Using any free Java implementation it either; did not start (core dump; suspect; not enough memory to get even the VM up) or ran very (unusable) slow. With the Java 7 closed source ARM version from Orac…

There's a lot that can be said about Oracle's stewardship of Java, what it's like and how it should improve; it's a very important conversation. But the tone of your comment (and some of its child comments) seem to take the discussion in a misinformed direction. I don't know how much of the world's important server-side software is written in Java (or runs on the JVM), but I wouldn't be surprised if it's around 80%.…

I agree with you, but as I can choose the software I create and with what I'm not very interested in working with Oracle stuff.

I worked with Java since 0.1 in the enterprise world for over 10 years and with Clojure & Scala I would continue with it, but I don't trust Oracle to do the right thing in releasing source at the same pace or at all for some critical perf/scaling features and I tend to think thats wrong.

How does OpenJDK handle serverside compared to the Oracle binaries these days?

Re: One VM to Rule Them All [pdf]

#47

Definitely an interesting project. It would be interesting to compare this to parrot[1], which had similar goals. Javascript and the JVM are currently occupying this niche to a certain degree, although neither were originally designed for this niche. 1: http://www.parrot.org/

Anyone having an idea why parrot is not more popular?

Because supporting the Rakudo attempt to implement Perl 6 turned out to be an unpleasant slog through an unnavigable field of abuse and nonsense:

http://www.modernperlbooks.com/mt/2013/02/goodnight-parrot.h...

Re: One VM to Rule Them All [pdf]

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone having an idea why parrot is not more popular?

Because it's not really a good VM. It's full of good ideas, but also full of cruft and years of technical debt. It doesn't have a JIT compiler, (nearly) no async IO, threading support is pretty new and not battle-tested nor documented very well.

Sounds like Perl 6!

Re: One VM to Rule Them All [pdf]

#49
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot that can be said about Oracle's stewardship of Java, what it's like and how it should improve; it's a very important conversation. But the tone of your comment (and some of its child comments) seem to take the discussion in a misinformed direction. I don't know how much of the world's important server-side software is written in Java (or runs on the JVM), but I wouldn't be surprised if it's around 80%.…

Meaning the world is in corporate hands,sad enough.

The world is in corporate hands, but Oracle and the JVM are far from being the worst of it. At least all Oracle wants is your money, unlike a younger kind of mega-corporations that will give you services free of charge only to hold your most secret information – e-mail, photos, current location, documents and more. Oracle can be infuriating, but it's not scary because it can be easily understood. What companies like Google want, well that's far scarier. It's also a completely different discussion. :)

Re: One VM to Rule Them All [pdf]

#50
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot that can be said about Oracle's stewardship of Java, what it's like and how it should improve; it's a very important conversation. But the tone of your comment (and some of its child comments) seem to take the discussion in a misinformed direction. I don't know how much of the world's important server-side software is written in Java (or runs on the JVM), but I wouldn't be surprised if it's around 80%.…

You are correct that the JVM is ubiquitous in server software but not nearly as much as you assume and there has been a shift away from it in recent years for reasons having nothing to do with Oracle etc. I've been designing high-performance server engines since the 1990s and have watched the architectures and tool chains evolve. Five years ago most new server engine development was done on the JVM. Since then there…

I think the key point you are missing is developer productivity.

Every potential performance gain C++ might have is completely negated by having to touch that complete clusterfuck of a language.

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