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Java is still available at zero-cost

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Re: Java is still available at zero-cost

#131

Post by majewsky »

eftychis wrote: post #86
cdoxsey wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With Go: every release. Free performance improvements and backwards compatibility. It also doesn't require anything installed on the server, so it's just updating a ci script.

Go is kind of special, as it is new relatively and the initial implementation of every feature is usually the most basic possible. Thus, every new version there is space for a lot of improvements. What I mean: the garbage collector is/was for all intents and purposes Dijkstra's late 70s ('78) tricolor algorithm. They eliminated re-scanning of the stack on Go 1.7 by adding a hybrid write barrier which is 90's work (fo…

> So Go is by no means state-of-the-art performance wise.

Yet Go is blazingly fast compared to most other languages that are widely used for web server development (except, maybe, Java).

Re: Java is still available at zero-cost

#132

Post by majewsky »

IloveHN84 wrote: post #92
euske wrote: post #43

Honest question: How often do people upgrade their production language? Me: once in a decade, maybe. I'm still perfectly happy (and productive) with C# 3.5, Java 7 and Python 2. I'm grudgingly moving forward because the old toolchains are being deprecated now, but my codes aren't significantly improved because of a few fancy idioms available in a new language, and it barely affects the design decisions. Upgrading you…

Fast: from C++11 to C++14 to C++17 soon.. The problem is that if you stay on old language versions, you're doomed soon or later (see the world moving to Python 3.7, Java 11, C#7, Go 2,..). If you consider then JavaScript, things are moving at speed of light. Today's framework might be ancient in a couple of months (React version??)

> if you stay on old language versions, you're doomed soon or later (see the world moving to [...] Go 2)

Go 2 is notable on that list because the Go developers have already promised that all Go 1 code will continue to compile and work with Go 2. It's not a 2.0, it's more like 1.15 or 1.20.

I guess they learned from the Python 2->3 transition.

Re: Java is still available at zero-cost

#133

Post by majewsky »

arthurcolle wrote: post #116
mnm1 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's insane, a complete waste of time, and a sign that the software is turning to garbage, releasing major api breaking changes just for their own goals, but to meet the goals of the user. Same goes for frameworks to a lesser extent. If one can't point out any real advantage of upgrading to a major version other than the developers want you to, that's the sign of broken software that's about to be insecure because th…

Part of the issue here is likely the pressure that dev teams feel to be outputting something rather than nothing at all. There definitely seems to be a huge overemphasis on quantity over quality.

Not sure if this is a stylistic choice, but if you want, you can do actual italics like this:

  You can do actual *italics* like this.

Re: Java is still available at zero-cost

#134

Post by MetalBuddha »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #110
euske wrote: post #43

Honest question: How often do people upgrade their production language? Me: once in a decade, maybe. I'm still perfectly happy (and productive) with C# 3.5, Java 7 and Python 2. I'm grudgingly moving forward because the old toolchains are being deprecated now, but my codes aren't significantly improved because of a few fancy idioms available in a new language, and it barely affects the design decisions. Upgrading you…

Multiple times a year. If your system is well designed it should be trivial to move between different versions. As languages evolve they tend to get faster and fix more bugs. Your tests should catch any bugs if the new version breaks anything. If you have performance concerns you can update a single server and see how it performs relative to the others. Once you're comfortable that everything is working well you can…

> If your system is well designed it should be trivial to move between different versions.

Not many systems are well designed.

Re: Java is still available at zero-cost

#135

Post by yoz-y »

euske wrote: post #43

Honest question: How often do people upgrade their production language? Me: once in a decade, maybe. I'm still perfectly happy (and productive) with C# 3.5, Java 7 and Python 2. I'm grudgingly moving forward because the old toolchains are being deprecated now, but my codes aren't significantly improved because of a few fancy idioms available in a new language, and it barely affects the design decisions. Upgrading you…

Swift every year or so. C++ every 3 years.

Re: Java is still available at zero-cost

#136

Post by majewsky »

mrep wrote: post #44
roenxi wrote: post #11

Up until around 2008, clock speed was increasing rapidly and the bottleneck to systems performance kept changing. Software was being obsoleted in a mater of years. Then things started changing; evidenced perhaps by Windows upgrades suddenly becoming a lot less relevant and Apple starting to steamroll more modular computer builders like Dell. Mark my words, there will come a day where continuously upgrading software w…

Eh, I think we got some time for consumer performance improvements. Graphics cards and HDD/SSDs seem to have been steadily increasing (noticeably) but CPU's and RAM have not for consumers which are major bottlenecks. My top of the line late 2013 rMBP has got 4 cores, 16GB of ram, and 512GB NVMe SSD. rMBPs just recently upgraded to 6 cores and 32GB of ram (more storage too but that isn't a big deal nowadays since spee…

> When those performance gains pass down to consumer computers, users will have up to 6.33 times the amount of CPU and 64 freaking times the amount of RAM!

This will only happen once there is a usecase for that much RAM in a consumer machine that justifies the massive increase in power consumption. I don't see such a usecase yet. (The only thing that I can think of that pushes hardware requirements on consumer machines is VR/AR, but that's mostly a GPU problem.)

Many notebook models (also the previous Macbooks, I think) were stuck at 16 GB RAM because that's the maximum for low-power DDR3.

Re: Java is still available at zero-cost

#137

Post by TurboHaskal »

euske wrote: post #43

Honest question: How often do people upgrade their production language? Me: once in a decade, maybe. I'm still perfectly happy (and productive) with C# 3.5, Java 7 and Python 2. I'm grudgingly moving forward because the old toolchains are being deprecated now, but my codes aren't significantly improved because of a few fancy idioms available in a new language, and it barely affects the design decisions. Upgrading you…

Our stack is quite "boring" in that regard. Common Lisp (SBCL), Free Pascal, Perl and Go. They all run the latest versions and we never had an issue upgrading these.

Re: Java is still available at zero-cost

#138

Post by Skinney »

scarface74 wrote: post #125
Skinney wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft broke backwards compatibility when they introduced generics in .NET 2.0. Java, on the other hand, is still getting flac for refusing the break backwards compatibility to introduce reified generics.

How did generics break backwards compatibility?

> Bytecode or ‘Intermediate Language’ (IL) changes. The main > place that the implementation of generics in the CLR differs > from the JVM is that they are ‘fully reified’ instead of > using ‘type erasure’, this was possible because the CLR > designers were willing to break backwards compatibility, > whereas the JVM had been around longer so I assume that this > was a much less appealing option. For more discussion on >this issue see Erasure vs reification and Reified Generics > for Java. Update: this HackerNews discussion is also worth a read.

http://mattwarren.org/2018/03/02/How-generics-were-added-to-...

Re: Java is still available at zero-cost

#139

Post by L0stLink »

Skinney wrote: post #114
scarface74 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft is known for s lot of things, but breaking backwards compatibility and short term support aren’t two of them.

Microsoft broke backwards compatibility when they introduced generics in .NET 2.0. Java, on the other hand, is still getting flac for refusing the break backwards compatibility to introduce reified generics.

Which to me is a good thing, Microsoft ripped the band-aid early and got it over with instead of delaying the inevitable.

Re: Java is still available at zero-cost

#140

Post by gulperxcx »

mnm1 wrote: post #121
arthurcolle wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the issue here is likely the pressure that dev teams feel to be outputting something rather than nothing at all. There definitely seems to be a huge overemphasis on quantity over quality.

Yup. I'm convinced this is the reason 95% of updates exist today. If it ain't broke don't fix it has been totally forgotten and it shows in today's broken ass software.

Lol, this cracked me up
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