One VM to Rule Them All [pdf]

Post by awayand » Sun, Aug 18, 2013, 11:37 PM UTC

jandrewrogers wrote: post #60

bjourne wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

A "server engine" (usually called a kernel actually) is like a userspace operating system kernel that is purpose-built for a class of server workloads and attempts to optimally manage system resources for that workload. The server application is built on top of that kernel. When people refer to e.g. "database kernels", this is what they are referring to. It reimplements the operating system resource management servic…

Post by SimHacker » Mon, Aug 19, 2013, 12:26 AM UTC

dubbledidu wrote: post #50

jandrewrogers wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Post by pekk » Mon, Aug 19, 2013, 1:30 AM UTC

pron wrote: post #31

tluyben2 wrote: 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%.…

Post by e12e » Mon, Aug 19, 2013, 1:42 AM UTC

dubbledidu wrote: post #15

tluyben2 wrote: 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…

Yes. The first slide basically guaranteed that I will never look into this project. The risk of touching anything Oracle-related is not worth the potential benefit.

Post by chii » Mon, Aug 19, 2013, 3:01 AM UTC

pron wrote: post #66

dubbledidu wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Google already had a lot fun with Oracle while not using their code. If you fork, be prepared for a patent-infringement lawsuit as soon as you earn some money with it. I'm pretty sure most companies have realized that staying the hell away from Oracle isn't a stupid move.

Actually, most companies that aren't Google (finance, government, military, enterprise) realized that simply sticking with Oracle is even a better move. I don't know if you know this, but Oracle is making more money (profit) than Google (Oracle is also a much larger company than Google). They wouldn't be doing that if people were staying away from them. Lawsuit aside, even Google itself (and Facebook, and Twitter) ru…