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While I see the Google vs. Oracle Java struggle getting ugly, I don't think this marks the decline of Java at all. Most corporations invested in Java are not bu

While I see the Google vs. Oracle Java struggle getting ugly, I don't think this marks the decline of Java at all. Most corporations invested in Java are not building their own version of Java- do they really care how this goes down? In addition what language is in any position to replace Java?

someone_here 16y ago
what language is in any position to replace Java? Previously, it was any new implementation of the VM...
- swannodette 16y ago
  Sadly a virtual machine by itself just isn't good enough anymore. The maturity and performance of the JVM shows. That kind of infrastructures takes oh ... about 20 years to build. Until the current crop of JVM based languages showed up my interest in the Java the language waned. But now that you can use your language of choice and still tap into JVM libraries, perf and the high quality profiling tools, the JVM is compelling again. Also experience stories like this, http://blog.urbanairship.com/blog/tag/java/ http://blog.urbanairship.com/blog/tag/java/, show that as great as Python and Ruby are for building websites, surprise, surprise, they don't have the performance for the real-time web.
  - amix 16y ago
    Java isn't really that good fit for real-time web applications as it usually eats a lot memory - especially if you compare it to C/C++ or node.js (V8). A while ago I rewrote a system from Java (that used JBoss Netty) to node.js. The node.js solution used about 10x less memory. And memory is a crucial element of scaling real-time web applications.
    - swannodette 16y ago
      What you mean is that your real-time application was largely memory bound - other apps might require that sanely and rapidly coordinating access to shared state might be more critical than the cost of memory- with a collaborative whiteboard or the backend of a MMORPG you're probably going to run into difficulties with C/C++ and Node.js might very well be useless. There are domains where shared nothing just doesn't work.
wicknicks 16y ago
Maybe there is no language which will immediately replace Java, but as noodle pointed out, its going to stagnate. Like what happened to C. C is being used in many companies, because they have so much stuff already written in it and cannot afford a re-write. But the community will slowly shift to other languages. We can already see that in terms of Scala/Clojure - both very promising languages.
- strlen 16y ago
  Scala and Clojure run on the JVM. There's very little to Java as far as syntax goes, it's basically C++ without MI, operator overloading or real templates. The real value is in the runtime: the standard library, the concurrency model, the virtual machine. That part is threatened by the litigation as well. Building your own competing JVM can, as this suit demonstrated, get you sued too.

someone_here 16y ago

what language is in any position to replace Java? Previously, it was any new implementation of the VM...

swannodette 16y ago
Sadly a virtual machine by itself just isn't good enough anymore. The maturity and performance of the JVM shows. That kind of infrastructures takes oh ... about 20 years to build. Until the current crop of JVM based languages showed up my interest in the Java the language waned. But now that you can use your language of choice and still tap into JVM libraries, perf and the high quality profiling tools, the JVM is compelling again. Also experience stories like this, http://blog.urbanairship.com/blog/tag/java/ http://blog.urbanairship.com/blog/tag/java/, show that as great as Python and Ruby are for building websites, surprise, surprise, they don't have the performance for the real-time web.
- amix 16y ago
  Java isn't really that good fit for real-time web applications as it usually eats a lot memory - especially if you compare it to C/C++ or node.js (V8). A while ago I rewrote a system from Java (that used JBoss Netty) to node.js. The node.js solution used about 10x less memory. And memory is a crucial element of scaling real-time web applications.
  - swannodette 16y ago
    What you mean is that your real-time application was largely memory bound - other apps might require that sanely and rapidly coordinating access to shared state might be more critical than the cost of memory- with a collaborative whiteboard or the backend of a MMORPG you're probably going to run into difficulties with C/C++ and Node.js might very well be useless. There are domains where shared nothing just doesn't work.

wicknicks 16y ago

Maybe there is no language which will immediately replace Java, but as noodle pointed out, its going to stagnate. Like what happened to C. C is being used in many companies, because they have so much stuff already written in it and cannot afford a re-write. But the community will slowly shift to other languages. We can already see that in terms of Scala/Clojure - both very promising languages.

strlen 16y ago
Scala and Clojure run on the JVM. There's very little to Java as far as syntax goes, it's basically C++ without MI, operator overloading or real templates. The real value is in the runtime: the standard library, the concurrency model, the virtual machine. That part is threatened by the litigation as well. Building your own competing JVM can, as this suit demonstrated, get you sued too.