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Yes, but GraalVM is still a VM with all that implies. An emulation of a computer system to execute code in a platform independent environment, where another sec

by jug 8y ago

Yes, but GraalVM is still a VM with all that implies. An emulation of a computer system to execute code in a platform independent environment, where another security-wise benefit is the walled garden nature. I think that all this done in 40 MB is pretty fascinating!! It depends on how you look at it? If you want the lowered resources, go ahead and code in C or why not Free Pascal, with an underestimated pretty mature and stable API on a multitude of platform targets. There are plenty of active projects with rich libraries. But there are also several disadvantages from not running on a VM. I think that these days, what you look for sometimes makes sense but in my opinion mostly just if you are into operating systems, embedded systems, hardware drivers, and so on. I don't think the added effort is worth it otherwise except for maybe personal pet projects. :)

tom_mellior 8y ago
> Yes, but GraalVM is still a VM with all that implies. What does it imply? For one thing, the term "VM" itself is vague. GraalVM isn't an "emulation of a computer system" in the way a "VM" like VirtualBox is.
- tootie 8y ago
  It sorta is. It was like a single Docker image called "Java" that gave you a complete runtime environment with all the OS internals available through a standard API so long as you wrote everything in one language.
  - tom_mellior 8y ago
    An API is not an emulation of a thing X. It's a way for you to access the actual X. Besides, as a sibling comment pointed out, even that loses all significance with native image compilation that throws out all the API methods that are not used, and inlines away the ones that are used.
viraptor 8y ago
> GraalVM is still a VM with all that implies. An emulation of a computer system to execute code in a platform independent environment, Not with graalvm native image compilation. It does ahead of time compile and eliminates the bytecode as far as I understand. It still uses managed memory and other abstractions, but it's quite far from a typical java VM. (And definitely away from a system vm)

by jug 8y ago

tom_mellior 8y ago

> Yes, but GraalVM is still a VM with all that implies. What does it imply? For one thing, the term "VM" itself is vague. GraalVM isn't an "emulation of a computer system" in the way a "VM" like VirtualBox is.

tootie 8y ago
It sorta is. It was like a single Docker image called "Java" that gave you a complete runtime environment with all the OS internals available through a standard API so long as you wrote everything in one language.
- tom_mellior 8y ago
  An API is not an emulation of a thing X. It's a way for you to access the actual X. Besides, as a sibling comment pointed out, even that loses all significance with native image compilation that throws out all the API methods that are not used, and inlines away the ones that are used.

viraptor 8y ago

> GraalVM is still a VM with all that implies. An emulation of a computer system to execute code in a platform independent environment, Not with graalvm native image compilation. It does ahead of time compile and eliminates the bytecode as far as I understand. It still uses managed memory and other abstractions, but it's quite far from a typical java VM. (And definitely away from a system vm)