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To programmers, Sun seemed earnest about its intentions. Thats why we adopted its Platform. Could anyone name one guy like James Gosling in Oracle ? Didn't t

To programmers, Sun seemed earnest about its intentions. Thats why we adopted its Platform. Could anyone name one guy like James Gosling in Oracle ? Didn't thinks so. With Oracle, everything they do with Java seems to be slimy. Suing Google, JCP elections ( Hologic ?? ). premium for JVM . I fear this trend is to continue. There are those who think that Oracle would continue to invest in Open JDK and continue to evolve it. I am sure they also believe that MySQl has an even brighter future ahead of it. The unfortunate sideffect is that cool new languages like Scala and Clojure could end up as collateral damage as JVM is no longer seen as a viable and open platform. I just might have to bite the bullet and learn me some Haskell after all !! Or GO programming language.

gaius 16y ago
I was going to say Bob Miner and Ed Oates but I've just checked and neither of them is a current Oracle employee. Why is "suing Google" automatically slimy? They're a corporation like any other. In fact they're not unlike Oracle was at a similar age...
- badmash69 16y ago
  IMHO all law suites over patents in software are slimy. This my opinion as a programmer. If you are indeed a programmer, please feel free to look at this and tell me if you see any of the stuff mentioned in the lawsuit not fairly obvious. http://www.theserverside.com/report/The-Oracle-Google-Patent-Lawsuit-Demystified http://www.theserverside.com/report/The-Oracle-Google-Patent... . I do not think algorithms should be patentable as this stifles innovation. Oracle vs. Google lawsuit would be fun to watch -- if you like the "SAW" movies.
  - gaius 16y ago
    Like it or not, this is how the game is played. If the situation were reversed, Google's lawyers would be all over Oracle like a cheap suit. They'd be neglecting their responsibility to their shareholders if they weren't. If you think Google is "different" from any other multinational public corporation then you've fallen hook, line and sinker for their PR.
    - badmash69 16y ago
      May be so , but so far no software patent lawsuits from Google. Yet. I read somewhere that Schawrtz, the nincompoop former CEO of Sun, pitched Google lawsuit as an asset. A typical Asshat CEO meets douchebag investor love story. May be my visceral reaction stems from the gradual acceptance of the fact that I would have to learn Haskell after all.
      - gaius 16y ago
        Haskell is great! And there's OCaml and F# too...
    - richardw 16y ago
      Google would have nixed Hadoop if they were playing the same game. Instead they gave them a BigTable patent license. There are many shades of evil, but theirs is far less dark than Oracle's.
narrator 16y ago
I think the best option for the community is to stick to JDK 1.6 and never upgrade. If people get sick of the Java language going nowhere they can just use Scala on JDK 1.6, or some sort of fork of the Java language that compiles to bytecode that runs on 1.6, etc. I really can't see any of the open source projects embracing the commercial feature set. 1.6 is a really great platform. I don't see it being obsoleted, at least on the server side, for at least 5 more years and no doubt code will live on in production that runs on 1.6 practically forever.
- 8ren 16y ago
  That makes sense, but people really like to see a future before investing (money or sweat).
- melling 16y ago
  This is really bad idea. Java and the JVM can still be greatly improved. Closures, fixing generics, tail call optimization, module system, faster startup, etc. JavaFX will be a nice improvement once it's integrated with Java.
  - sukuriant 16y ago
    Hitting a couple of your points: What about Generics is broken? For the extent of power they seem to intend to provide (forcing methods to only take a particular type, and providing syntactic sugar so you don't have to cast everywhere. Tail-call optimization is just that, an optimization. A 1.6 compliant, open-source JVM could provide that. Same with the faster startup time. As I don't generally use closures, and would replicate their abilities through interfaces and anonymous classes, I don't have a comment on them; and you'd need to expound upon "module system" for me to say anything.
    - steveklabnik 16y ago
      > What about Generics is broken? I'm going to be slightly handwavy, so forgive me: Generics are implemented by doing type erasure[1] rather than as 'real generics' through some other method. This causes issues with runtime reflection. > would replicate their abilities through interfaces and anonymous classes, This embodies exactly what I hate about Java: In other languages, where I simply 'do/end' or ' \ ->', I have to create a whole giant pile of boilerplate bullshit to pull off something that's supposed to be easy. 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generics_in_Java#Type_erasure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generics_in_Java#Type_erasure
TallGuyShort 16y ago
So when Oracle monetizes it's products it's slimy, eh? What about when hackers do it for their apps?
- maxawaytoolong 16y ago
  Most people do indeed consider it slimy when "hackers" package up something that used to be open source and start selling it. And, hackers generally don't have the power to turn off the free and open source versions of the project, or start suing people, like Oracle does.
- badmash69 16y ago
  Its bait and switch-- thats what makes it slimy. With Sun at helm, you never had to wonder if your JVM was intentionally crippled. I stayed with Java because it was write once run everywhere (on the server side). Oracle is making it into write once, renew your license annually on every platform for every CPU.
  - mikedouglas 16y ago
    Oracle's JRockit is older than the OpenJDK. All they have announced is that their merging the two codebases, and that the next version of Oracle's proprietary JVM will be based off the result. In no way does that resemble a bait and switch. "Messinger didn't explain how the premium JVM would differ to the free version, but the premium edition will likely see performance tuning and tie-ins to Oracle's middleware." Explain to me how the free version is crippled?
    - fauigerzigerk 16y ago
      If one day there are two versions of the JVM based on the same core, and one has more features than the other, the non-premium version will be perceived as crippled. Much depends of course on the kind of features affected. Tie-ins to Oracle middleware would not be a problem. Optimizations appearing first in the premium version before they eventually come to the open version would be a huge problem. But I think Oracle's strategy is not to cripple the open version so much that it's really worse. I think they're trying to create a perception with big customers that they are on the safe side if they make payments to Oracle. So Oracle is effectively creating an SKU for the kind of people who also buy their other overpriced enterprise stuff. Smart move on Oracle's part, at least in the short run. It has the potential to kill Java in the longer run though.
Dbug 16y ago
>...as JVM is no longer seen as a viable and open platform. With Apple dropping work on future major updates to the JVM for OS X, Oracle would be wise to speak up promptly indicating what support/development they'll provide for the platform. Apple has done a pretty good job integrating the JVM with OS X. If Oracle is able to continue from the code-base Apple has been using (and perhaps hire some from that Apple team?), announcing those things would certainly add to the believability of robust support actually coming. Apple isn't very likely to want to part with skilled developers though. If Oracle doesn't get or (still?) have developers with heavy OS X experience, and perhaps some code to build on, one has to wonder if/when they could ever deliver a quality release for the platform.
hga 16y ago
To the extent that Clojure's heath depends on the Java ecosystem, that's true. To the extent that Clojure is the next big Lisp as many are predicting, not so. The development of Clojure-in-Clojure will make it relatively easy to do more specific platform backends (e.g. x86_64 POSIX); some of us with no love of Java (or of OOP or in extreme need of existing Java libraries) are looking forward to that day. And while this won't appeal to many, Clojure was originally targeted to the CLR as well as the JVM. Rich Hickey punted his CLR efforts when he decided he'd prefer developing the language at twice the rate, but others have resurrected it.
- narrator 16y ago
  Hey whatever happened to Parrot? You know the common VM for Perl and Python that was supposed to be the basis for Perl6? Here's an old HN story about it. In fact, in the comments someone proposes porting Clojure to Parrot: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=552850 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=552850
  - hga 16y ago
    When Parrot has its concurrency and GC acts together, it's potentially worthy of consideration. As I understand it, neither (which are inextricably linked) are in good shape today.
    - chromatic 16y ago
      I have a GC tuning branch which improves performance by about 10%, and we have a new GC in progress as well. Our target date for the latter is for the 3.0 release in January.
      - hga 16y ago
        Thanks for your reply! 1. I assume this is precise, not conservative GC? 2. How do these work with the new concurrency (threading) system that as I remember Team Parrot was going to write? Ideally, for the multicore future that is now today, I'd like to see multiple simultaneous mutators and scavengers without a stop the world requirement. That said, stock HotSpot doesn't supply the latter, although Azul has done some neat stuff to extend it and apparently Do A Right Thing (their Pauseless mark and compact GC and their open source release of that in their Managed Runtime Initiative). It would be nice if Parrot can someday do this without extreme pain.
narrator 16y ago
Has anyone played around with LLVM's JVM Implementation? It supposedly runs Tomcat and Eclipse... http://vmkit.llvm.org/ http://vmkit.llvm.org/

gaius 16y ago

I was going to say Bob Miner and Ed Oates but I've just checked and neither of them is a current Oracle employee. Why is "suing Google" automatically slimy? They're a corporation like any other. In fact they're not unlike Oracle was at a similar age...

badmash69 16y ago
IMHO all law suites over patents in software are slimy. This my opinion as a programmer. If you are indeed a programmer, please feel free to look at this and tell me if you see any of the stuff mentioned in the lawsuit not fairly obvious. http://www.theserverside.com/report/The-Oracle-Google-Patent-Lawsuit-Demystified http://www.theserverside.com/report/The-Oracle-Google-Patent... . I do not think algorithms should be patentable as this stifles innovation. Oracle vs. Google lawsuit would be fun to watch -- if you like the "SAW" movies.
- gaius 16y ago
  Like it or not, this is how the game is played. If the situation were reversed, Google's lawyers would be all over Oracle like a cheap suit. They'd be neglecting their responsibility to their shareholders if they weren't. If you think Google is "different" from any other multinational public corporation then you've fallen hook, line and sinker for their PR.
  - badmash69 16y ago
    May be so , but so far no software patent lawsuits from Google. Yet. I read somewhere that Schawrtz, the nincompoop former CEO of Sun, pitched Google lawsuit as an asset. A typical Asshat CEO meets douchebag investor love story. May be my visceral reaction stems from the gradual acceptance of the fact that I would have to learn Haskell after all.
    - gaius 16y ago
      Haskell is great! And there's OCaml and F# too...
  - richardw 16y ago
    Google would have nixed Hadoop if they were playing the same game. Instead they gave them a BigTable patent license. There are many shades of evil, but theirs is far less dark than Oracle's.

narrator 16y ago

I think the best option for the community is to stick to JDK 1.6 and never upgrade. If people get sick of the Java language going nowhere they can just use Scala on JDK 1.6, or some sort of fork of the Java language that compiles to bytecode that runs on 1.6, etc. I really can't see any of the open source projects embracing the commercial feature set. 1.6 is a really great platform. I don't see it being obsoleted, at least on the server side, for at least 5 more years and no doubt code will live on in production that runs on 1.6 practically forever.

8ren 16y ago
That makes sense, but people really like to see a future before investing (money or sweat).
melling 16y ago
This is really bad idea. Java and the JVM can still be greatly improved. Closures, fixing generics, tail call optimization, module system, faster startup, etc. JavaFX will be a nice improvement once it's integrated with Java.
- sukuriant 16y ago
  Hitting a couple of your points: What about Generics is broken? For the extent of power they seem to intend to provide (forcing methods to only take a particular type, and providing syntactic sugar so you don't have to cast everywhere. Tail-call optimization is just that, an optimization. A 1.6 compliant, open-source JVM could provide that. Same with the faster startup time. As I don't generally use closures, and would replicate their abilities through interfaces and anonymous classes, I don't have a comment on them; and you'd need to expound upon "module system" for me to say anything.
  - steveklabnik 16y ago
    > What about Generics is broken? I'm going to be slightly handwavy, so forgive me: Generics are implemented by doing type erasure[1] rather than as 'real generics' through some other method. This causes issues with runtime reflection. > would replicate their abilities through interfaces and anonymous classes, This embodies exactly what I hate about Java: In other languages, where I simply 'do/end' or ' \ ->', I have to create a whole giant pile of boilerplate bullshit to pull off something that's supposed to be easy. 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generics_in_Java#Type_erasure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generics_in_Java#Type_erasure

TallGuyShort 16y ago

So when Oracle monetizes it's products it's slimy, eh? What about when hackers do it for their apps?

maxawaytoolong 16y ago
Most people do indeed consider it slimy when "hackers" package up something that used to be open source and start selling it. And, hackers generally don't have the power to turn off the free and open source versions of the project, or start suing people, like Oracle does.
badmash69 16y ago
Its bait and switch-- thats what makes it slimy. With Sun at helm, you never had to wonder if your JVM was intentionally crippled. I stayed with Java because it was write once run everywhere (on the server side). Oracle is making it into write once, renew your license annually on every platform for every CPU.
- mikedouglas 16y ago
  Oracle's JRockit is older than the OpenJDK. All they have announced is that their merging the two codebases, and that the next version of Oracle's proprietary JVM will be based off the result. In no way does that resemble a bait and switch. "Messinger didn't explain how the premium JVM would differ to the free version, but the premium edition will likely see performance tuning and tie-ins to Oracle's middleware." Explain to me how the free version is crippled?
  - fauigerzigerk 16y ago
    If one day there are two versions of the JVM based on the same core, and one has more features than the other, the non-premium version will be perceived as crippled. Much depends of course on the kind of features affected. Tie-ins to Oracle middleware would not be a problem. Optimizations appearing first in the premium version before they eventually come to the open version would be a huge problem. But I think Oracle's strategy is not to cripple the open version so much that it's really worse. I think they're trying to create a perception with big customers that they are on the safe side if they make payments to Oracle. So Oracle is effectively creating an SKU for the kind of people who also buy their other overpriced enterprise stuff. Smart move on Oracle's part, at least in the short run. It has the potential to kill Java in the longer run though.

Dbug 16y ago

>...as JVM is no longer seen as a viable and open platform. With Apple dropping work on future major updates to the JVM for OS X, Oracle would be wise to speak up promptly indicating what support/development they'll provide for the platform. Apple has done a pretty good job integrating the JVM with OS X. If Oracle is able to continue from the code-base Apple has been using (and perhaps hire some from that Apple team?), announcing those things would certainly add to the believability of robust support actually coming. Apple isn't very likely to want to part with skilled developers though. If Oracle doesn't get or (still?) have developers with heavy OS X experience, and perhaps some code to build on, one has to wonder if/when they could ever deliver a quality release for the platform.

hga 16y ago

To the extent that Clojure's heath depends on the Java ecosystem, that's true. To the extent that Clojure is the next big Lisp as many are predicting, not so. The development of Clojure-in-Clojure will make it relatively easy to do more specific platform backends (e.g. x86_64 POSIX); some of us with no love of Java (or of OOP or in extreme need of existing Java libraries) are looking forward to that day. And while this won't appeal to many, Clojure was originally targeted to the CLR as well as the JVM. Rich Hickey punted his CLR efforts when he decided he'd prefer developing the language at twice the rate, but others have resurrected it.

narrator 16y ago
Hey whatever happened to Parrot? You know the common VM for Perl and Python that was supposed to be the basis for Perl6? Here's an old HN story about it. In fact, in the comments someone proposes porting Clojure to Parrot: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=552850 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=552850
- hga 16y ago
  When Parrot has its concurrency and GC acts together, it's potentially worthy of consideration. As I understand it, neither (which are inextricably linked) are in good shape today.
  - chromatic 16y ago
    I have a GC tuning branch which improves performance by about 10%, and we have a new GC in progress as well. Our target date for the latter is for the 3.0 release in January.
    - hga 16y ago
      Thanks for your reply! 1. I assume this is precise, not conservative GC? 2. How do these work with the new concurrency (threading) system that as I remember Team Parrot was going to write? Ideally, for the multicore future that is now today, I'd like to see multiple simultaneous mutators and scavengers without a stop the world requirement. That said, stock HotSpot doesn't supply the latter, although Azul has done some neat stuff to extend it and apparently Do A Right Thing (their Pauseless mark and compact GC and their open source release of that in their Managed Runtime Initiative). It would be nice if Parrot can someday do this without extreme pain.

narrator 16y ago

Has anyone played around with LLVM's JVM Implementation? It supposedly runs Tomcat and Eclipse... http://vmkit.llvm.org/ http://vmkit.llvm.org/