6 ms·

Once Oracle bought Sun Microsystems, i became dis-interested in Java all round. I would rather use a programming language not licensed by a huge corporation.

Once Oracle bought Sun Microsystems, i became dis-interested in Java all round. I would rather use a programming language not licensed by a huge corporation. The reason they are a huge company is the way they are predatory towards their customers. Probably why sun didn't survive as well, its kind of sad that this is the way of the world.

nicoburns 8y ago
You should give C# a try. It's pretty open these days (bonus: it's a much nicer language than Java)
- thefounder 8y ago
  Or better use Go! It's 100% open/BSD license.
  - mustardo 8y ago
    sigh... I'll just rewrite my 500k LOC products, abandon all of the great open source libraries instead of just using an open JRE https://adoptopenjdk.net/ https://adoptopenjdk.net/ Go fanboys are the worst
    - dana321 8y ago
      Its all still encumbered by patents, its not free. Its "open"
    - currysausage 8y ago
      To be fair, grandfather did write: "I would rather use a programming language not licensed by a huge corporation."
      - mustardo 8y ago
        Isn't Go out of Google...
  - dana321 8y ago
    I do myself now use go, i've developed a scripting language on top of go which has all the great features of the go runtime but it is interpreted instead. It has a few hundred commands and will eventually have the ability to modify its own commands at runtime. I started the same thing with C++ but found that i spent too long getting libraries to work with each other without clashing (especially on windows) I've also found java to be a terrible memory hog and require significant tuning to run stable without having long periods of garbage collection and non-responsiveness, i've not had that problem with go out of the box. Thats the one thing about go that is great, goroutines and the (much much better) garbage collection. Yeah, i'm a bit of a go fanboy :)
    - pdimitar 8y ago
      You should not call yourself a fanboy for being practical! Lately I am on the hunt for a good closer-to-the metal language because I feel that even though the Erlang runtime (and thus Elixir's) is extremely stable and with unmatched concurrency and parallelism primitives, there still is a need for a native hyper-optimized code every now and then (crypto and compression come to mind). I like Go a lot. The authors got a lot of things right and the language's tooling is exceptional. Goroutines are no match for the true preemptive scheduling that the BEAM (Erlang's VM) can provide though. But I don't intend to use Go where I would use Erlang/Elixir anyway. They serve different niches. --- Have you evaluated other languages outside of Go and C++? For example Rust or OCaml? If you did evaluate anything else, what are your impressions?
      - dana321 8y ago
        I have evaluated Rust a while ago, before i updated my C++ skills to C++17 with vcpkg / cmake and learned go using the new go modules functionality. I think rust is overly complex, and very quirky but.. It has some good ideas that i have taken and used in my own experimental languages i have developed like the error/ok branch structures. I think Ocaml is even more quirky than rust, they are using symbols (|) to define select statements, i would to be honest rather have something more readable. Reminds me of perl a lot. Both use "let" for defining variables that i'm not a fan of as a keyword.
  - j16sdiz 8y ago
    Go is good for system-level tools. But the web-facing / framework-wise is weak. The dependancy hell is not fully fixed yet.
    - mustardo 8y ago
      This x1000 If you want to make a little cross platform binary for some utility sure maybe Go is the right choice, but most of the time people are building a "Web Application" in which case there are dozens of better languages to use
      - thefounder 8y ago
        I found Go a better fit than Java & Python for my web APIs/micro-services. I'm not sure what web application are but Go compiles to WASM so it would make it an even more complete solution once WASM gets DOM access.
    - thefounder 8y ago
      I would say that the lack of gigantic frameworks is a feature. Go is great for web APIs.
- elygre 8y ago
  Is C# more open than Java?
  - nicoburns 8y ago
    Well it's about the same amount of open as far as licensing is concerned, but it's created by microsoft rather than oracle, so you're less likely to be chased into ridiculous lawsuits. Downside is: the library ecosystem is less open. Some libraries are proprietary, which is not something I've encountered in other ecosystems. This seems to be changing though, now that C# itself is open source.
    - marktangotango 8y ago
      It’s more common to pay for licenses in the .net ecosystem in my experience.
    - pron 8y ago
      > you're less likely to be chased into ridiculous lawsuits. Microsoft has sued/legally threatened companies over Android and extracted many billions of dollars from them: * https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2015/11/01/microsoft-android-patent-income/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2015/11/01/microsoft... * https://www.computerworld.com/article/2475440/android/microsoft-gets--2-billion-a-year-in-android-patent-fees--really-.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2475440/android/micros...
      - gruez 8y ago
        AFAIK it’s not because of android, but because of fat32.
        charleslmunger 8y ago
        Patent extortion works by threatening the most applicable patents you have, then licensing your whole portfolio. If they didn't have fat32, do you really think they wouldn't have just used another patent to try and extract rents?
- mustardo 8y ago
  Because who could possibly imagine a world where M$ would pull this same sort of stunt with the CLR...
  - marktangotango 8y ago
    Usage of “M$” is very juvenile in 2019, but this is the same point I was going to make. Microsoft hasn’t been as extortionist as oracle, at least not yet.
    - ui-explorer12 8y ago
      Microsoft has also demonstrated a far stronger commitment to developers over many decades compared with Oracle, who never sell or promote that far away from the C-suite.
      - mustardo 8y ago
        Realy? I remember pretty much every development stack for windows being dropped and abandoned (leaving devs in the lurch) time after time on windows. XNA, Silverlight, WinRT, etc. It's easy to make MS look ok when you compare them to the horror show that is Oracle
- severino 8y ago
  He said "no big corporations behind". Also, it's not fully open, as you said.
krn 8y ago
I don't care about Java, but I care about Clojure in which it is implemented. Should I be worried about Oracle?
- mustardo 8y ago
  I doub't it, not unless Oracle wins the Google V Oracle case and somehow API's can become patented, in which case were all boned https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_America,_Inc._v._Google,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_America,_Inc._v._Google.... Just make sure you don't use the Oracle JDK and use Open JDK or similar
pron 8y ago
Oracle has now fully open sourced the JDK[1] (more than Sun ever did), not to mention all the resources invested into Java now. [1]: https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/oracle-jdk-releases-for-java-11-and-later https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/oracle-jdk-rele...
- j16sdiz 8y ago
  GPLv2 have no explicit patent granting. If you remember Sun, you should knew the TCK license controversy.
  - pron 8y ago
    The TCK is a different project licensed separately. As to GPLv2 and patents, see http://en.swpat.org/wiki/GPLv2_and_patents http://en.swpat.org/wiki/GPLv2_and_patents But note that patents are unrelated to copyright, and licesors may only grant their own patents. Third-party licenses always apply (e.g. see how Microsoft was able to extract billions from Android vendors through patents).

nicoburns 8y ago

You should give C# a try. It's pretty open these days (bonus: it's a much nicer language than Java)

thefounder 8y ago
Or better use Go! It's 100% open/BSD license.
- mustardo 8y ago
  sigh... I'll just rewrite my 500k LOC products, abandon all of the great open source libraries instead of just using an open JRE https://adoptopenjdk.net/ https://adoptopenjdk.net/ Go fanboys are the worst
  - dana321 8y ago
    Its all still encumbered by patents, its not free. Its "open"
  - currysausage 8y ago
    To be fair, grandfather did write: "I would rather use a programming language not licensed by a huge corporation."
    - mustardo 8y ago
      Isn't Go out of Google...
- dana321 8y ago
  I do myself now use go, i've developed a scripting language on top of go which has all the great features of the go runtime but it is interpreted instead. It has a few hundred commands and will eventually have the ability to modify its own commands at runtime. I started the same thing with C++ but found that i spent too long getting libraries to work with each other without clashing (especially on windows) I've also found java to be a terrible memory hog and require significant tuning to run stable without having long periods of garbage collection and non-responsiveness, i've not had that problem with go out of the box. Thats the one thing about go that is great, goroutines and the (much much better) garbage collection. Yeah, i'm a bit of a go fanboy :)
  - pdimitar 8y ago
    You should not call yourself a fanboy for being practical! Lately I am on the hunt for a good closer-to-the metal language because I feel that even though the Erlang runtime (and thus Elixir's) is extremely stable and with unmatched concurrency and parallelism primitives, there still is a need for a native hyper-optimized code every now and then (crypto and compression come to mind). I like Go a lot. The authors got a lot of things right and the language's tooling is exceptional. Goroutines are no match for the true preemptive scheduling that the BEAM (Erlang's VM) can provide though. But I don't intend to use Go where I would use Erlang/Elixir anyway. They serve different niches. --- Have you evaluated other languages outside of Go and C++? For example Rust or OCaml? If you did evaluate anything else, what are your impressions?
    - dana321 8y ago
      I have evaluated Rust a while ago, before i updated my C++ skills to C++17 with vcpkg / cmake and learned go using the new go modules functionality. I think rust is overly complex, and very quirky but.. It has some good ideas that i have taken and used in my own experimental languages i have developed like the error/ok branch structures. I think Ocaml is even more quirky than rust, they are using symbols (|) to define select statements, i would to be honest rather have something more readable. Reminds me of perl a lot. Both use "let" for defining variables that i'm not a fan of as a keyword.
- j16sdiz 8y ago
  Go is good for system-level tools. But the web-facing / framework-wise is weak. The dependancy hell is not fully fixed yet.
  - mustardo 8y ago
    This x1000 If you want to make a little cross platform binary for some utility sure maybe Go is the right choice, but most of the time people are building a "Web Application" in which case there are dozens of better languages to use
    - thefounder 8y ago
      I found Go a better fit than Java & Python for my web APIs/micro-services. I'm not sure what web application are but Go compiles to WASM so it would make it an even more complete solution once WASM gets DOM access.
  - thefounder 8y ago
    I would say that the lack of gigantic frameworks is a feature. Go is great for web APIs.
elygre 8y ago
Is C# more open than Java?
- nicoburns 8y ago
  Well it's about the same amount of open as far as licensing is concerned, but it's created by microsoft rather than oracle, so you're less likely to be chased into ridiculous lawsuits. Downside is: the library ecosystem is less open. Some libraries are proprietary, which is not something I've encountered in other ecosystems. This seems to be changing though, now that C# itself is open source.
  - marktangotango 8y ago
    It’s more common to pay for licenses in the .net ecosystem in my experience.
  - pron 8y ago
    > you're less likely to be chased into ridiculous lawsuits. Microsoft has sued/legally threatened companies over Android and extracted many billions of dollars from them: * https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2015/11/01/microsoft-android-patent-income/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2015/11/01/microsoft... * https://www.computerworld.com/article/2475440/android/microsoft-gets--2-billion-a-year-in-android-patent-fees--really-.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2475440/android/micros...
    - gruez 8y ago
      AFAIK it’s not because of android, but because of fat32.
      - charleslmunger 8y ago
        Patent extortion works by threatening the most applicable patents you have, then licensing your whole portfolio. If they didn't have fat32, do you really think they wouldn't have just used another patent to try and extract rents?
mustardo 8y ago
Because who could possibly imagine a world where M$ would pull this same sort of stunt with the CLR...
- marktangotango 8y ago
  Usage of “M$” is very juvenile in 2019, but this is the same point I was going to make. Microsoft hasn’t been as extortionist as oracle, at least not yet.
  - ui-explorer12 8y ago
    Microsoft has also demonstrated a far stronger commitment to developers over many decades compared with Oracle, who never sell or promote that far away from the C-suite.
    - mustardo 8y ago
      Realy? I remember pretty much every development stack for windows being dropped and abandoned (leaving devs in the lurch) time after time on windows. XNA, Silverlight, WinRT, etc. It's easy to make MS look ok when you compare them to the horror show that is Oracle
severino 8y ago
He said "no big corporations behind". Also, it's not fully open, as you said.

krn 8y ago

I don't care about Java, but I care about Clojure in which it is implemented. Should I be worried about Oracle?

mustardo 8y ago
I doub't it, not unless Oracle wins the Google V Oracle case and somehow API's can become patented, in which case were all boned https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_America,_Inc._v._Google,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_America,_Inc._v._Google.... Just make sure you don't use the Oracle JDK and use Open JDK or similar

pron 8y ago

Oracle has now fully open sourced the JDK[1] (more than Sun ever did), not to mention all the resources invested into Java now. [1]: https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/oracle-jdk-releases-for-java-11-and-later https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/oracle-jdk-rele...

j16sdiz 8y ago
GPLv2 have no explicit patent granting. If you remember Sun, you should knew the TCK license controversy.
- pron 8y ago
  The TCK is a different project licensed separately. As to GPLv2 and patents, see http://en.swpat.org/wiki/GPLv2_and_patents http://en.swpat.org/wiki/GPLv2_and_patents But note that patents are unrelated to copyright, and licesors may only grant their own patents. Third-party licenses always apply (e.g. see how Microsoft was able to extract billions from Android vendors through patents).