4 ms·

> The Java ecosystem has been slowly dying for years, it's already the new Cobol at this stage. This has been said for at least the last ten years. Not only is

by pron 8y ago

> The Java ecosystem has been slowly dying for years, it's already the new Cobol at this stage. This has been said for at least the last ten years. Not only is Java not dying, but companies like Apple and Facebook (not to mention Netflix, Amazon and Google, that are mostly or largely Java already) are increasing their investment in the platform. This was not the case when COBOL was 25. The reason this is so is that Java is by far the most technologically advanced server-side platform in existence. It continuously presents technological breakthroughs in GC, compilation, and low-overhead profiling technology (just in the past few years it did so again in all three -- with ZGC, Graal and JFR). Node, Python, Go, Erlang -- none of them even come close. .NET comes closest, but even it is pretty far behind. This certainly wasn't the case when COBOL was 25. It is true that for a short period of time, somewhere between 2002 and 2005, Java was more dominant than it is today, but that was a fluke. More "scripty" runtimes and languages were usually more successful in the "smallish software" domain. In 1995-2002 that was VB (and others); now it's Python. Also, there has been some decline in all languages due to the ubiquity of JavaScript on the browser, but Java did not suffer more than others. Maybe less so. > Oracle did not take a note from the Microsoft book and is really behaving that an evil corporate overlord. Oracle has just open sourced the entire JDK. Sun didn't do that and even .NET isn't entirely open source. I have no knowledge or involvement with EE, but it seems Oracle simply doesn't have faith in EE, and doesn't want the Java trademark associated with it. (I work at Oracle on the JDK -- i.e. OpenJDK -- but speak only for myself)

dijit 8y ago
I think you’ve drunk the kool-aid a little. Outside of complex projects headed by PhD compsci students (who used to learn java in uni but those courses are now taught in python) there isn’t a whole lot of mindshare going towards java these days. At least in regards to new FOSS projects. I can say that my company’s use of java is diminishing rapidly over the last 5 years too. No matter what you think of the technological advancement of the language and ecosystem- it matters not if people are not using it. Oracle itself is a pariah, the vast majority of the tech industry avoid it.
- pron 8y ago
  > I think you’ve drunk the kool-aid a little. Don't know about kool-aid, but if you want to do interesting platform work -- on GC, compilers or low-overhead observability -- you could work at Microsoft on .NET, at Google on V8 (or Go), or at Mozilla on WebAssembly, but the truly cutting-edge, state-of-the-art work is done at Oracle on the JDK (and related projects like Graal), which is where I get to lead a project to add delimited continuations and fibers to the JDK. We're obviously keeping an eye on what's going on elsewhere, and while there are certainly great ideas out there (some we're happy to steal, as others steal from us) we look around and don't see similar overall technological leadership elsewhere. That's not to say others won't pick up mindshare or win certain niches, or that technological leadership is the determining factor, but if you're in interested in the technology and familiar with what people are doing, it's hard to deny that Java is ahead of the pack in the technologies I mentioned. > there isn’t a whole lot of mindshare going towards java these days. At least in regards to new FOSS projects. I'm not sure your numbers are correct. Java is not the only game in town as it was for a few years in the first half of the naughts, but "not a whole lot of mindshare" seems to be detached from reality. I can't predict the future, but remember when PHP had all the mindshare and totally killed Java? Remember when Ruby did the same? I would like to think that Java still being the leading server-side platform after being killed over and over has something to do with its technical excellence, but I know that's being naive. Nevertheless, wishful thinking on the part of some don't make reality, and usual fluctuations don't make a trend. Eventually, something will kill Java -- or at least mark its true lasting decline -- but it doesn't seem like that something is here yet. > I can say that my company’s use of java is diminishing rapidly over the last 5 years too. That may well be, but we're also seeing companies switching to the Java platform in quite significant numbers, in cases where both performance and observability are top priorities. There seems to be movement inside the Java ecosystem (e.g. among the Java language, Kotlin, Clojure and Scala) or outside it (e.g. people switching among Ruby, Python, Node and Go), but we're not seeing any significant shift away (except on the client side, where the browser has won). There are also certain niches, like machine learning, where the Java platform isn't number one, but it's doing much better than Node, Go or .NET. > Oracle itself is a pariah, the vast majority of the tech industry avoid it. I'm not a manager, but I'm not sure the numbers support your conclusion. The opinions developers voice on HN and Reddit are... fickle, and don't necessarily reflect market shifts. In any event, the competition doesn't seem to be doing too hot in comparison, either. I can tell you that personally I'm certainly unhappy with some of the things Oracle has done, but at least it's not surveilling on the entire world, putting thousands of small businesses out of business, or getting kids into conspiracy theories. Also, my colleagues are so far not famous for outbursts of racism or misogyny. Now, I admit that’s not exactly high praise, but these days, as far as Big Tech is concerned, that’s not not nothing, either, and I’ll take annoying some other corporations over those any day.
Rattled 8y ago
> Oracle has just open sourced the entire JDK. Last time I had to download a JDK I got a warning about having to pay a license for commercial use. I think most enterprises care more about the licensing arrangement than access to the source.
- pron 8y ago
  The licensing arrangement is that the JDK is now completely free (rather than mixed free/paid as before). Oracle offers the same JDK under two different license -- one, commercial, for those who wish to buy support, and one free. That page you went to described the two options, and referred you to the free one: http://jdk.java.net/ http://jdk.java.net/
  - makomk 8y ago
    The "free one" that Oracle refer people to doesn't even come with a Windows installer, nor does it have any useful installation instructions. It's (presumably) intentionally unusable to all but the most persistent and technically knowledgeable users.
    - pron 8y ago
      First of all, the JDK doesn't need an installer. You can put the JDK wherever you like and just point JAVA_HOME to it. Second, the JDK is intended only for developers. We have discontinued the "consumer/desktop JRE", and it is now the recommended practice for developers to create their own embedded runtimes with jlink. We are also working on a tool that would allow developers to package their applications with native OS installers [1]. Third, nearly all OpenJDK contributors are Oracle developers and use those builds, and AFAIK few if any OpenJDK contributors use any other build than the Oracle or the Red Hat ones, and so if you want anyone to fix your bug, you need to report it against an "official" build. Fourth, I don't know why you put free in scare quotes. It is the most popular OpenJDK distribution and it is as free as all the others (because all OpenJDK distributions are released under the same OpenJDK license; they are all owned by Oracle, BTW). Finally, you should ask yourself why is the OpenJ9 JDK, which makes up for maybe 1% of their downloads, featured so prominently on Adopt? Well, the reason is that IBM is in the habit of finding promising community projects, throwing some money and people at them, and taking control. This is what happened with Harmony, what happened with Adopt, and my guess is -- though I have no knowledge of the situation -- that this is precisely what Oracle feared would happen with Jakarta. This may not be bad if IBM also contributed something to OpenJDK, but they don't [2]. They just take over community projects, and then take credit for work that's done by Oracle. IBM taking control over Adopt is also why they lost their TCK license. The TCK is licensed freely for OpenJDK builds but requires payment for non-OpenJDK builds. IBM used Adopt to run the TCK on the OpenJ9 JDK -- not an OpenJDK build -- which put the entire project in violation of the TCK terms. So this entire story should be viewed in this light, as well: we have a company doing nearly all the work an an open source project and other companies wishing to exploit that. You need to realize that Oracle does over 90% of the work on OpenJDK, and that the Java ecosystem is so big that there are other very large corporations who want to make money off of Java, and so are very interested in painting a picture of a "non-cooperating" Oracle. But again, whether you use a build from Amazon or Adopt, those source code behind those builds is developed and maintained by Oracle developers. And I can also tell you that we beg companies that build distributions or make money off of Java to contribute more, but so far, they can't or won't. We're happy to see Google starting to contribute more, and, of course, we've been cooperating with Red Hat for a long time. But so far, Amazon and IBM contribute little if at all (but I will say again that some companies cooperate nicely with Oracle -- Red Hat, SAP, and now it seems like Google may be starting to do that as well). [1]: https://jdk.java.net/jpackage/ https://jdk.java.net/jpackage/ [2]: https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/building-jdk-11-together https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/building-jdk-11..., https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/the-arrival-of-java-12 https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/the-arrival-of-...

by pron 8y ago

dijit 8y ago

I think you’ve drunk the kool-aid a little. Outside of complex projects headed by PhD compsci students (who used to learn java in uni but those courses are now taught in python) there isn’t a whole lot of mindshare going towards java these days. At least in regards to new FOSS projects. I can say that my company’s use of java is diminishing rapidly over the last 5 years too. No matter what you think of the technological advancement of the language and ecosystem- it matters not if people are not using it. Oracle itself is a pariah, the vast majority of the tech industry avoid it.

pron 8y ago
> I think you’ve drunk the kool-aid a little. Don't know about kool-aid, but if you want to do interesting platform work -- on GC, compilers or low-overhead observability -- you could work at Microsoft on .NET, at Google on V8 (or Go), or at Mozilla on WebAssembly, but the truly cutting-edge, state-of-the-art work is done at Oracle on the JDK (and related projects like Graal), which is where I get to lead a project to add delimited continuations and fibers to the JDK. We're obviously keeping an eye on what's going on elsewhere, and while there are certainly great ideas out there (some we're happy to steal, as others steal from us) we look around and don't see similar overall technological leadership elsewhere. That's not to say others won't pick up mindshare or win certain niches, or that technological leadership is the determining factor, but if you're in interested in the technology and familiar with what people are doing, it's hard to deny that Java is ahead of the pack in the technologies I mentioned. > there isn’t a whole lot of mindshare going towards java these days. At least in regards to new FOSS projects. I'm not sure your numbers are correct. Java is not the only game in town as it was for a few years in the first half of the naughts, but "not a whole lot of mindshare" seems to be detached from reality. I can't predict the future, but remember when PHP had all the mindshare and totally killed Java? Remember when Ruby did the same? I would like to think that Java still being the leading server-side platform after being killed over and over has something to do with its technical excellence, but I know that's being naive. Nevertheless, wishful thinking on the part of some don't make reality, and usual fluctuations don't make a trend. Eventually, something will kill Java -- or at least mark its true lasting decline -- but it doesn't seem like that something is here yet. > I can say that my company’s use of java is diminishing rapidly over the last 5 years too. That may well be, but we're also seeing companies switching to the Java platform in quite significant numbers, in cases where both performance and observability are top priorities. There seems to be movement inside the Java ecosystem (e.g. among the Java language, Kotlin, Clojure and Scala) or outside it (e.g. people switching among Ruby, Python, Node and Go), but we're not seeing any significant shift away (except on the client side, where the browser has won). There are also certain niches, like machine learning, where the Java platform isn't number one, but it's doing much better than Node, Go or .NET. > Oracle itself is a pariah, the vast majority of the tech industry avoid it. I'm not a manager, but I'm not sure the numbers support your conclusion. The opinions developers voice on HN and Reddit are... fickle, and don't necessarily reflect market shifts. In any event, the competition doesn't seem to be doing too hot in comparison, either. I can tell you that personally I'm certainly unhappy with some of the things Oracle has done, but at least it's not surveilling on the entire world, putting thousands of small businesses out of business, or getting kids into conspiracy theories. Also, my colleagues are so far not famous for outbursts of racism or misogyny. Now, I admit that’s not exactly high praise, but these days, as far as Big Tech is concerned, that’s not not nothing, either, and I’ll take annoying some other corporations over those any day.

Rattled 8y ago

> Oracle has just open sourced the entire JDK. Last time I had to download a JDK I got a warning about having to pay a license for commercial use. I think most enterprises care more about the licensing arrangement than access to the source.

pron 8y ago
The licensing arrangement is that the JDK is now completely free (rather than mixed free/paid as before). Oracle offers the same JDK under two different license -- one, commercial, for those who wish to buy support, and one free. That page you went to described the two options, and referred you to the free one: http://jdk.java.net/ http://jdk.java.net/
- makomk 8y ago
  The "free one" that Oracle refer people to doesn't even come with a Windows installer, nor does it have any useful installation instructions. It's (presumably) intentionally unusable to all but the most persistent and technically knowledgeable users.
  - pron 8y ago
    First of all, the JDK doesn't need an installer. You can put the JDK wherever you like and just point JAVA_HOME to it. Second, the JDK is intended only for developers. We have discontinued the "consumer/desktop JRE", and it is now the recommended practice for developers to create their own embedded runtimes with jlink. We are also working on a tool that would allow developers to package their applications with native OS installers [1]. Third, nearly all OpenJDK contributors are Oracle developers and use those builds, and AFAIK few if any OpenJDK contributors use any other build than the Oracle or the Red Hat ones, and so if you want anyone to fix your bug, you need to report it against an "official" build. Fourth, I don't know why you put free in scare quotes. It is the most popular OpenJDK distribution and it is as free as all the others (because all OpenJDK distributions are released under the same OpenJDK license; they are all owned by Oracle, BTW). Finally, you should ask yourself why is the OpenJ9 JDK, which makes up for maybe 1% of their downloads, featured so prominently on Adopt? Well, the reason is that IBM is in the habit of finding promising community projects, throwing some money and people at them, and taking control. This is what happened with Harmony, what happened with Adopt, and my guess is -- though I have no knowledge of the situation -- that this is precisely what Oracle feared would happen with Jakarta. This may not be bad if IBM also contributed something to OpenJDK, but they don't [2]. They just take over community projects, and then take credit for work that's done by Oracle. IBM taking control over Adopt is also why they lost their TCK license. The TCK is licensed freely for OpenJDK builds but requires payment for non-OpenJDK builds. IBM used Adopt to run the TCK on the OpenJ9 JDK -- not an OpenJDK build -- which put the entire project in violation of the TCK terms. So this entire story should be viewed in this light, as well: we have a company doing nearly all the work an an open source project and other companies wishing to exploit that. You need to realize that Oracle does over 90% of the work on OpenJDK, and that the Java ecosystem is so big that there are other very large corporations who want to make money off of Java, and so are very interested in painting a picture of a "non-cooperating" Oracle. But again, whether you use a build from Amazon or Adopt, those source code behind those builds is developed and maintained by Oracle developers. And I can also tell you that we beg companies that build distributions or make money off of Java to contribute more, but so far, they can't or won't. We're happy to see Google starting to contribute more, and, of course, we've been cooperating with Red Hat for a long time. But so far, Amazon and IBM contribute little if at all (but I will say again that some companies cooperate nicely with Oracle -- Red Hat, SAP, and now it seems like Google may be starting to do that as well). [1]: https://jdk.java.net/jpackage/ https://jdk.java.net/jpackage/ [2]: https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/building-jdk-11-together https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/building-jdk-11..., https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/the-arrival-of-java-12 https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/the-arrival-of-...