3 ms·

First is Java, 87%. Does anyone here know how JVM ecosystem is governed? Do the needs of Java dominate or can smaller languages get change requests in reasonabl

by jakear 7y ago

First is Java, 87%. Does anyone here know how JVM ecosystem is governed? Do the needs of Java dominate or can smaller languages get change requests in reasonably easily too?

lmm 7y ago
There's a committee and a process. As an outsider it seems like non-Java languages get at least some influence, e.g. invokedynamic was put into the bytecode largely to support non-Java.
dehrmann 7y ago
Most of the new development in Java is syntactic sugar, not JVM-level. The most interesting JVM thing recently has been invokedynamic, which was a boon for JRuby, but ended up helping Java's own lambdas.
- kasperni 7y ago
  > Most of the new development in Java is syntactic sugar, not JVM-level. That's not true. The javac team is what 5% of all people working on OpenJDK.
  - dehrmann 7y ago
    Are they adding instructions to the language or working optimizing the JVM, though? My point was that someone writing the language targeting the JVM will compile to Java bytecode, so missing/suboptimal instructions are where they're mostly likely to feel pain.
pjmlp 7y ago
Java needs drive the JVM, yes they do take into consideration what might be relevant for guest languages on the JVM, but that is "nice to have" kind of thought. You can easy check this by reading JEP proposals, discussions on the mailing list, or talks from JVM Language Summit.
dtech 7y ago
Java dominates, also because that's the main source of engineering capacity. There are some notable exceptions though. E.g. invokedynamic from JVM 7 was only really used for Java starting at 8 (with the introduction of lambdas), and was partially introduced to better support dynamically typed languages like Ruby on the JVM. The languages do benefit from JVM improvements. Scala 2.12 had a significant speed-up due to native lamba support from JVM 8, and if project valhalla ever lands you can bet all JVM languages will be happy to use it.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  Guest languages cannot make use of Valhalla/Panama without having plaform specific extensions. Basically they will end up with some form of conditional compilation or performance loss emulating those features on other platforms (if at all possible).

by jakear 7y ago

First is Java, 87%. Does anyone here know how JVM ecosystem is governed? Do the needs of Java dominate or can smaller languages get change requests in reasonably easily too?

lmm 7y ago

There's a committee and a process. As an outsider it seems like non-Java languages get at least some influence, e.g. invokedynamic was put into the bytecode largely to support non-Java.

dehrmann 7y ago

Most of the new development in Java is syntactic sugar, not JVM-level. The most interesting JVM thing recently has been invokedynamic, which was a boon for JRuby, but ended up helping Java's own lambdas.

kasperni 7y ago
> Most of the new development in Java is syntactic sugar, not JVM-level. That's not true. The javac team is what 5% of all people working on OpenJDK.
- dehrmann 7y ago
  Are they adding instructions to the language or working optimizing the JVM, though? My point was that someone writing the language targeting the JVM will compile to Java bytecode, so missing/suboptimal instructions are where they're mostly likely to feel pain.

pjmlp 7y ago

Java needs drive the JVM, yes they do take into consideration what might be relevant for guest languages on the JVM, but that is "nice to have" kind of thought. You can easy check this by reading JEP proposals, discussions on the mailing list, or talks from JVM Language Summit.

dtech 7y ago

Java dominates, also because that's the main source of engineering capacity. There are some notable exceptions though. E.g. invokedynamic from JVM 7 was only really used for Java starting at 8 (with the introduction of lambdas), and was partially introduced to better support dynamically typed languages like Ruby on the JVM. The languages do benefit from JVM improvements. Scala 2.12 had a significant speed-up due to native lamba support from JVM 8, and if project valhalla ever lands you can bet all JVM languages will be happy to use it.

pjmlp 7y ago
Guest languages cannot make use of Valhalla/Panama without having plaform specific extensions. Basically they will end up with some form of conditional compilation or performance loss emulating those features on other platforms (if at all possible).