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I know that Java is not hip nowadays (was it ever?) but at some point Jobs bragged Macs are the best Java workstations. Clearly Apple not only does not care abo

I know that Java is not hip nowadays (was it ever?) but at some point Jobs bragged Macs are the best Java workstations. Clearly Apple not only does not care about Java but hates it. macOS Catalina is also pretty scary. So, I am enthusiastically waiting on getting a new laptop with the Ryzen 4800 CPU to run Linux on. I do some Java tooling projects and I will just use the existing Mac gear to support them, for a while. As weird as it sounds, even Windows is starting to look like a good target OS for somebody spending lots of time in the terminal and doing some Java.

pjmlp 6y ago
That was in the OS X early days, as Apple wasn't sure developers would buy into Objective-C, they jumped into Java as alternative, having their own VM and Cocoa bindings. As it became clear that they would gladly use Objective-C, they killed the other horse.
- rbanffy 6y ago
  A lot of their backend is Java. Prior to acquiring Apple for one Steve Jobs (and getting 400 million dollars in change), NeXT had a Java web framework called WebObjects.
- rsynnott 6y ago
  Well, they lost interest in it. They didn't actually kill off Apple Java until the Oracle Thing happened, and they weren't alone there; a lot of companies backed slowly away from Sun stuff after its acquisition (remember when MacOS was going to have ZFS support any day now?)
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    That happened during Sun days still, and they keep using WebObjects among other Java stuff on their backends, as per job offers.
pron 6y ago
Apple is a huge Java shop. They're quite secretive but a very large portion (the great majority?) of their backend is Java. OpenJDK has a Linux/AArch64 port, and it will have a macOS/AArch64 port, too.
- super_mario 6y ago
  A lot of Java software is stuck in JDK 1.8. I wonder if anyone will port old versions like this to AArch64 and macOS 11.
  - vbsteven 6y ago
    1.8 applications run and compile fine on JRE 11 and up
    - super_mario 6y ago
      Not necessarily. Apache Spark for example, prior to just released 3.0.0 did not work with anything later than JDK 1.8.x. Apache Cassandra in version 3.x.y does not work with 1.11. Version 4.x will support JDK 1.11. Things are not that simple unfortunately.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    Apple has supposedly prepared a patch for OpenJDK to make it work on Apple Silicon.
- rjsw 6y ago
  There are several BSD ports of OpenJDK to AArch64, anything Linux specific has already been fixed.
- panzagl 6y ago
  Do they currently run their backend on MacOS?
  - oneplane 6y ago
    No they do not. They (as some would maybe not expect) even use Oracle software as backend for some systems. But not macOS. Unless you count developer workstations and things like Xcode build servers or their ASD replacement.

pjmlp 6y ago

That was in the OS X early days, as Apple wasn't sure developers would buy into Objective-C, they jumped into Java as alternative, having their own VM and Cocoa bindings. As it became clear that they would gladly use Objective-C, they killed the other horse.

rbanffy 6y ago
A lot of their backend is Java. Prior to acquiring Apple for one Steve Jobs (and getting 400 million dollars in change), NeXT had a Java web framework called WebObjects.
rsynnott 6y ago
Well, they lost interest in it. They didn't actually kill off Apple Java until the Oracle Thing happened, and they weren't alone there; a lot of companies backed slowly away from Sun stuff after its acquisition (remember when MacOS was going to have ZFS support any day now?)
- pjmlp 6y ago
  That happened during Sun days still, and they keep using WebObjects among other Java stuff on their backends, as per job offers.

pron 6y ago

Apple is a huge Java shop. They're quite secretive but a very large portion (the great majority?) of their backend is Java. OpenJDK has a Linux/AArch64 port, and it will have a macOS/AArch64 port, too.

super_mario 6y ago
A lot of Java software is stuck in JDK 1.8. I wonder if anyone will port old versions like this to AArch64 and macOS 11.
- vbsteven 6y ago
  1.8 applications run and compile fine on JRE 11 and up
  - super_mario 6y ago
    Not necessarily. Apache Spark for example, prior to just released 3.0.0 did not work with anything later than JDK 1.8.x. Apache Cassandra in version 3.x.y does not work with 1.11. Version 4.x will support JDK 1.11. Things are not that simple unfortunately.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Apple has supposedly prepared a patch for OpenJDK to make it work on Apple Silicon.
rjsw 6y ago
There are several BSD ports of OpenJDK to AArch64, anything Linux specific has already been fixed.
panzagl 6y ago
Do they currently run their backend on MacOS?
- oneplane 6y ago
  No they do not. They (as some would maybe not expect) even use Oracle software as backend for some systems. But not macOS. Unless you count developer workstations and things like Xcode build servers or their ASD replacement.