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You would think that Java is maybe not the right tool for the job, if you have to write your own Runtime first.

by tcmb 6y ago

deaddodo 6y ago
This was my main thought. Maybe all that effort expended on managing the runtime could be aggregated into a unified effort in a more cohesive (to your goals) language.
- diroussel 6y ago
  IntelliJ had been based on java for twenty years. It has worked well as a mainstream cross platform application that has been around before, and outlived, other approaches. Moving to another language would surely be many more orders of magnitude than plugging in a new JIT?
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Lets see how far they actually manage to go with Kotlin/Native, they seem to be trying to make Kotlin the new Delphi. I don't have any hopes for it besides Android, which is working thanks Google gatekeeping Java updates and pushing Kotlin instead.
daniel-thompson 6y ago
They didn't write the runtime, they just modified a (relatively) small piece of it. From the article: > JetBrains forked the OpenJDK project in order to facilitate better control over how the IDEs looked on Macs a well as other HiDPI screens; JetBrains Runtime was born and we bundled it with our IDEs from 2014. > There are many facets of the runtime, and we do not know every little crevice of it, rather we focus on the part of the code that handles the rendering of UI on screens.
aaomidi 6y ago
This isn't it's own runtime. It's a modified JDK and when you're one of the largest pieces of GUI software in Java, you're obviously going to have things you want to change in it. They've created a huge platform. They're going to have needs that aren't met in a pre-packaged thing. VSCode avoided using any frontend frameworks, does that mean they made a wrong engineering choice?
acdha 6y ago
Here's the problem: they selected Java many, many years ago back when Apple shipped Java as part of Mac OS X. I believe they're based on IntelliJ and presumably have added a considerable amount of their own code over the last 20 years. They certainly didn't know that the Oracle acquisition would lead to Apple removing a not unpopular feature due to legal risks. With a large cross-platform codebase like that, Java is an understandable choice and at any point the cost of switching would be greater than the cost of fixing the current issue.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
criddell 6y ago
Not necessarily. It could be that even though they have to rewrite some of the runtime it's still the right tool for the job.
bassman9000 6y ago
Ah, yes. The classic let's rewrite everything from first principles instead of using a proven, state-of-the-art runtime for which we just to reimplement font rendering.

You would think that Java is maybe not the right tool for the job, if you have to write your own Runtime first.

by tcmb 6y ago

You would think that Java is maybe not the right tool for the job, if you have to write your own Runtime first.

This was my main thought. Maybe all that effort expended on managing the runtime could be aggregated into a unified effort in a more cohesive (to your goals) language.

diroussel 6y ago
IntelliJ had been based on java for twenty years. It has worked well as a mainstream cross platform application that has been around before, and outlived, other approaches. Moving to another language would surely be many more orders of magnitude than plugging in a new JIT?
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Lets see how far they actually manage to go with Kotlin/Native, they seem to be trying to make Kotlin the new Delphi. I don't have any hopes for it besides Android, which is working thanks Google gatekeeping Java updates and pushing Kotlin instead.

daniel-thompson 6y ago

They didn't write the runtime, they just modified a (relatively) small piece of it. From the article: > JetBrains forked the OpenJDK project in order to facilitate better control over how the IDEs looked on Macs a well as other HiDPI screens; JetBrains Runtime was born and we bundled it with our IDEs from 2014. > There are many facets of the runtime, and we do not know every little crevice of it, rather we focus on the part of the code that handles the rendering of UI on screens.

aaomidi 6y ago

This isn't it's own runtime. It's a modified JDK and when you're one of the largest pieces of GUI software in Java, you're obviously going to have things you want to change in it. They've created a huge platform. They're going to have needs that aren't met in a pre-packaged thing. VSCode avoided using any frontend frameworks, does that mean they made a wrong engineering choice?

acdha 6y ago

Here's the problem: they selected Java many, many years ago back when Apple shipped Java as part of Mac OS X. I believe they're based on IntelliJ and presumably have added a considerable amount of their own code over the last 20 years. They certainly didn't know that the Oracle acquisition would lead to Apple removing a not unpopular feature due to legal risks. With a large cross-platform codebase like that, Java is an understandable choice and at any point the cost of switching would be greater than the cost of fixing the current issue.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

criddell 6y ago

Not necessarily. It could be that even though they have to rewrite some of the runtime it's still the right tool for the job.

bassman9000 6y ago

Ah, yes. The classic let's rewrite everything from first principles instead of using a proven, state-of-the-art runtime for which we just to reimplement font rendering.