4 ms·

Java-the-bytecode is as dynamic yet somehow hotspot manages to be rather nippy

throwaway2037 3y ago
This is wildly misunderstood by many just how insanely good is the current JVM. It scares me how much it has improved in the last ten years. Since it has been open source for a long time, many university researchers have done experiments and proposed HotSpot improvements. Plus, Sun/Oracle employs a small army of PhD researchers to work on it "night and day". If Project Valhalla ever sets sail (pun intended), I could imagine other languages begin to target JVM instead of their own (worse) VM. (Raku talked about it a few years ago.) When I need to move from Java to Python, I am always painfully reminded how terrible is the VM performance in a tight loop that does not use list comprehension.
- superq 3y ago
  I'm no fan of Python after the 2-3 debacle, but to be fair, you're comparing apples and oranges here. Why not instead compare it to another C-like language (Java was originally intended to be the replacement for C++ back in 1995, and Python dates back to 1989.) Go or Rust, or even Erlang or Haskell would be great examples that are more inline with the design goals (then and now) of Java.
  - throwaway2037 3y ago
    comparing apples and oranges That is exactly my point. People start a small project in Python. Velocity is very high. Then, the project grows into a monstrosity. Suddenly, the awful Python "VM" (slow as hello) and lack of true multi-threading are major project liabilities. They should have started with someone much less sexy: DotNet (C#) or Java. Repetitive? Hell yes, but easy to maintain and cheap to hire devs.
- lizmat 3y ago
  FWIW, the JVM is one of the supported backends of the Raku Programming Language. Has been for quite some time actually. It was the first additional backend supported after Parrot, and provided a template for supporting the MoarVM and Javascript backends since then.

throwaway2037 3y ago

This is wildly misunderstood by many just how insanely good is the current JVM. It scares me how much it has improved in the last ten years. Since it has been open source for a long time, many university researchers have done experiments and proposed HotSpot improvements. Plus, Sun/Oracle employs a small army of PhD researchers to work on it "night and day". If Project Valhalla ever sets sail (pun intended), I could imagine other languages begin to target JVM instead of their own (worse) VM. (Raku talked about it a few years ago.) When I need to move from Java to Python, I am always painfully reminded how terrible is the VM performance in a tight loop that does not use list comprehension.

superq 3y ago
I'm no fan of Python after the 2-3 debacle, but to be fair, you're comparing apples and oranges here. Why not instead compare it to another C-like language (Java was originally intended to be the replacement for C++ back in 1995, and Python dates back to 1989.) Go or Rust, or even Erlang or Haskell would be great examples that are more inline with the design goals (then and now) of Java.
- throwaway2037 3y ago
  comparing apples and oranges That is exactly my point. People start a small project in Python. Velocity is very high. Then, the project grows into a monstrosity. Suddenly, the awful Python "VM" (slow as hello) and lack of true multi-threading are major project liabilities. They should have started with someone much less sexy: DotNet (C#) or Java. Repetitive? Hell yes, but easy to maintain and cheap to hire devs.
lizmat 3y ago
FWIW, the JVM is one of the supported backends of the Raku Programming Language. Has been for quite some time actually. It was the first additional backend supported after Parrot, and provided a template for supporting the MoarVM and Javascript backends since then.