3 ms·

I asked Rob why he didn't like Java (Gosling was standing nearby) and he said "public static void main"

by dekhn 3y ago

grumpyprole 3y ago
Nice. My reply would have been something like: it combines the performance of Lisp with the productivity of C++. These days Java the language is much better though, thanks to Brian Goetz.
- shakow 3y ago
  > it combines the performance of Lisp with the productivity of C++ Is that supposed to be a jab? Because IME SBCL Lisp is in the same ballpark as Go (albeit offering a fully interactive development environment), and C++ is far from being the worst choice when it comes down to productivity.
  - grumpyprole 3y ago
    Hopefully you agree Lisp is more productive than C++? Lisp is however not quite fast or efficient enough to displace C++ completely, mainly because, like Java and Go, it has a garbage collector. C++ was very much the language in Java's crosshairs. Java made programming a bit safer, nulls and threads not withstanding, but was certainly not as productive as Lisp. Meanwhile Lisp evolved into Haskell and OCaml, two very productive languages which thankfully are inspiring everyone else to improve. Phil Wadler (from the original Haskell committee) has even been helping the Go team.
    - pjmlp 3y ago
      Common Lisp, is also among the GC based languages that offer mechanisms to do GC free allocations and has value types. The only reason is the AI winter, and companies moving away from Lisp.
    - shakow 3y ago
      I agree; my point is simply that C++ is still OK-ish w.r.t. productivity, and Lisp is OK when it comes down to performances.
- didntcheck 3y ago
  The performance of the JVM was definitely a fair criticism in it's early years, and still is when writing performance-critical applications like databases, but it's still possibly the fastest managed runtime around, and is often only a margin slower than native code on hot paths. It seems the reputation has stuck though, to the point that I've seen young programmers make stock jokes about Java being slow when their proposed alternative is Python
  - kaba0 3y ago
    Just for an example: on the recent 1billion rows challenge, the top java contender takes only 2x as much time as a SIMD-optimized C one.
    - grumpyprole 3y ago
      Yes it's possible to write Java without any boxing of primitives or garbage collection, but one can't use any of the standard libraries and it's not really Java one is writing but a very restricted subset. I don't think these benchmark are particularly indicative of real world performance. But of course Java is still hundreds (thousands?) of times faster than Python.
      - kaba0 3y ago
        It’s okay to do some allocations - it can be stack replaced, and even if it’s not, the cost is very negligible. The problem is mindless allocation, not allocation itself.
pron 3y ago
Well, that's taken care of: https://openjdk.org/jeps/463 https://openjdk.org/jeps/463 (well you need `void main`)
blibble 3y ago
still better than case deciding visibility
- nyolfen 3y ago
  i love this feature to be honest
  - cryptos 3y ago
    I consider that a bad practice, because it doesn't make things obvious. I guess it works so well in Go, because the language itself is small, so that you don't have to remember much of these "syntax tricks". Making things explicit, but not too verbose, is the best way in my opinion. JetBrains has done amazing work in this area with Kotlin. for (item in collection) { ... } list.map { it + 1 } fun printAll(vararg strings: String) constructor(...) companion object I like the `for..in` which reads like plain English. Or `vararg` is pretty clear - compare that to "*" and the like in other languages. Or `constructor` can not be more explicit, there is no need to teach anyone that the name must be the same as the class name (and changed accordingly). Same is true for companion object (compare with Scala).
didntcheck 3y ago
I've always found it eye rolling how often this is given as some sort of "mic drop" against Java. Yeah it's a little weird having to have plain functions actually be "static methods", but it's a very minor detail. And I really hope people aren't evaluating their long-term use of a language based on how tersely you can write Hello World
kaba0 3y ago
At least he knows something about a single other language! Honestly, I wasn’t sure about given the stupidity of go, and the warts it has.

I asked Rob why he didn't like Java (Gosling was standing nearby) and he said "public static void main"

by dekhn 3y ago

I asked Rob why he didn't like Java (Gosling was standing nearby) and he said "public static void main"

Nice. My reply would have been something like: it combines the performance of Lisp with the productivity of C++. These days Java the language is much better though, thanks to Brian Goetz.

shakow 3y ago
> it combines the performance of Lisp with the productivity of C++ Is that supposed to be a jab? Because IME SBCL Lisp is in the same ballpark as Go (albeit offering a fully interactive development environment), and C++ is far from being the worst choice when it comes down to productivity.
- grumpyprole 3y ago
  Hopefully you agree Lisp is more productive than C++? Lisp is however not quite fast or efficient enough to displace C++ completely, mainly because, like Java and Go, it has a garbage collector. C++ was very much the language in Java's crosshairs. Java made programming a bit safer, nulls and threads not withstanding, but was certainly not as productive as Lisp. Meanwhile Lisp evolved into Haskell and OCaml, two very productive languages which thankfully are inspiring everyone else to improve. Phil Wadler (from the original Haskell committee) has even been helping the Go team.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    Common Lisp, is also among the GC based languages that offer mechanisms to do GC free allocations and has value types. The only reason is the AI winter, and companies moving away from Lisp.
  - shakow 3y ago
    I agree; my point is simply that C++ is still OK-ish w.r.t. productivity, and Lisp is OK when it comes down to performances.
didntcheck 3y ago
The performance of the JVM was definitely a fair criticism in it's early years, and still is when writing performance-critical applications like databases, but it's still possibly the fastest managed runtime around, and is often only a margin slower than native code on hot paths. It seems the reputation has stuck though, to the point that I've seen young programmers make stock jokes about Java being slow when their proposed alternative is Python
- kaba0 3y ago
  Just for an example: on the recent 1billion rows challenge, the top java contender takes only 2x as much time as a SIMD-optimized C one.
  - grumpyprole 3y ago
    Yes it's possible to write Java without any boxing of primitives or garbage collection, but one can't use any of the standard libraries and it's not really Java one is writing but a very restricted subset. I don't think these benchmark are particularly indicative of real world performance. But of course Java is still hundreds (thousands?) of times faster than Python.
    - kaba0 3y ago
      It’s okay to do some allocations - it can be stack replaced, and even if it’s not, the cost is very negligible. The problem is mindless allocation, not allocation itself.

pron 3y ago

Well, that's taken care of: https://openjdk.org/jeps/463 https://openjdk.org/jeps/463 (well you need `void main`)

blibble 3y ago

still better than case deciding visibility

nyolfen 3y ago
i love this feature to be honest
- cryptos 3y ago
  I consider that a bad practice, because it doesn't make things obvious. I guess it works so well in Go, because the language itself is small, so that you don't have to remember much of these "syntax tricks". Making things explicit, but not too verbose, is the best way in my opinion. JetBrains has done amazing work in this area with Kotlin. for (item in collection) { ... } list.map { it + 1 } fun printAll(vararg strings: String) constructor(...) companion object I like the `for..in` which reads like plain English. Or `vararg` is pretty clear - compare that to "*" and the like in other languages. Or `constructor` can not be more explicit, there is no need to teach anyone that the name must be the same as the class name (and changed accordingly). Same is true for companion object (compare with Scala).

didntcheck 3y ago

I've always found it eye rolling how often this is given as some sort of "mic drop" against Java. Yeah it's a little weird having to have plain functions actually be "static methods", but it's a very minor detail. And I really hope people aren't evaluating their long-term use of a language based on how tersely you can write Hello World

kaba0 3y ago

At least he knows something about a single other language! Honestly, I wasn’t sure about given the stupidity of go, and the warts it has.