6 ms·

All I can say is Timer Warner / AOL. Not a popular opinion, but I really hope Sun dies. I'm probably not up to snuff on their product lines, but I know they've

by geuis 18y ago

All I can say is Timer Warner / AOL. Not a popular opinion, but I really hope Sun dies. I'm probably not up to snuff on their product lines, but I know they've developed and promoted the atrocity that is Java and I think they're quickly killing Mysql. IBM, on the other hand, has proven itself as a company that can reinvent itself over and over and have been doing some very cool things. They're one of the few classic companies that still do actual long term R&D without the requirements that they crank new products out in the next 2 years. It would be really bad for them to buy Sun.

Dobbs 18y ago
Sun has some amazing engineering staff. They produced such wonders as Dtrace, Sparc, and ZFS. If IBM were to buy them and take the good portions it would be a huge boon to IBM, Open Source and the software/computing community.
- adrianwaj 18y ago
  What should IBM do with the Sun brand once it cherry-picks all the good parts?
  - Dobbs 18y ago
    Java is strong (while not most 'hacker's cup of tea) large amounts of buisnesses like it. I could see IBM cleaning up some of the less pleasant sides of it and continuing to support it slash push it under the Sun brand. If they were to rebuild the Sparc line this could also be done under the Sun brand. I could see rebuilding sparc to be useful particuarlly in response to the latest Intel AMD debacle. If they made something like KVM (kernel virtual machines) more strongly built into the hardware this would likewise help them push the line. IBM is a smart company, they could definitely create a decent buisness plan to use Sun to their advantage.
    - pavlov 18y ago
      IBM has the POWER lineage of RISC CPUs for servers, which has consistently beaten Sparc in benchmarks for at least the past eight years or so. POWER also has the advantage of having a shared ISA (and thus shared R&D) with IBM's PowerPC-based mainstream products, e.g. the CPUs used in Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. Thus I think that Sparc will be among the first casualties if this merger goes through.
      - Tamerlin 18y ago
        I think you're right about this one. SPARC hasn't been competitive since the late 90's, so it's hard to see why IBM would care about keeping it alive in the face of POWER -- not to mention, IBM is also one of Intel's biggest server OEM's.
- delano 18y ago
  Dtrace is an incredibly technology. Debugging performance problems in production is literally a dream come true.
  - nailer 18y ago
    It's also much easier to use than SystemTap.
- j2d2 18y ago
  These people will find a good home elsewhere. Sun, as a company, has been floundering since the dot com crash. Their most popular stuff is free and many people choose cheap linux boxes over heavy duty sun boxes. The investment bank I used to work for is a good example of the heavy computing world dropping Sun. A merge with IBM would solidify their irrelevance if you ask me...
tptacek 18y ago
Say what you will about Java-the-language, especially after the world has moved on to higher-level languages, but it's hard to deny the extent to which Java has been a force for good in enterprise software development. The de facto standard for companies that didn't adopt Java? C++.
- geuis 18y ago
  Yeah, I can deny it. I've worked in java shops for 2 years. The "good for enterprise" argument is bunk. All its lead to is inefficient and disastrous technology decisions, an inability to be agile and flexible in software development, and a general dumbing down of any smart engineers that happen to be stuck working there. As a language, the best metaphor I can imagine is that Java is like the language of some Amazonian tribes. They don't have the concept of numbers bigger than 2. Its not about their brain power, just the way their culture and language has shaped their minds. That's basically what Java does to software engineers.
  - donw 18y ago
    I would argue that this is what the Java culture does to software engineers, not the language. There seems to be this culture of the 'Enterprise Astronaut', that says everything needs to be 'Enterprise Ready'. I'm not sure what this means, but it seems to indicate incredible complexity. But the language itself doesn't enforce this; it is very possible to write concise software in Java. What's better still, is you can use a Groovy (or JRuby, or Jython), and still use the HUGE class library provided by Java. If you haven't played with it, give one of the JVM dynamic languages a go.
  - tptacek 18y ago
    You've worked in enterprise Java shops for 2 years. I've spent ~4 years now parachuting into enterprises and doing security evaluations on Java apps. You may not like the "agile" "flexible" "dumbing down" "bunk" (and, hey, I'm not going to write something Java either), but you can safely take my word on it that the bunk is better than the empirical results of those same developers writing C++ code.

by geuis 18y ago

Dobbs 18y ago

Sun has some amazing engineering staff. They produced such wonders as Dtrace, Sparc, and ZFS. If IBM were to buy them and take the good portions it would be a huge boon to IBM, Open Source and the software/computing community.

adrianwaj 18y ago
What should IBM do with the Sun brand once it cherry-picks all the good parts?
- Dobbs 18y ago
  Java is strong (while not most 'hacker's cup of tea) large amounts of buisnesses like it. I could see IBM cleaning up some of the less pleasant sides of it and continuing to support it slash push it under the Sun brand. If they were to rebuild the Sparc line this could also be done under the Sun brand. I could see rebuilding sparc to be useful particuarlly in response to the latest Intel AMD debacle. If they made something like KVM (kernel virtual machines) more strongly built into the hardware this would likewise help them push the line. IBM is a smart company, they could definitely create a decent buisness plan to use Sun to their advantage.
  - pavlov 18y ago
    IBM has the POWER lineage of RISC CPUs for servers, which has consistently beaten Sparc in benchmarks for at least the past eight years or so. POWER also has the advantage of having a shared ISA (and thus shared R&D) with IBM's PowerPC-based mainstream products, e.g. the CPUs used in Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. Thus I think that Sparc will be among the first casualties if this merger goes through.
    - Tamerlin 18y ago
      I think you're right about this one. SPARC hasn't been competitive since the late 90's, so it's hard to see why IBM would care about keeping it alive in the face of POWER -- not to mention, IBM is also one of Intel's biggest server OEM's.
delano 18y ago
Dtrace is an incredibly technology. Debugging performance problems in production is literally a dream come true.
- nailer 18y ago
  It's also much easier to use than SystemTap.
j2d2 18y ago
These people will find a good home elsewhere. Sun, as a company, has been floundering since the dot com crash. Their most popular stuff is free and many people choose cheap linux boxes over heavy duty sun boxes. The investment bank I used to work for is a good example of the heavy computing world dropping Sun. A merge with IBM would solidify their irrelevance if you ask me...

tptacek 18y ago

Say what you will about Java-the-language, especially after the world has moved on to higher-level languages, but it's hard to deny the extent to which Java has been a force for good in enterprise software development. The de facto standard for companies that didn't adopt Java? C++.

geuis 18y ago
Yeah, I can deny it. I've worked in java shops for 2 years. The "good for enterprise" argument is bunk. All its lead to is inefficient and disastrous technology decisions, an inability to be agile and flexible in software development, and a general dumbing down of any smart engineers that happen to be stuck working there. As a language, the best metaphor I can imagine is that Java is like the language of some Amazonian tribes. They don't have the concept of numbers bigger than 2. Its not about their brain power, just the way their culture and language has shaped their minds. That's basically what Java does to software engineers.
- donw 18y ago
  I would argue that this is what the Java culture does to software engineers, not the language. There seems to be this culture of the 'Enterprise Astronaut', that says everything needs to be 'Enterprise Ready'. I'm not sure what this means, but it seems to indicate incredible complexity. But the language itself doesn't enforce this; it is very possible to write concise software in Java. What's better still, is you can use a Groovy (or JRuby, or Jython), and still use the HUGE class library provided by Java. If you haven't played with it, give one of the JVM dynamic languages a go.
- tptacek 18y ago
  You've worked in enterprise Java shops for 2 years. I've spent ~4 years now parachuting into enterprises and doing security evaluations on Java apps. You may not like the "agile" "flexible" "dumbing down" "bunk" (and, hey, I'm not going to write something Java either), but you can safely take my word on it that the bunk is better than the empirical results of those same developers writing C++ code.