5 ms·

There's some exciting stuff in the presentation. In particular: next gen threading (fibers/warps, fj), plus attention to java's profligate use of memory b/w be

by x0x0 12y ago

There's some exciting stuff in the presentation. In particular: next gen threading (fibers/warps, fj), plus attention to java's profligate use of memory b/w because of it's reliance on pointers-for-all-the-things. Plus the idea of the jvm helping out languages besides java is also exciting. That said, it's a little scary to contemplate the power that microsoft, steward of the clr, and oracle, steward of the jvm have over our industry. It's staggering to see the amount of engineering that's gone into bullet-proofing the jvm. What happens when microsoft or oracle decline to continue paying for hundreds of very expensive senior compiler/vm/language engineers?

tormeh 12y ago
I've long wondered what's in it for Oracle and now Microsoft. Microsoft stands to profit from applications written for Windows that are hard to port, but they seem to be abandoning that approach. Oracle seems to have no real upside to maintaining Java. No one is paying for C# and Java directly, so I don't get it.
- xxxyy 12y ago
  Java is the corporate powerhouse, especially for banking. Together with Oracle DB. Owning two out of three crucial components (the third being the hardware) creates a lot of good business opportunities for them, makes it easier to enforce monopoly.
  - Gurkenmaster 12y ago
    Oracle already released new SPARC processors that are optimized for the Oracle DB and Java: https://blogs.oracle.com/rajadurai/entry/sparc_m7_chip_32_cores https://blogs.oracle.com/rajadurai/entry/sparc_m7_chip_32_co...
- parkovski 12y ago
  Both companies have a lot of enterprise software that exposes either Java or .NET APIs, and lots of companies pay them for support and troubleshooting, and licensing those other products.
- pjmlp 12y ago
  > Oracle seems to have no real upside to maintaining Java Since the early 2000 the majority of Oracle GUI tools across their products are written in Java. Long before acquiring Sun, Oracle did acquire Bea. Oracle still sells Bea Weblogic JEE container and the J/Rockit JVM, which also has a real time version. They have their own JSF framework and IDE. So becoming Java steward is not so strange.
- tsotha 12y ago
  I always believed Sun shot itself in the head with Java. They had this idea getting people invested in a cross platform ecosystem meant new software could be run on Sun hardware. But what really happened is people who had been locked into Sun with legacy software wrote applications in Java and then switched from Sun to cheaper hardware running Linux or Windows.
  - cpeterso 12y ago
    Similarly, IBM tried to make OS/2 a "better Windows than Windows" by supporting both OS/2 and Windows applications. This just encouraged application developers to write Windows applications because they would run on OS/2 and Windows.
  - SixSigma 12y ago
    They did have Microsoft removing their helmet and doing the reloading. Sun called it: Mankind vs Microsoft [1] It drained their energy and stole their focus. It was the apex of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish [1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/03/why_sun_threw/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/03/why_sun_threw/ Interesting from that 2004 piece > Microsoft's biggest global competitors are exactly as they were on Thursday: Nokia and Sony. How different things looked then!
- gaius 12y ago
  Oracle seems to have no real upside to maintaining Java. No, but they have an awful lot of downside from not maintaining it. Consider the history of IBM, their grand strategy in the early 90s was that Smalltalk would be the enterprise language of the next few decades. The Java juggernaut rode roughshod over IBM. Or Microsoft, they would have loved to have kept Visual Basic and Visual C++ cash cows going forever, Java completely blindsided them. Altho' it may be technically less powerful than Smalltalk or C++, in terms of mindshare (or hype if you prefer) Java is too powerful for Oracle to risk falling into anyone else's hands.
- Padding 12y ago
  > No one is paying for C# and Java directly No one you know. Suppose some large and wealthy entity has trouble running some money-making legacy application that happens to be running atop the JVM. Who do you think will they call to fix their issues asap? .. Which is why there's a lot of interest in having the people working on the JVM on your payroll ..
LaSombra 12y ago
For Java there's always OpenJDK, which I believe is 100% open source.
wtetzner 12y ago
Well, there's OpenJDK and now the CLR is open source, so companies that are heavily invested in the platforms can pay for people to work on them. As for the languages and compilers, I'm less worried. There are already plenty of open source languages targeting these platforms, many of them better than Java/C#.
pjmlp 12y ago
> What happens when microsoft or oracle decline to continue paying for hundreds of very expensive senior compiler/vm/language engineers? People will move away for something else, while a few will keep on maintaining them. I remember when the answer for any database related problem was Clipper. Now it is gone. I remember when no one would question the use of Turbo Pascal for both system programming as application programming. I remember when using a spreadsheet meant Lotus 1-2-3. I remember ....
- aragot 12y ago
  Sorry I "arrived late at the party", was Turbo Pascal ever used beyond business applications? I've always thought it was a cool programming language but that C was the massive leader.
  - pjmlp 12y ago
    In the 80's and 90's, C had hardly any meaning outside UNIX. The 8 bit home computers were all about BASIC, Assembly and Forth. Those powerful enough to run CP/M, had some C dialects available, but no one cared. When 16 bit arrived in the home computers, BASIC and Assembly were still the way. On *-DOS variants, the OS was developed in straight Assembly. Turbo Pascal was widely used in my home country from systems programing all the way to business applications. Very few cared about C. For CRUD applications there was DBase and Clipper. We only started caring about C when the need to take code to Windows 3.x started to be a reality and Turbo Pascal for Windows started to get behind the times. Then Borland went crazy in their business decisions and many moved away from Delphi into Visual Basic and Visual C++ (MFC). In the Amiga world, the OS was coded in a mix of Assembly, BCPL and C. For the coders it was all about Assembly and AMOS. Although I think there were some using C with the likes of MUI and similar. MacOS was originally developed in Object Pascal, the dialect later added to Turbo Pascal, and Assembly. Apple eventually added C and C++ support, and while trying to cater for developers went C and C++, re-writing the Object Pascal parts. So it always saddens me to see young generations think C was the one and only systems programming language. It only became that because UNIX based workstations succeed in the market and everyone wanted a piece of the pie. Which partially meant using C.
pron 12y ago
There are now many large companies participating in OpenJDK. Of them, IBM, AMD and Intel are contributing code (Google, sadly, not so much).

by x0x0 12y ago

tormeh 12y ago

I've long wondered what's in it for Oracle and now Microsoft. Microsoft stands to profit from applications written for Windows that are hard to port, but they seem to be abandoning that approach. Oracle seems to have no real upside to maintaining Java. No one is paying for C# and Java directly, so I don't get it.

xxxyy 12y ago
Java is the corporate powerhouse, especially for banking. Together with Oracle DB. Owning two out of three crucial components (the third being the hardware) creates a lot of good business opportunities for them, makes it easier to enforce monopoly.
- Gurkenmaster 12y ago
  Oracle already released new SPARC processors that are optimized for the Oracle DB and Java: https://blogs.oracle.com/rajadurai/entry/sparc_m7_chip_32_cores https://blogs.oracle.com/rajadurai/entry/sparc_m7_chip_32_co...
parkovski 12y ago
Both companies have a lot of enterprise software that exposes either Java or .NET APIs, and lots of companies pay them for support and troubleshooting, and licensing those other products.
pjmlp 12y ago
> Oracle seems to have no real upside to maintaining Java Since the early 2000 the majority of Oracle GUI tools across their products are written in Java. Long before acquiring Sun, Oracle did acquire Bea. Oracle still sells Bea Weblogic JEE container and the J/Rockit JVM, which also has a real time version. They have their own JSF framework and IDE. So becoming Java steward is not so strange.
tsotha 12y ago
I always believed Sun shot itself in the head with Java. They had this idea getting people invested in a cross platform ecosystem meant new software could be run on Sun hardware. But what really happened is people who had been locked into Sun with legacy software wrote applications in Java and then switched from Sun to cheaper hardware running Linux or Windows.
- cpeterso 12y ago
  Similarly, IBM tried to make OS/2 a "better Windows than Windows" by supporting both OS/2 and Windows applications. This just encouraged application developers to write Windows applications because they would run on OS/2 and Windows.
- SixSigma 12y ago
  They did have Microsoft removing their helmet and doing the reloading. Sun called it: Mankind vs Microsoft [1] It drained their energy and stole their focus. It was the apex of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish [1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/03/why_sun_threw/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/03/why_sun_threw/ Interesting from that 2004 piece > Microsoft's biggest global competitors are exactly as they were on Thursday: Nokia and Sony. How different things looked then!
gaius 12y ago
Oracle seems to have no real upside to maintaining Java. No, but they have an awful lot of downside from not maintaining it. Consider the history of IBM, their grand strategy in the early 90s was that Smalltalk would be the enterprise language of the next few decades. The Java juggernaut rode roughshod over IBM. Or Microsoft, they would have loved to have kept Visual Basic and Visual C++ cash cows going forever, Java completely blindsided them. Altho' it may be technically less powerful than Smalltalk or C++, in terms of mindshare (or hype if you prefer) Java is too powerful for Oracle to risk falling into anyone else's hands.
Padding 12y ago
> No one is paying for C# and Java directly No one you know. Suppose some large and wealthy entity has trouble running some money-making legacy application that happens to be running atop the JVM. Who do you think will they call to fix their issues asap? .. Which is why there's a lot of interest in having the people working on the JVM on your payroll ..

LaSombra 12y ago

For Java there's always OpenJDK, which I believe is 100% open source.

wtetzner 12y ago

Well, there's OpenJDK and now the CLR is open source, so companies that are heavily invested in the platforms can pay for people to work on them. As for the languages and compilers, I'm less worried. There are already plenty of open source languages targeting these platforms, many of them better than Java/C#.

pjmlp 12y ago

> What happens when microsoft or oracle decline to continue paying for hundreds of very expensive senior compiler/vm/language engineers? People will move away for something else, while a few will keep on maintaining them. I remember when the answer for any database related problem was Clipper. Now it is gone. I remember when no one would question the use of Turbo Pascal for both system programming as application programming. I remember when using a spreadsheet meant Lotus 1-2-3. I remember ....

aragot 12y ago
Sorry I "arrived late at the party", was Turbo Pascal ever used beyond business applications? I've always thought it was a cool programming language but that C was the massive leader.
- pjmlp 12y ago
  In the 80's and 90's, C had hardly any meaning outside UNIX. The 8 bit home computers were all about BASIC, Assembly and Forth. Those powerful enough to run CP/M, had some C dialects available, but no one cared. When 16 bit arrived in the home computers, BASIC and Assembly were still the way. On *-DOS variants, the OS was developed in straight Assembly. Turbo Pascal was widely used in my home country from systems programing all the way to business applications. Very few cared about C. For CRUD applications there was DBase and Clipper. We only started caring about C when the need to take code to Windows 3.x started to be a reality and Turbo Pascal for Windows started to get behind the times. Then Borland went crazy in their business decisions and many moved away from Delphi into Visual Basic and Visual C++ (MFC). In the Amiga world, the OS was coded in a mix of Assembly, BCPL and C. For the coders it was all about Assembly and AMOS. Although I think there were some using C with the likes of MUI and similar. MacOS was originally developed in Object Pascal, the dialect later added to Turbo Pascal, and Assembly. Apple eventually added C and C++ support, and while trying to cater for developers went C and C++, re-writing the Object Pascal parts. So it always saddens me to see young generations think C was the one and only systems programming language. It only became that because UNIX based workstations succeed in the market and everyone wanted a piece of the pie. Which partially meant using C.

pron 12y ago

There are now many large companies participating in OpenJDK. Of them, IBM, AMD and Intel are contributing code (Google, sadly, not so much).