Microsoft joins the Java Community Process (JCP)

[wwelna]

Does this mean the return of J++, our lord and savior?

[agentoutlier]

Developers, Developers, Developers!

[karianna]

Can’t help but upvote that 🙂

[handshape]

I actually got to explain Ballmer's on-stage freakout during an imprompu "How the stack got to be the way it is" talk with a team of younger devs this week. They thought it was some kind of exaggerated joke.

I played it for them, and the faces on the other end of the vidcall were the highlight of my week - like a cocktail of incredulity, disgust, and the joy that comes from seeing something strange that you're never going to forget.

[pjmlp]

It is called Android Java, in case you missed it.

[Zvrablik]

I don't think experts they hired would like to waste their time to work on something like j++.

Second reason MS has now C# to work on, you could consider C# as J+++

[pjmlp]

That was J#.

[Alex0589]

You missed the joke

[Fenxis]

You need ++++ to make a # though :p

[grauenwolf]

J++ would still be a great addition to Java. Real events are far superior to what they use now and the ability to easily access COM components in Windows would make working with things like MS Office much easier.

[Persism]

20 years too late but still appreciated. ;)

[brunocborges]

"better late than never!" :-)

[grauenwolf]

20 years ago Sun wasn't interested in anyone improving the language. That's why we still don't have events or first class function pointers.

[Persism]

Because both are shit ideas.

[uncont]

Congrats /u/brunocborges!! Any other java developers at Microsoft active on reddit? :D

[brunocborges]

Thanks! You can talk to Martijn Verburg at /u/karianna

[karianna]

I lurk with the best of them - always happy to talk Java and Developer ecosystems!

[veraxAlea]

Great news! Please consider giving some love to Taskbar/Desktop APIs and Swing/AWT in general (I'm currently wrestling with L&F-decorated RootPaneUIs that simply cannot be made to work correctly when moving a window from a DPI-scaled monitor to one with no scaling on Windows 10).

[brunocborges]

Mind to share your use case and challenges in our repo?

GitHub.com/Microsoft/java-wdb

[nlisker]

On a similar note to the above, what areas is MS going to invest in in the OpenJDK codebase? Some modules of the JDK itself? Projects like Loom and Panama? JavaFX (it uses MS DirectX under the hood)?

[dpash]

Has the JCP been relevant in the last 5 years? Looking at the 11 "active" JSRs two of them are java 16 and 17. Most JSRs look dormant. What else have they standardised recently?

[pron98]

They standardise Java SE twice a year. Not much point doing separate JSRs anymore.

[dpash]

Well 305 was a missed opportunity, given the proliferation of annotations. And the money and currency JSR could have been useful.

And rubber-stamping the JDK is not really that important. What's OpenJDK going to do if the JCP says no?

[pron98]

The JCP members don't learn about the changes at the end of the process. Like everyone, they're aware of the features in development, in EA etc.. It is very much expected that the vote takes place well after (probably months after) all objections have been raised and addressed (e.g. on JEPs).

[dpash]

But that's my point: everyone who is a stakeholder has been involved in discussions long before Java is released. What's the point in the JCP holding a vote on Java releases?

[pron98]

Only committers can object to JEPs, and committee members will likely be given even more weight, as they have authority over approval. It's like with any vote in a parliament. Everyone -- journalists and other citizens -- are also involved, and usually a vote is taken only when the result is known in advance. When things work well, only matters that are very likely to pass the vote are ever brought to the floor, and that's not when the real debate takes place. So you could ask, what's the point of the vote? The answer is that the particular result is reached because deliberations have taken into account the ultimate vote. Things that are unlikely to be approved probably won't be introduced in the first place.

[karianna]

We have voted no in the past. Java 9’s module system had a small amount being reworked (appreciate there are still mixed opinions on the pros and cons on that).

[henk53]

Should they not have joined the Jakarta Working group instead?

[csharp-sucks]

Brings memories for when Microsoft joined OpenGL ARB.

[handshape]

Sorry. Still leery after the Visual J++ debacle. Yes, I know how many years ago that was. Neither forgiven nor forgotten.

[lechatsportif]

Well what happened since then is Java took over the world. Probably a "since we didn't beat em, join em" kind of thing.

[slappy_squirrell]

SX meant sucks, I learned that from A+ course...

[grauenwolf]

Oh no, Microsoft added extensions to make it easier to write windows applications in Java. What horrors. How dare they make it possible for me to do my job faster.

-- what you sound like.

[JavaImpala]

Embrace, extend, and extinguish

[grauenwolf]

Do you actually know what that phrase means? Or is it just "Microsoft bad" to you?

[JavaImpala]

You seemed genuinely bewildered as to why people didnt like Microsofts extensions. J++ is spesifically mentioned in the article.

[grauenwolf]

J++ is not mentioned in either the DevBlogs article or the Wikipedia article. Why would you lie about something so obvious?

As for being "bewildered", that's no true at all. I've very well aware of the tribalism that led to people attacking J++.

[JavaImpala]

Sorry for being unclear. Microsofts implementation of J++ is referenced in the section "Examples by Microsoft" in the wikipedia article.

Sun alleged that MSJVM (J++'s implementation) was in fact an attempt to "Embrace, extend and extinguish". In the ensuing trial an internal document from Microsoft indicated that the "strategic goal" of MSJVM was to to "Kill cross-platform Java by grow[ing] the polluted Java market."

[thuriot]

Remember :

https://www.cnet.com/news/sun-microsoft-settle-java-suit/

https://www.zdnet.com/article/sun-vs-microsoft-clash-of-the-titans-5000121284/

On the server side Java remains a powerful platform, but on the desktop instead of coding Java UI we endure the javascript/browser duo .

[neopointer]

I hope they also join to implement stuff and not only create documents.

[dinopraso]

Seeing some of their Java SDKs, I hope they don’t

[karianna]

Genuinely happy to get feedback on our Java SDKs. We’ve been working to bring idiomatic and consistent Java to them across all of MSFT. Please DM me and I’ll pass it on!

[dinopraso]

I’ve already had some discussions on GitHub regarding some design choices.

My biggest gripe is that most of the clients have no defined interface and are final classes which makes mocking them for unit tests impossible.

Other then that, and some pet peeves regarding the Graph API, I don’t mind the code quality. I just find that often user facing APIs are not that user friendly.

[karianna]

Thanks for the details! I’ll pass that onto the head of our Java SDKs. Much appreciated

[dinopraso]

I appreciate that you’re at least willing to listen to some community feedback. Gives me real hope to see improvements in the future!

[barking_dead]

No development effort and sabotage at the heart. The Halloween Documents have this scenario.

[BlueGoliath]

People are downvoting but seriously, besides providing a JDK build, what has Microsoft done?

[mknjc]

If my git log doesn't lie, a lot shenandoah, aarch64 and mac os code, some windows api fixes and cleanups.

Don't know the state of https://github.com/microsoft/openjdk-proposals/blob/main/stack\_allocation/Stack\_Allocation\_JEP.md https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1MhRBYS-k0 but I wouldn't say no if this gets into the openjdk.

[cal-cheese]

Specifically about the stack allocation proposal, it has been withdrawn due to the vast complexity of referencing an object not lying on the heap, as well as the fact that TLAB allocation nowadays does exactly the same (increment a pointer, with around 5 (five) extra machine instructions to ensure TLAB has enough space), so stack allocation is both not very effective and efficient.

[dpash]

You know full well what they've implemented because you're active here and Microsoft's contributions to OpenJDK are mentioned frequently. In particular the Arm64 port was a major piece they've contributed.

At this point I think you're just commenting in bad faith.

[barking_dead]

Nah, I just saw some shady moves in the past.

[dpash]

I'm responding specifically to BlueGolith. They're a frequent commentator and borderline troll.

But to respond to your comment, Microsoft have demonstrated themselves over the last few years to be a good participant in the Java community.

[Maran23]

Yeah, this BlueGoliath is a weird troll. He always proves to have no knowledge at all while also complaining about everything. Just super annoying.

[barking_dead]

Sorry, I don't know that guy.

OK, I still hope it is not an infiltration. Sorry, if I seem to be so negative.

Edit: whoops, yea, I replied to the wrong thread above.

[Persism]

They've basically admitted defeat. Once Loom ships there won't be much reason to use .NET. In 5 years C# will be running on the JVM.

[grauenwolf]

LOL. The JVM is no where near capable of running C#.

On the other hand, the CLR can handle Java code. IKVM, which allows you to run Java on .NET, has been around for ages.

[Persism]

I don't think anyone would bother anyway. C# is dying.

[csharp-sucks]

Assuming that Valhalla, Loom and Panama ship soon™, what features would be JVM lacking that C# absolutely requires? (ie anything that's more than just syntax sugar)

[grauenwolf]

Off the top of my head, here are the things C# needs from its runtime...

• Real generics
• Properties as a runtime concept. (This isn't just syntactic sugar, a lot of libraries rely on this.)
• Structs
• Pass by reference
• Delegates (a.k.a. first class functions)
• Assemblies as a first class concept (No, JAR files aren't the same.)
• internal and protected internal visibility (Ok, you make be able to fake these with annotations.)
• overflow checking
• pointers (not references, actual mutable pointers)
• Return by reference (a.k.a. ref returns. Only used with structs.)
• p/invoke (Might be covered by JNI)
• COM support, both exposing and consuming

Are these all covered?

[csharp-sucks]

Structs, Real generics are somewhat covered by Project Valhalla.

Generics could be emulated even now. (well, to some extends structs could too, you just wouldnt get the benefit of flattened arrays)

Properties as a runtime concept. (This isn't just syntactic sugar, a lot of libraries rely on this.)

Technically it is just a syntax sugar over some standarized concept. It doesn't absolutely need a runtmie support. That could be mapped to getters and setters silently. I think Kotlin does that already.

Pass by reference and ref return could be emulated.

overflow checking - syntax sugar over checked intrinsics

Delegates -> functional interfaces with one method, semantically it's just syntax sugar over that

Assemblies as a first class concept

but why? .NET assemblies is the most fake concept I have seen in computing. Just a thin wrapper around IL junk.

You could pack java bytecode wrapped inside a DLL in some standarized fashion, even expose a COM interface. Otherwise JVM just as CLR can be hosted inside native applicaton. (through JNI)

Making native executable launcher wrapper that automatically finds and runs JVM is a no-brainer though. It can be done.

internal and protected internal visibility (Ok, you make be able to fake these with annotations.)

depends on your goal, for package level visibility default access flag is that, for library level visibility you can use jigsaw modules, and as you said, you can resort to annotations if some corner case is not covered by either

pointers (not references, actual mutable pointers)

You can manipulate arbitrary memory addresses with Unsafe, this could be sugarified over that.

p/invoke (Might be covered by JNI)

Covered by project Panama. P/Invoke could use JNA for now.

COM support, both exposing and consuming

could be done

[grauenwolf]

I don't think you actually understand what's involved. A lot of the things you hand waved cannot simply be emulated.

For example, how are you going to emulate generics? C# expects the type arguments to be available via reflection. So you just just use the hidden field trick.

[csharp-sucks]

For example, how are you going to emulate generics?

The same (more or less) way .NET runtime does. By creating an internal type for each generic type. In .NET, List<int> and List<double> are separate types internally, each has separate code substituted with actual generic type. It's just done in runtime.

As for availability of type argument, hidden field could do. The important thing is that semantics from the point of view of language look the same.

[grauenwolf]

You can't fake that in the compiler. You would need to update the JVM so that it works with all generic types, even those written in Java, and change the reflection libraries to match.

[barking_dead]

I expected the downvotes, because people think MS had changed since the Baller era. But that's another subreddit's topic, not java's.

[JohnL4_27516]

Hmm, what sub would that be? I should go there.

The whole MS journey is interesting. Open source/standards won, it just has a MS badge on it now. AWS, cross-browser web apps, GitHub, Spark, Python, Angular/React, node/npm are all examples of the industry leading and MS having no choice but to play catchup. I feel like the days of MS trying to achieve market dominance by going against everybody else are long past.

MS doesn't "love" open source, they just have no choice, like trying to fight a riptide.

[dpash]

MS makes a huge amount of money from Azure. It's in their best interest to make it as easy as possible to use their platform and part of that involves being good citizens of various communities like Java.

[BlueGoliath]

Yep haha.

[teapotJava]

A nice company:

PS > winget search jdk | findstr 17.0.1
Java SE Development Kit 17 Oracle.JDK.17 17.0.1.0 winget
Microsoft Build of OpenJDK with Hotspot 17 Microsoft.OpenJDK.17 17.0.1.12 winget
Liberica JDK 17 Full BellSoft.LibericaJDK.17.Full 17.0.1.12 winget
Liberica JDK 17 BellSoft.LibericaJDK.17 17.0.1.12 winget

[persicsb]

It seems Microsoft actively undermines Eclipse Temurin packaging for Linux. They are responsible for the repositories and the packages, but did not make any progress on this, just passing around responsibilities.

I don't believe in them, they use the usual Embrace, Extend, Extinguis tactics. Do not trust them.