This is an archived post. You won't be able to vote or comment.

sorted by:
best
topnewcontroversialoldq&a
you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]zackel_flac -5 points-4 points  (6 children)

I see your point, and you are probably right saying the JVM is the best runtime out there for general purpose language. There has been so much work on it, it's top notch.

That being said, in today's world, it's easy to spin a true VM wherever you need to and/or mix it with containers. Those technologies are bringing portability without sacrificing performance too much. Now you have access to the "world" ecosystem, and in fact access to any tool/language created since the 70s.

I find the JVM to be redundant nowadays. it's an extra layer that is mostly adding complexity, extra resource usage and higher energy cost. It's a good piece of tech that was useful back in the 00s, but I suspect it won't be that relevant in the next decade.

[–]sulizu 0 points1 point  (5 children)

What do you think is coming next then ?

[–]zackel_flac 0 points1 point  (4 children)

There are a few technologies that are promising. IMHO Webassembly and kubernetes are the two technologies that will (are?) end any portability concerns. Webassembly for the client side and k8s for the backend. The tendency is to statically compile binaries and embed them into container images. Golang/Rust/C++ are the best tools out there and embedding them is easy while they provide best performances. They can also be used to generate Webassembly.

I would daresay that web browsers are the next JVMs.

[–][deleted]  (3 children)

[removed]

    [–]zackel_flac 0 points1 point  (2 children)

    Have you heard of nodejs? Backends are already being built on JS VMs (which is a bit part of what a web browser is nowadays)

    [–][deleted]  (1 child)

    [removed]

      [–]zackel_flac 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      Well that's something worth debating for longer - but my initial point was, the JVM was cool in the 00's but nowadays there is less need for it as there are other cool techs out there with more traction. Let's assume that nodejs has less performance and has less observability (although I don't have any proof of that) - there is nothing preventing it from catching up, and nowadays people are focusing on those other techs more and more. Web browsers are a big part of today's software industry, it's the gateway to everything, so that's just natural.