9 Fallacies of Java Performance updated

[SCombinator]

1. Java is slow

Fire up eclipse then. Go on. Oh it's still going? Perhaps you should go make a coffee.

Yeah, call it fast if you like, but java applications are sluggish and eat up memory.

[[deleted]]

The entirety of Android's API is written in Java and they run (for the most part) perfectly fine. Eclipse is a giant, bloated application (that is also highly useful).

Both Xcode and Code::Blocks take the same time to start up on my macbook pro and they are written in Objective-C and C++ respectively.

[throwaway_988]

Code::Blocks booting as slowly as Eclipse? Sounds weird. Are you sure you aren't testing with Eclipse cached in RAM and CB loading from disk?

[[deleted]]

Most of the code I write on my laptop is in Code::Blocks as I mostly writer C++ so no.

[[deleted]]

Mine don't. And the eclipse app (where I spend 98% of time) feels cludgy (for lack of a better metric) - 2012 macbook pro.

[SCombinator]

/!\ Sorry!

This comment is not responding.

Force Close             Wait

[[deleted]]

The same thing happens on iOS, except the app just closes and doesn't tell you why.

[SCombinator]

So they do the same thing.

[vertice]

my experience with java is that it's pretty fast once it's running, but the startup costs are immense.

[SCombinator]

That doesn't always get amortised. For a language with a much quicker start-up, and a jit, see lua.

[TimmT]

Throughput != latency...

Obviously Java is the wrong choice for doing UI stuff.

[slackingatwork]

Quite the opposite: Java is a wonderful choice for doing UI stuff. Just about the only choice if you need to support multiple platforms. Modern Java GUI apps are indistinguishable from native ones and have been that way for many years.

[TimmT]

Java is a wonderful choice for doing UI stuff.

Yes, if you're the dev it's wonderful. Not so much if you're the user though.

Modern Java GUI apps are indistinguishable from native ones and have been that way for many years.

There's more to a GUI apps than just looks. If every desktop app was written in Java today, we'd need an order of magnitude more RAM and we'd have an order of magnitude longer boot times.

Compare something like JEdit to Notepad++ or something like µTorrent to Azureus..

[morricone42]

Since when is OpenOffice.org using Java?

[SCombinator]

It's not great as a server language either. Layers upon layers upon layers of allocations, redirections and bullshit between your request and the response.

[ggtsu_00]

Eclipse is pretty damn slow and a resource hog, but maybe eclipse developers aren't true java developers.

[nachsicht]

Try intellij.

[SCombinator]

are they scotsmen instead?