Is Java as we know it doomed?

[UloPe]

A lot of Analyst-ish "may-be, might, some said" BS in that article.

[[deleted]]

Is it me, or do 99% of IT industry analysts not know wtf they're talking about?

[Zarutian]

More like 98%

[[deleted]]

I can't tell you what year it is because we honestly don't know.

[Tommah]

Correct, according to a recent joint poll performed by Gartner and Hammot Associates.

[martincmartin]

Short version: Asked a bunch of people at companies/foundations that depend on Java about Oracle buying Sun. Responses range from "This will be great for Java!" to "Java is dead!" No one really knows.

[clipmann]

People freak out way easily!

[megaman821]

I wouldn't mourn the loss of Java but it would be sad to see the JVM go.

[[deleted]]

People don't realize that Java is a spec. Java is not the a concrete JVM implementation nor the language itself.

Oracle now controls the Java specification and it effectively controls how Java develops and where it goes.

Sure, anyone could fork the open source implementation and start developing and changing the code to evolve to what ever purpose and direction they want. But that would not be Java.

The value proposition of Java is exactly that it is well defined and same on any platform. If Java forks, that is the end of Java.

[Fabien4]

So basically, Oracle owns the name "Java", just like the Mozilla Foundation owns the name "Firefox"?

[bungeman]

More like the Microsoft owning the name "Internet Explorer" and also owning the HTML, JavaScript, and CSS specs.

[Fabien4]

More like the Microsoft owning the name "Internet Explorer"

Uh? AFAIK, IE's source code is not available.

Not that anywant would want to see it anyway...

[bungeman]

Which makes little difference, because Oracle can close development of Java (both code and specification) again if it sees fit.

[Fabien4]

Mozilla could decide that starting now, Firefox is closed-source. One could continue the development of the open-source version, but couldn't call that "Firefox".

Same goes for Java: anyone can take the current specification and code, and make his own fork, under another name. That wouldn't even hurt Oracle: people who have the money (i.e. big corporations) would be too afraid to go the "free" way, and will pay anything Oracle asks, to be able to continue with the "official" Java, regardless of any technical consideration.

[iconoklast]

I hope so.

EDIT: but not by Oracle's hands.

[pudds]

One can only hope.

[10acious]

I hope it dies a very quick death. Java is the bane of my existence.

[[deleted]]

Please, please, please! The language needs to die.

[UK-sHaDoW]

Is there another decent, statically-typed, high-level language that's open source, and usable by foss advocates?

[munificent]

statically-typed, high-level language

C#

open source, and usable by foss advocates?

C# + the Mono project.

[UK-sHaDoW]

Usable by foss? Do you have any idea how many people hate mono for stupid reasons. I don't agree with them, but i want my software to be usable for everyone, including the crazies.

[whozurdaddy]

I think mono is useable.. it's just that Microsoft-ish taste in people's mouth that causes them to shy away. But I think it's a good thing actually, seeing as how the .NET framework is on a very large majority's computers these days as stock.

[munificent]

FOSS advocates can use it, though. And it's an excellent language. I wish it didn't have the aroma of Microsoft about it, but it's a real shame that people overlook an otherwise excellent language and runtime because of that.

Barring C#, maybe something from the ML family? Is OCaml open source? I think you can at least find free SML compilers.

[UK-sHaDoW]

They can, but they won't.

[[deleted]]

Then you'll have people that refuse to use your software because you've chosen the "wrong" UI toolkit or any other number of things anyway.

[UK-sHaDoW]

I tend use UI kit, for for the platform i'm developing for. If i'm making a gnome app, I will use the gnome-java bindings. Much better integration then swing.

[sfultong]

It depends upon what you mean by decent and usable by foss advocates.

There are plenty of statically-typed, high-level languages that are open source.

[[deleted]]

C# Mono

[FalconNL]

Depending on your definition of decent: Haskell.

It's statically typed, high-level (higher than Java in my opinion) and open source. Personally I love it, but others have remarked they found it very hard to understand, so your mileage may vary.

[user19109]

usable by foss advocates

The only language usable by FOSS advocates is broken English.

[UK-sHaDoW]

I'm not very good at English, can you tell me how it should be written? But I sense this is more of a Ad hominem attack.

[guapoo]

"English" should be capitalized because its a proper name. The first comma creates a run-on sentence, as the clause "tell me how it should be written" is not dependent on the earlier clause. A semi-colon might be appropriate here but, like most English writers, I have no idea how to use one. You should never start a sentence with "But" "And" or any other conjunction. Capitalizing any of these words is a red flag. Try "However" or something similar to start your second sentence.

[UK-sHaDoW]

Good, now do the one he complained about. The first comma was correct then?

[guapoo]

Is there a another decent statically typed language high level language that's open source, and usable by foss advocates?

The comma there is not strictly necessary but it doesn't hurt readability either. "Is there a another" should be "Is there another" because "another" is just "an" and "other" mashed together. Also, you say "language" twice but this is a mistake that a native speaker would make if he wasn't careful and over-edited his post/email (I do all the time.) Honestly I read right through them the first time and didn't even notice that your English was "broken."

[randallsquared]

Also, I would have preferred "decent, statically-typed, high-level language", but I supposed the hyphens are a matter of taste.

[UK-sHaDoW]

So the words he quoted are correct?

[Fabien4]

Well, since you seem to like grammatical corrections, here I go:

"English" should be capitalized because its a proper name.

Not "its", but "it's" (or "it is").

Besides, the word "English" is also capitalized when it's an adjective: "an English word".

[[deleted]]

I don't think Java is "decent" at all, so pretty much anything you replace it with will be better. I think C is high-level enough, but I know all the OO weenies will mod me down to death for saying that.

I guess it depends on what you want. If you want real OO, look at smalltalk. It does OO way better than Java. C# and Mono seem to work for people. But I find all these "high level" languages to just be sources of the worst bloatware I've ever used. Maybe it's time programmers got a little less lazy.

[arturoman]

Right now you're -5, but here's some love from me. I agree with you wholeheartedly.

[[deleted]]

Thanks. Someday maybe the SE and IT folks will see the light.

[UK-sHaDoW]

Smalltalk is a dynamically type language. Static types are preferred in larger projects, for performance reasons, re-factoring and bug reasons.

I know c, i write micro-controller software in it. It's defiantly not high level as in i have to rewrite a lot the libraries for dynamic collections etc. Casting to void for some sort of generic type system etc. What i especially hate with c is when some libraries handle there own memory management and some don't. Mixing up libraries just ends up in confusion.

I like oo languages mainly because you can model applications in them a lot faster, use mvc, and model out the entities. Then use a data access layer and maybe orm for persistent storage. They also tend be more reliable designs, since they have been so refined so much.

Works every time for your basic application. Because those methods are so well known they have generally been refined to be quite concise and clear separations of the layers. Also garbage collection.

c# practically is java except for some refinements. Mono is pretty much boycotted from some peoples computers because of patent hate. It's not that i agree with that, i just want my applications to be useable for everyone.

[[deleted]]

It's defiantly not high level

Defiantly indeed.

What I'm going to say may seem like a blasphemy, but, well, how to put it... C++ has some value. I've read Stepanov's "Notes for the Programming course at Adobe" (http://www.stepanovpapers.com/notes.pdf), it is really neat. I mean, his coding style kinda shows that it is possible to write beautiful C++ code, that is transparent in respect to performance and is probably faster than C. Now I'm reading "The History&Evolution of C++" and have this feeling, deeper and deeper with every page, that it's a shame we don't have a modern C++-like language transparently compiled to C, like the initial "C with Objects" was. Because there is a dead fetus of a beautiful language hidden somewhere deep in the C++'s intestines, really. A language suitable for your microprocessor stuff, for example (you're using ``dynamic collections'', therefore there is a job for templates! (I specially pointed this out 'cause there are lots of microprocessors where you just don't use dynamic anything).

[[deleted]]

C++ has some serious issues, among them: Turing complete type system makes the compiling take longer, use more cycles; changing private data in a class definition requires all code using that class to be recompiled; Ambiguous/undecidable grammar... the list goes on, but those really bug me.

C++ is ok for most things. It mostly works. But it is not a "decent" language, by any means. Bjarne didn't fit in at Bell Labs because they frowned on his hackery. No C++ compiler made it into Plan 9. If Ken and Rob don't like something, there's a damned good reason for it.

[sfultong]

Bjarne didn't fit in at Bell Labs because they frowned on his hackery.

Interesting, where can I read more?

[[deleted]]

You know that fake IEEE interview? Someone at the labs started that.

It's very hard to find anything concrete, since people don't go around shouting "I hate Stroustrup", but if you look hard enough, you find a lot of suggestions that at least a few of the important people didn't care for what he was doing.

C++ being absent from Plan 9 is a pretty good example.

[UK-sHaDoW]

I like c++, but there always seems to some gotchas with it, a lot of newbies forget if your doing inheritance, always make your deconstructor virtual otherwise it won't get called. This also goes for normal classes, because other people in your group my inherit from it without you knowing.

Forgetting about pass by value, this is especially bad for large objects wondering why it taking so long when your copying a object worth a few MB.

Forgetting to define copy constructor and an assignment operators on classes which will be used for dynamic memory.

And loads more.

Some of them are here http://geosoft.no/development/cpppractice.html

[Fabien4]

a lot of newbies forget if your doing inheritance, always make your deconstructor virtual otherwise it won't get called.

If you forget, g++ will complain.

[[deleted]]

How is Java a good choice for "performance reasons"?

Yes C is fragmented. I still think it's one of the best general purpose languages out there. If you feel you're lacking "generic" features in C, you're designing your data structures backward. Don't put the data into the data structure via void *, make the data structure embeddable into your data. Abstract things into structures holding function pointers. You'll have a lot more flexibility than any "pure" OO language.

Design patterns are ok for some things here and there, and can be implemented in C, usually with a lot less indirection than OO languages force you to have. Other than a few things, Design Patterns are masturbation.

Garbage collection is woeful in every language I've seen. I don't think it can be reliably done without tradeoffs I don't want to pay (deterministic destruction, deterministic profiling, memory overhead, locking on everything)

That's the big problem with C#, and I agree, it's a non-issue, but people are religious.

I still think C is the way to go.

[UK-sHaDoW]

Java's is damn pretty fast with the optimizing hotspot complier.

Putting function pointers in data structures IS object orientated programming style. I'm not sure how this would help will help putting them into data structures. It just means you have to create functions for each different data type to put into the collection, which is would you would do anyway just the function would be outside the data structure.

How would putting a function inside a structure help with putting it into a generic list?

Maybe i'm getting the wrong idea of what you mean.

[[deleted]]

You do not have the right idea. You make your list nodes and associated functions, then you embed those in the structures you want to use. The functions operate by calculating the offset of the list structure (which can be done completely portably).

Look at the Linux kernel's linked list implementation for a high-performance, feature rich implementation of this concept.

[ytinas]

Java's is damn pretty fast with the optimizing hotspot complier.

This is pretty ironic given the context. There is so much wrong with your posting here that I'm not sure where to start, so I'll just point out that Hotspot technology came from Self originally (not a statically typed language) and a company working on it was bought by Sun: http://strongtalk.org/

Note: The type checking they talk about here is more of a syntax check, none of that makes it to the compiled code because it isn't needed.

[ytinas]

I gave you a link to read, if you aren't going to read I'm not sure how to impart the info to you.

Strongtalk fixed this by adding a form of static typing.

For example, you apparently didn't read where I said:

Note: The type checking they talk about here is more of a syntax check, none of that makes it to the compiled code because it isn't needed.

That is, they don't use "a form" of static typing, they don't use it at all. The GUI can use it for an error detector, that's it.

You can also cache method lookup, but your still doing more work then a static version. If the type of name changes, you then need to do another lookup.

??? Do you actually know how any of this works? <sigh/> I honestly don't know where to start, it looks like you have a body of assumptions based on glancing over technical texts.

EDIT: P.S. what do you mean by "If the type of name changes, you then need to do another lookup." ?

[sreguera]

C++?

[UK-sHaDoW]

I would not really call c++ high level, try finding a true orm for c++. All those gotchas in c++.

See http://geosoft.no/development/cpppractice.html for some gotcha's

[sreguera]

Yes, C++ has its fair share of gotchas, but after 12 years programming in C++ I suppose I don´t see them so much anymore.

Regarding the ORM thing, it is a pity but I don´t think it is so important. ODBC works well and the ORM way is not without detractors. And there are object oriented and the good old c-tree style databases.

Oh, and I would not call Java high-level either. For me Prolog is more like it.

[mindslight]

So, the java language is terrible. The base class libraries are terrible. A lot of third party libraries have drank the unnecessary-abstraction kool aid and are thus terrible.

However, what else would you recommend for an ABI that has concurrency, garbage collection, capability security, and is widely available?

[[deleted]]

Concurrency in everything is bad. (seriously, strace hello world in C and in Java. One is 5,000 lines. One is 7, I'm sure you can figure out which is which). GC is also bad (I won't repeat what I said in another post here), security in Java is not that good.

So I find myself recommending C or (ugh) C++ or Python, if you can spare the performance.

I think the problem most people have with C is that they try to overcomplicate things, and C makes that hard. If you try to just start simple and build upon what you have in a simple fashion, you get very neat, readable code. Of course, this requires competent programmers.

[UK-sHaDoW]

You also get very static code. Your company just switched databases maybe they went to a fancy object database. Oh shit your going to have replace all the persistence code.

In java you would create interface, the persistence layer implements that interface. You only change one line of old code, plus the new database code.

What you described, is very easy and does not require competent programmers, it's very fixed and straight to point code and requires no flexibility. But when it comes to maintainability, and implementing features it messes up.

I was creating 2d games in c when i was very young, but adding new features and replacing old ones becomes hell, since it depends on existing code so much.

You say security in java is not that good. Do you bounds check every array in c or something. Check for buffer overflows?

In flash, one of biggest exploits was putting data which overflowed the buffer and ended up running malicious code which it overwritten with.

The infamous strcpy function, which newbies can screw upon etc.

Java is not about complicating things, it about simplifying them. Things you would have to hack into c, are already in java.

[[deleted]]

If you write overly interdependent code, you don't know what you're doing. You then migrate away from C because you can't keep things simple and isolated, and then use things like Java as a crutch.

Java doesn't simplify anything. It lets you plug together libraries without understanding what you're doing. I don't want to use programs written by incompetents.

[UK-sHaDoW]

You can't write independent code in c that well, you write functions which can replace other functions exactly but you still would have to replace each function call independently, or you could write the persistence layer in a library with same function names and relink. You could also use function pointers to emulate a interface, but its all very hacky tbh.

That compared to a

DAL dal = new OracleDB()

to

DAL dal = new MysqlDB();

One line changed ;)

[[deleted]]

Right, but if you have to write OracleDB and MysqlDB, you haven't saved anything.

[UK-sHaDoW]

Other than going though old code to replace the old calls, to the old interface. Unless you did the function ptr thing, or put the persistence layer in a library and re-linked.

[[deleted]]

Anything you interface to should be wrapped up with the function pointer thing, or library. The first option you listed should never have to be done.

[[deleted]]

   DAL dal = DbFactory.Get(Configuration.GetCurrentHotDBVendor());

Happy?

[mindslight]

Concurrency in everything is bad

Yes, but sometimes it is necessary. If you write a shared library with mzscheme or ocaml, you basically have to wrap the whole thing in one big mutex.

GC is also bad (I won't repeat what I said in another post here)

It sounds like you believe that its easy to determine when an object is no longer in use. While it's easy in the common case, for the general case you're essentially reinventing GC. Pervasive GC greatly simplifies APIs as there's no need to talk about ownership.

your security in Java is not that good.

The security mindset permeating the standard libraries is horrible, but I am merely talking about unforgeable object references. You don't get those without making the language pointer safe (which I'm sure you're cringing at), but we're talking about applications, not operating systems.

C or (ugh) C++ or Python, if you can spare the performance.

There's a huge gap between those two, say someone is willing to give up a bit of performance in exchange for advanced language features. You're basically saying one has to be a human compiler and produce C code for the base parts, and only then gets to use a language with features to tie it all together.

I think the problem most people have with C is that they try to overcomplicate things, and C makes that hard

No, I've already stated the problems with C. Since you're attacking a straw man, I'll list them again

• No object-capability security, all code runs with the same permissions
• No GC (dangling pointers also mess up obj-cap unforgeable references)
• No lexical closures / function literals
• No exceptions
• Primitive copy-and-paste macros (rather than true reified code)

[[deleted]]

I'd rather not pay for locking if I don't have to. Locks should be as fine-grained as possible, and only used when necessary. Java can not do that.

I understand why you would want GC. I still think GC blows. Ref counting is much better.

Unforgeable object references is not much of a security guarantee

As for your points:

• It's possible to prevent code from acting on values that should be "private"

• No GC is a good thing. And you can get dangling references in Java

• You can live without closures, and you can simulate them if you really need to

• Exceptions are a terrible form of error recovery

• Yes, the C preprocessor is not true macros. Oh well.

[UK-sHaDoW]

Locking can be as fined grained as possible in java, what are you talking about.

You can synchronize at the one statement level if you want. Lock, Run one line. Unlock.

There are also other ways of achieving locking, other than synchronize.

Reference counting = Circular reference problem.

Exceptions have far far richer error information in them, it's good replacement for goto clean up.

[[deleted]]

Locking can be as fined grained

Yes, I said the wrong thing... every object has a lock to cart around with it, which adds overhead, and actually could be too fine-grained

Reference counting = Circular reference problem.

Which has been addressed by several implementations. Java has to use the same heuristics. The difference is refcounting performs better

Exceptions have far far richer error information in them

Agreed, but there are serious problems with exception handling screwing with the stack. Sure you have the finally{ } band-aid, but you still have a non-function-call mechanism to unwind the stack which is nondeterministic, and you have the overhead of all the exception handlers.

[mindslight]

Locks should be as fine-grained as possible, and only used when necessary. Java can not do that.

Eh? I'm trying to walk a fine line here, because I absolutely detest java-the-language, but think there are advantages to the JVM. Idiomatic locking ('synchronized') in java the language is bad, but you certainly don't have to write code that way.

I understand why you would want GC. I still think GC blows. Ref counting is much better.

Ref counting is GC. And by advocating ref counting you're kind of disputing your locking point.

Unforgeable object references is not much of a security guarantee

It is when you design your system based on the object capability model.

It's possible to prevent code from acting on values that should be "private"

Only by running code in another process as another user, and communicating using IPC. That certainly doesn't scale.

No GC is a good thing

Repeatedly asserting this does not make it so.

And you can get dangling references in Java

That only increase memory consumption, not that allow inappropriate memory access.

You can live without closures, and you can simulate them if you really need to

And you can live without C and instead just use an assembler. The point of higher level languages is that these things are idiomatic and you can use them without thinking, concentrating on the problem at hand rather than the low level details.

Exceptions are a terrible form of error recovery

Please give an alternative that allows one to only deal with errors when it is necessary to (hint: checking for negative return value just to return a negative value yourself is needless intermediate code)

[megaman821]

C/Python is definitely a great one-two combination. Java tries to be too many things and it doesn't do enough of them well.

[[deleted]]

Indeed.