
The Future of Java SE [video] - javinpaul
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFfTqUQxFTs
======
heelix
The end of this year is going to be such a dumpster fire for us. I think I've
got about a hundred developers with a mix of Linux, Mac, and Windows. The
corporate overlords are mostly sticking to JDK 1.8, which is fine -- RHEL has
a LTS for that on Linux. The developer desktops are all over the place right
now, however. The jump from 8 to 9+, for those of saddled with legacy crap
code, has been somewhat painful. Got to wonder how many years I'll be seeing a
8u191 (or whatever the last release is) on the windows/osx boxes.

~~~
exabrial
Curious, Is the adoptjdk or openjdk not an option for some reason?

~~~
kjeetgill
I'm looking forward to seeing what they do but right now my impression is that
they're still getting on their feet.

If you go to the page an select builds from the drop down half of them weren't
available last I checked. They're new so I'd give them some space for
maturation.

------
rnikander
I wish they would add tail calls to the VM. It would really help functional
programming. It's doable but apparently not considered a high priority.

~~~
aardvark179
We plan to they are on the list of things that will be looked at as part of
project loom. It was originallly thought they would be closely related to
continuations as they are both forms of non local return, but this hasn’t been
the case so far.

------
shadowmint
protip: jump to minute 31 for the interesting stuff.

The first 30 minutes is about the new release cycle, which is... hm.. quite
dry, boring and covered extensively elsewhere.

~~~
mothsonasloth
Yea, its death by gantt chart

------
sheeshkebab
Interesting road map - some features seem like would be moving java closer to
go (walhalla, loom, Panama)

~~~
watt
Yes indeed. Hopefully with the jdk modularization (Project Jigsaw) done and
out and GA, efforts will finally pick up steam on those modernization
projects.

Add GraalVM native image capability to that, and Java will be back to leading
the pack again.

~~~
vijaybritto
Imo, The most important part is earning developer trust more than the feature
set.

------
discordance
The roughly decade long copyright battle around Java API use has killed any
interest I had in Java

~~~
maaaats
Why? (Or why should we care about your personal interest in java without any
substantial information?)

~~~
discordance
I don’t believe in software patents, and Oracle’s litigious history indicates
they are a strong proponent for software patents.

I loved working with Java/Spring at one time, but there are too many good
alternatives and I choose to vote with my feet.

~~~
pron
FYI, the company that extracted the most from Android through patent-related
legal threats was Microsoft, that collected billions in patent royalties from
Android vendors[1][2]. While more extensive, it generated less noise partly
because the companies MS came after didn't have the same PR machine as the one
Oracle came after... (a cynic would say that the result of the case was what
would be expected from a battle between a company with a great legal
department and a company with a great PR department).

Large software companies (except MS) are far more often the _target_ of patent
infringement lawsuits/threats than the perpetrator.

[1]:
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2015/11/01/microsoft...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2015/11/01/microsoft-
android-patent-income/)

[2]: [https://www.howtogeek.com/183766/why-microsoft-
makes-5-to-15...](https://www.howtogeek.com/183766/why-microsoft-
makes-5-to-15-from-every-android-device-sold/)

~~~
curt15
It's not about the money. it's about the principle. For example, where does
the copyright lawsuit leave Apache Harmony legally, given that it's an
"unauthorized" Java API implementation? Is the codebase's Apache license still
valid? If not, what does that say about the GPL license of GNU/Linux, which is
similarly an "unauthorized" reimplementation of proprietary Unix?

~~~
pron
There was nothing in the lawsuit about being authorised or not. The court
ruled that Google's _particular_ use of the Java APIs was not fair use, as it
wasn't intended for interop[1]. Apache Harmony can only license what they own,
and they don't own the Java API. I guess that if you use Harmony in a way that
makes fair use of the APIs you should be fine, but that's not what Google did
(at least according to the court's ruling).

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_America,_Inc._v._Google...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_America,_Inc._v._Google,_Inc.#Appeals_Court_and_finding_of_non-
fair-use).

------
antpls
I tried to compile the JVM 9 on a Debian this weekend, just to give it a try.
The openjdk's mercurial repository returned 500 HTTP-errors 9 times out of 10.
After relaunching the clone command 50 times, I managed to fetch the sources.
Total size of the source code with sub-projects dependencies : 1.5 GB.

After that you have to further download a pre-compiled JVM to bootstrap the
compilation, and install further debian packages such as X11 stuff (???). I
looked at the Debian package's Makefile from the package maintainers, and then
I gave up.

The complexity, and especially the dependencies, of the JVM are outstanding. I
guess some work groups are paid to work on Java, but it seems some sub-
projects are staling, while some modern expected features are still not in the
JVM. For example, it's difficult to see where GraalVM is in the grand scheme.
Is it replacing several previous project? Is it competing with ongoing sub-
projects? Will it be compatible with most projects?

The problem I see with Java is : if people are not paid to work or develop it,
I'm not sure people would continue to support the language and the stack,
given the time and specific skills you have to invest in it.

At that point, Java looks more like a research project than a production-ready
tool.

~~~
chrisseaton
> The openjdk's mercurial repository returned 500 HTTP-errors 9 times out of
> 10.

I don't know why that would happen - that's a shame. They're moving to GitHub
soon though.

> Total size of the source code with sub-projects dependencies : 1.5 GB.

Is that a problem? How large are most other large, long-lived projects'
repositories? Linux is also several GB, for comparison.

> After that you have to further download a pre-compiled JVM to bootstrap the
> compilation

Yes it's bootstrapped. Just like most other programming languages. Is this a
problem?

> and install further debian packages such as X11 stuff (???).

Java includes windowing libraries. Is this a big problem?

> I looked at the Debian package's Makefile from the package maintainers

What were you looking for in there? You can just build Java without trying to
build Debian packages.

> The complexity, and especially the dependencies, of the JVM are outstanding.

I really don't think this is the case compared to any other large systems
project. What was the real problem you found? It needs a binary to bootstrap
it? Yeah like almost all languages. It's a bit large? It's been around for
decades. It provides windowing libraries? Wow what a crime.

> I guess some work groups are paid to work on Java

Hundreds. Hundreds of people are paid to work on Java full time, at many
companies. I would guess probably more people work on Java implementation than
any other programming language.

> if people are not paid to work or develop it...

Let me stop you there, because they are.

> At that point, Java looks more like a research project than a production-
> ready tool.

It demonstrably is production-ready. Massive companies use Java in production
in enormous, complex, demanding deployments, and have been for decades.

~~~
antpls
Please see my other reply for some details of some of the points.

> It demonstrably is production-ready. Massive companies use Java in
> production in enormous, complex, demanding deployments, and have been for
> decades.

It's true, it powers a good part of the Android ecosystem, and probably a lot
of stuff we use everyday, but Google has massive ressources!

Given the momentum of Java, and with the rise of GPGU, Tensor DSPs,
accelerated hardwares, containers stuff, Kubernetes or maybe even new
programming paradigm around AI, will Java be able to keep up and find its way?
What about Scala, Clojure, etc

This is only my point of view, but C and C++ still look more future proof for
speed, and everything else in Python or Go is good enough. I understand many
investments were made by many companies on the JVM and at least one of its
language tho

------
vijaybritto
Project Loom looks pretty interesting!

------
koiz
I wish the future of java was less Oracle.

~~~
kjeetgill
It is and it has been? They've open sourced a ton just this last year removing
most differences between OracleJDK and OpenJDK. I think it's just a few small
compatibility variences left.

------
tnr23
already porting everything away from Java

~~~
simion314
any GOOD reason why porting existing stuff that works ?

~~~
halfastack
Doubt it honestly. Seems to me like the main group of people up in arms about
it are those who never did serious Java development anyways.

~~~
twic
Comments on HN vary very widely in quality, but articles about Java or the JDK
currently seem to attract particularly passionate low-quality comments. Does
it somehow tickle the same neurons that Microsoft did back in the days of
Micro$haft Winblowz 95?

~~~
dman
If you think Java has it bad, I invite you to read every thread about C++.

~~~
simion314
PHP projects also get a lot of hate from people that have no idea about PHP,
they just learned that some noobs wrote bad code with it, it is not a pretty
or cool language but only bad developers would port existing project from PHP
just because the language is not cool.

