
Google calls Oracle lawsuit 'baseless,' vows to fight it - kqr2
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9180703/Google_calls_Oracle_lawsuit_baseless_vows_to_fight_it
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sasidharm
Not sure why Oracle is getting so much flak for protecting and monetizing
their acquired assets. They are doing what Sun had failed to do, which is
monetizing the Java platform effectively, thus leading them to sell themselves
to Oracle. Granted, software patents can be pretty meaningless and i believe
that there should be no software patents at all. But this seems like the only
way Java platform can be monetized (through licensing). I kind of wish Sun had
the balls to do this kind of thing earlier.

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davidw
If you're against software patents, it's for a reason, no?

That's sort of like saying that you admire one mafioso more than the other,
because he has fewer compunctions about killing people in order to extort
money, even though you're against the "killing people" tactic in general.

The entire Android stack is open source, and is not software that was
implemented by Sun/Oracle. The class library comes from the Apache Software
Foundation. Is Oracle going to sue Apache next? Who else might they sue?

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codexon
What he means is that it was better to go through the wake-up call earlier
instead of losing millions of dollars and man-hours on a language controlled
by corporate interests.

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SomeCallMeTim
Yet another reason why it was a terrible idea to base the Android SDK on Java.
What WERE they thinking?

I know, let's force everyone to use a scripting language to write for
underpowered phone hardware! We don't need native support! Just because Apple
did the same with iPhone to start with, and it came back to haunt them later,
doesn't mean that we won't get away with it! And don't forget Microsoft did
the same thing with C#--look where it's gotten them! And while we're at it,
let's pick a proprietary and patented language that's a laughing stock in
language design circles!

I doubt this makes a dent in Android, though, and I would be amazed if this
changes their Java strategy in the slightest. In a battle between Oracle and
Google, I think the smart money is on Google.

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i80and
Is this meant as irony? Java is not by any stretch of the imagination a
scripting language (static, bytecode-distributed, etc.), Objective-C is
directly translated into C before being compiled, and C#/.NET is probably one
of the better things Microsoft has cooked up.

This is kind of debatable, but I'd also say that modern phones are freakishly
_overpowered_. The ARM Cortex IP used by the current generation phones really
is a slick little architecture, and can definitely handle the overhead of
running bytecode.

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SomeCallMeTim
Java is interpreted on Android on every version prior to Android 2.2. Lua
(clearly a scripting language) also converts to bytecode on load, and runs
faster than Java in most cases. I'm pretty sure Python also converts to
bytecode.

Objective C has a lot of run time overhead due to its "message passing"
paradigm. So any time you need to use a Cocoa API, it's pretty slow. Somewhere
I read that, as a result of Objective C overhead, the iPhone ends up about the
same speed as Android in typical apps--so that with Android 2.2 getting a JIT
compiler, it ends up much faster on similar generation phones.

EDIT: I just realized what you were confused about. Originally Apple said: "NO
native SDK. You must use JavaScript on web pages to create iPhone apps."
That's what I meant by "Apple started with a scripting language and had to
back down." END EDIT

If you're writing code for mobile platforms, then I'm sorry, but it sucks to
have to write it all 3-4 times. C# may be better than Java, but it's not
relevant to me if I want to write Android/iOS games. If everyone used C++,
then even the small-market phones (I'm looking at Microsoft here) would get
ports of everything. At least iOS has somewhat native support for C++, which
makes it easier to port games to/from Windows/Linux. The Android native
support is unfortunately a neglected step-child of Google, though I'm fighting
with it to get that compatibility.

And I'd certainly debate that modern phones are overpowered, but then again I
write games. My G1 positively _crawls_ \--which I submit it wouldn't do if
large portions of the OS weren't written in interpreted Java. I would totally
agree with you that, on paper, there's plenty of power--but it's all wasted by
inefficient code.

You know what really surprises me, though? How much CPU it takes to render a
web page. Even when I'm on WiFi, the G1 is unusably slow at rendering web
pages. And it's built on C++--and the Google browser, which is supposed to be
fast. Opera and Dolphin are also pathetic on the G1.

Not that anyone will see this now that my original comment has been downvoted
to oblivion. I guess you can't insult Java on HN and get away with it. No
worries, though--the same thing happens on Reddit.

EDIT: See "EDIT" section above.

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i80and
Mostly I just took issue with your usage of "scripting language" (which has
more to do with a REPL and no discrete compilation step than anything else).
The edit clarifies things a bit too; I confess to not following the original
iOS app development details.

Thanks for taking the time to write an awesome response; you are definitely
more savvy on the performance topic than me, and I'm disappointed to learn
that the crunching power of modern mobile CPUs tends to be squandered.

