The Future of Java?

Todd AvErth writes "Judge Motz recently ordered Microsoft to distribute Sun's JVM with every Windows product. Salon decided to pipe up about it with an editorial musing about whether or not it's too late. Most of it isn't all that interesting, but some of the comments from Ximian developer, Miguel de Icaza point to the advantage of being able to compile from multiple languages. Anyone know of any projects to compile JVM bytecode from other languages?" Update: 01/23 16:00 GMT by M : Comments were disallowed when this story was originally posted; fixed now. My mistake (although KDE3's stupid mouseover-activates-form-elements user interface, now finally fixed in the latest versions, has to take some blame too).

Ada

[mgaiman]

Ada has a bytecode generator. See here [adahome.com]

So does that mean that my forced ada classes [gwu.edu] in college were useful?

Geez...

[mschoolbus]

I thought for a second /. was just gonna repost the story anyways and just let us write our comments in that one instead...

I Think...

[FireChipmunk]

I Think Sun are really a huge problem
I Think Garbage Collections are too much on my mind
I Think dumps have got a lot to do with why the world sucks
But what can you do?

Like a red rain, beating down on me
Like a Linus line, which won't let go of my brain
Like C#'s ass, it is in my head
Blame it on java
Blame it on java
Blame it on java

I Think slows are gonna drive us all crazy
And write once, run anywheres make me feel like a child
I Think crapyness will eventually be the downfall of civilization
But what can you do? I said what can you do?

Like a red rain, beating down on me
Like a Linus line, which won't let go of my brain
Like C#'s ass, it is in my head
Blame it on java
Blame it on java
Blame it on java

Like a red rain, beating down on me
Like C#'s smile, cruel and cold
Like Linus's ass, it is in my head
Blame it on java
Blame it on java
Blame it on java

Re:I'm so pissed off

[Malc]

Maybe they were giving us time to read the links? That would be a shocker for most /.'ers though, reading the story before posting!.

Re:Language popularity ranking

[Black Parrot]

> The Salon article has a link to a Language popularity study [tiobe.com]...

Ah, yes. I write all my programs in #11 -- XML.

(Who's the idiot? The pollsters or the people who voted?)

Lets get it out of the way...

[japhar81]

(although KDE3's stupid mouseover-activates-form-elements user interface, now finally fixed in the latest versions, has to take some blame too).

Responses that are sure to follow:

• Should have used GNOME
• This was fixed 6 releases ago, upgrade from .0001 to .000009.
• GUIs are for lusers, use the CLI
• You should rewrite this in perl
• You should rewrite this in COBOL
• You should rewrite this in python running on top of a JVM inside a VMWare session of windows XP which is running inside a VMWare session of Minix.

Re:The Future of Java? Even Brighter!!

[throbbingbrain.com]

And, there should be no lack of new software because, as the article says, "Sun estimates there are about 3 million Java developers."

...most of which are currently unemployed...

Re:Languages for the Java VM...

[Zico]

They'll probably be released right around the same time that we're all wearing those Java rings that Chompers McNealy always used to talk about.

Java is a Jobs Program

[Anonymous Coward]

Java has been a constant hire (even during the worst parts of the IT recession).

Probably because it takes so many developers to get anything done in Java. It is a Bloat Magnet. If you want job security, use every OO pattern in the GOF Pattern book to print a simple error message. Toss in a hand-built XML database for good measure.

Re:Languages for the Java VM...

[Anonymous Coward]

I just tried this, but your code was flawed... I optimized it thus:

int j = 1000000;

and it seems to run just as fast under the JVM as the C++ implementation under gcc. ;)

Re:Languages for the Java VM...

[allenw]

Hmm...

Ultra 2/2x168MHz:

$ time ./a.out
100000000
real 0m0.03s
user 0m0.01s
sys 0m0.00s

$ time java Test
100000000

real 0m4.90s
user 0m4.60s
sys 0m0.15s

OS X 2x800MHz:
$ time java Test
100000000

real 0m2.26s
user 0m1.98s
sys 0m0.13s
$ time ./a.out
-ksh: ./a.out: cannot execute [Exec format error]

real 0m0.01s
user 0m0.00s
sys 0m0.01s

Looks to me like Java wins considering that the C version wouldn't even run. ;p

[For those playing at home: You don't have to "recompile" Java applications when you cross platforms. ]