Gosling Returns To The Java Fold 43
MemRaven writes "In an article on CNet News, James Gosling reveals that he's returning to the Java Tools group at Sun. The article touches briefly on the Eclipse situation as well as some vague statements about what he's doing in the future. Since he's been gone from the Java fold for a while, this might spell some definite changes in how Sun treats its stepchild."
great (Score:1)
Why is this news? (Score:5, Interesting)
He created a commercial Emacs clone, which didn't particularly ingratiate him to the open source community.
He created a commercial window system called NeWS and tried to kill X11 with it, but that was a commercial failure, never really worked anyway, and was largely based on other people's technology.
Then he built a simplistic language for programming consumer devices, but that project failed miserably as well. Only when they put it out on the Internet for free, claimed that they were going to make it "open", and promised to create a browser based application delivery platform did it take off--not because there was anything technical novel about it, but because people wanted to believe in browser-based programming (sadly, Sun has pretty much failed to deliver on all of that). Most of the hard work to make Java a success was done by the JIT developers and IBM.
These days [sun.com], he seems to be porting over code highlighting and some other features from Emacs to NetBeans.
Sorry, but if this is a "personality story", maybe someone can explain to me why I should be excited about it. At Sun, Guy Steele would be my vote for one of the most competent people they have. But Gosling? Why?
Re:Why is this news? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Why is this news? (Score:2)
Re:Why is this news? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why is this news? (Score:3, Insightful)
I have to disagree. There were several window systems that put code display-side. NeWS perhaps got the most exposure at the time, but it was, in my experience, the flakiest and hardest to program. No doubt, a lot of that was due to the exceptionally poor choice of PostScript as the displaly-side programming language. Even Apple finally exorcised that demon.
And Java, like it or not, and I do
Re:Why is this news? (Score:1)
Re:Why is this news? (Score:2)
I think it is because of acclamation from sun!wnj.
Larry
eclipse has passed critical mass (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Eclipse is a slow-moving truck (Score:4, Interesting)
As for Eclipse, it is pretty speedy as long you your have the ram. 512 is really the minimum on a Win2k + Eclipse box. (200M for Win2k + 100M for eclipse + extra for everything else). From what I've seen Eclipse isn't overly ram hungry for a moderen IDE. It seems to use slightly less memory then IntelliJ Idea, which is Currently at 150M on my box, even though it says it is only using 95M.
Re:Eclipse is a slow-moving truck (Score:2)
The moderators must have slipped, accidentally selecting "Insightful" instead of "Troll."
Re:Eclipse is a slow-moving truck (Score:2)
Because they really don't require GHz CPUs and GBs of RAM. They never did. Hundreds of MB for big Swing apps, perhaps, but not GBs. Performance issues with EJB stem from the developers misapplying EJBs and writing code on a pre-schooler level. EJBs simply are not appropriate for small projects, either, which burns many developers
Re:Eclipse is a slow-moving truck (Score:1)
It's a close thing, though; LyX [lyx.org] failed to compile on that machine because the compiler even ran out of swap. (LyX uses a lot of C++.)
Re:Eclipse is a slow-moving truck (Score:2)
Re:Eclipse is a slow-moving truck (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Eclipse is a slow-moving truck (Score:2, Informative)
My own findings have been that VS.NET and Eclipse perform about the same. They both are snappy for a while. They they go off on some tangent and the GUI doesn't respond. If you wait long enough, all your keystrokes and mouse clicks will catch up and the GUI is responsive again, for a while.
64-bit Array Indices? (Score:3, Interesting)
Will someone PLEASE tell this genius to add 64-bit array indices to the language? What in the world good is this stupid language on a 64-bit platform?
And yes, WE DO NEED 64 BITS. LIKE YESTERDAY.
Our lab is taking 24-bit Doppler readings [8 byte doubles, 16 byte long doubles] on simultaneous channels at staggering sampling frequencies, and we can generate a 4GB file in the blink of an eye.
Not to mention MPEGs of e.g. The Ten Commandments or Gone with the Wind.
Re:64-bit Array Indices? (Score:1)
If you run into this limit you obviously need to subdevide the workload.
Make multiple array's to fill the data with.
Go rent a DVD from Blockbuster. (Score:2, Insightful)
If you run into this limit you obviously need to subdevide the workload. Make multiple array's to fill the data with.
Go grab a random DVD from Blockbuster. There's a real good chance you'll immediately encounter files of size greater than 4GB.
As I mentioned above, in the medical imaging field, we generate files greater than 4GB in the blink of an eye.
In this day and age, there is simply no excuse whatsoever for any aspect of an "Enterprise" system to lack true 64-bit support. Yes, 32-bit support is n
Re:Go rent a DVD from Blockbuster. (Score:2, Insightful)
But, Medical Imaging and DVD playback are NOT enterprise applications.
Re:64-bit Array Indices? (Score:2)
I mean, when you're doing your computations in Fortran 90, or FORTRAN 77, or C (or whatever), what platforms are you currently using to compile and run your programs?
Re:64-bit Array Indices? (Score:2)
I mean, when you're doing your computations in Fortran 90, or FORTRAN 77, or C (or whatever), what platforms are you currently using to compile and run your programs?
That's the whole point. It's simply INSANE that we have all this modern hardware but no modern languages to access it.
Writing hacks like doubly indexed 32-bit arrays to access memory above 4GB is just EMBARRASSING in this day and age.
And people have the gall to chide Intel & IBM about A20 address barriers...
Re:64-bit Array Indices? (Score:2)
Is there some specific reason why you think there might be a problem?
Re:64-bit Array Indices? (Score:2)
The Java VM can run in full 64-bit mode on SPARCv9 CPUs. Perhaps this would useful to you? Granted, the array index is a limitation for one-dimensional arrays, but perhaps this is an area that could use byte-addressed data streams in a creative way? How about a native call to C-language routines? How about implementing an array-like data structure that overcomes the int limitation? You sound as if you are condemning a good platform for one percieved flaw. Try that strategy on a spouse or significant
Re:condemning a good platform for one percieved fl (Score:4, Insightful)
The Java Language Specification explicity states that using longs as an array index is an error. There might be a good reason for this, as there were 64-bit CPUs around when Java was being developed.
Also, when an array gets to a point of literally being 4,000,000,000 elements long, perhaps the application really could use some re-work. What applications need such large one-dimensional structures, anyway? Now that I think about it, it would be pretty easy to create larger arrays, anyway, in the way UNIX inodes allow indirection to access terabytes of data. The performance penalty of the indirection isn't huge.
I thought "Java" was supposed to be write-once, run any-damned-where you please.
It is. However, when you move forward to 64-bit address spaces--and use them--it makes going back to 32-bit a little difficult.
And you guys think Redmond's marketing department lies out their [collective] ass...
Actually, Sun is pretty straight-forward about Java. Usually, the lies come out of the mouths of the people who want to believe them.
Re:64-bit Array Indices? (Score:2)
J2SE1.5 is now in Beta (Score:3, Informative)
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/index.jsp [sun.com]
Font? (Score:2)
I can't find it in the stylesheets of the page.