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Java's New G1 Collector Not For-Pay After All

Posted by kdawson on from the trial-balloon-popped dept.

An anonymous reader writes "As a follow-up to our previous discussion, Sun appears to have quietly edited the Java 6u14 release notes language to say now: 'G1 is available as early access in this release, please try it and give us feedback. Usage in production settings without a Java SE for Business support contract is not recommended.' So does this mean it was all one huge typo? Or was Oracle/Sun tentatively testing the waters to see the community's reaction? In either case it's nice to see Java's back on the right path."

7 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. Right path? by DoofusOfDeath · · Score: 5, Funny

    In either case it's nice to see Java's back on the right path.

    Did kdawson even read the article before writing the summary? I don't see anything in the article about Java becoming more like Haskell!

  2. But it could be! by BadAnalogyGuy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Garbage collection is an amazingly boring field of computer science. It's all about tracking references and trying to keep memory from filling up while also trying to keep the overall impact on the running system down. But as boring as it may be, it's also absolutely critical in today's interpreted languages.

    Where Java really fails is in the inability to trust the finalize method. At least in C++, the destructor of an object is guaranteed to be called as soon as the object is deleted. Java has no such guarantee, so expecting an object to clean itself up once it goes out of scope is a fool's errand. It will get finalized eventually, but the lack of deterministic behavior in this critical part of the object lifecycle means that there is a very big chance that unacceptable delays may occur in practice.

    Give me deterministic behavior over faster GC any day.

    1. Re:But it could be! by Ethanol-fueled · · Score: 5, Informative

      What you just said makes no sense. The whole point of Java is that you don't have to mess with memory management. You've just admitted that you want to invest more time and complexity in building "mini-projects" by switching to C++. Good for learning, but otherwise practically silly if you're a noob, and you've implied that you are.

      As far as Java goes, ignore the command line for now. You don't need it to quickly build decent-performing applications.

  3. Not quietly by RPoet · · Score: 5, Informative

    Sun didn't "quietly edit" the release notes; they announced it publicly and appologized for having been unclear (which seems like a bit dishonest, but not quiet).

    --
    "Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
  4. Slashdot editors don't read slashdot? by argent · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is not a change, it was clear in the previous thread that the article was completely misinterpreted. The Slashdot summary made no sense at all once it was pointed out that G1 was GPL+Classpath.

  5. No Way! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    A kdawson article that totally blew something out of proportion? What a shock!

  6. Stop spreading FUD by harryandthehenderson · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So does this mean it was all one huge typo? Or was Oracle/Sun tentatively testing the waters to see the community's reaction? In either case it's nice to see Java's back on the right path."

    No, it means that the original article was a misleading pile of FUD since the G1 garbage collector was released GPL + Classpath exception from the beginning. It's amusing that after being pointed out that the original submission was misleading and wrong that instead of this being a retraction that this article still tries to implicitly claim that Sun or Oracle did something wrong.