Red Hat Gives Ceylon To The Eclipse Foundation (eclipse.org)

An anonymous reader writes: Some media outlets called Ceylon an attempted "Java killer" when Gavin King first unveiled his secret two-year development project in 2011. In 2013 Red Hat finally released version 1.0 of the modern, modular statically-typed programming language for the Java and JavaScript virtual machines. After another four years, "Ceylon has a small but very active and enthusiastic community of developers and users, and indeed is the fruit of the hard work of a large number of contributors over the years," says a project proposal page at Eclipse.org seeking "to further grow our community... a key strategy to achieve that would be to move Ceylon from Red Hat to a vendor-neutral foundation."

That project has now been approved, and the "Eclipse Ceylon" project has been created. It includes the Ceylon distribution and its SDK, plus the Java2Ceylon converter and the Ceylon Herd project's server (and related services) for Ceylon module sharing. There's also three IDEs (and their code-formatting and functionality-sharing modules).
Back in 2011 InfoWorld predicted that instead of becoming a Java killer, "it is more likely Ceylon will join a growing list of new languages resting atop the JVM, while the Java language and platform will continue on as staples of enterprise computing."

Comments

Bad idea for Red Hat

[Anonymous Coward]

What if the Eclipse Foundation is quietly supporting Neo-Nazis? Better to not donate money to anyone at all rather than risk that your money is going to Neo-Nazis.

Re:Bad idea for Red Hat

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, we should probably ask, because if they're gonna be coming over with those Paccino's pizzas...could be trouble.

Donations are dangerous

[Anonymous Coward]

You could be giving stuff to Neo-Nazis and not even know it. Smart people won't donate anything, so there's no risk that anything could end up in the possession of Neo-Nazis.

So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rust?

[Anonymous Coward]

So it's safe to assume it's a dead language at this point?

The JVM languages like Scala, Ceylon and Kotlin have lost all of their hype. It turns out that people actually want languages like Go, Swift and Rust that create realnstive binaries, and don't have the overhead of the JVM.

Re:So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rust?

[Anonymous Coward]

Java 8 addressed most of the bullshit those language were all trying to provide anyways. That's why it's stupid to waste years making some Java replacement on the JVM since by the time you finish the next Java version will be out and make your whole shit pointless. Hey, let's make a whole new language because Java doesn't have this One Thing. Oh crap, Java N+1 now has that One Thing, shit.

Re:So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rust?

[Anonymous Coward]

So it's safe to assume it's a dead language at this point?

The JVM languages like Scala, Ceylon and Kotlin have lost all of their hype. It turns out that people actually want languages like Go, Swift and Rust that create realnstive binaries, and don't have the overhead of the JVM.

Lost out to Rust?!?!?!

Number of Rust questions at Stackoverflow: 7,301

Number of Scala questions at Stackoverflow: 69,647

It's hilarious how you think Rust getting it's ass kicked by an order of magnitude means Scala "lost out".

Oh, just for shits and grins:

Number of Java questions at Stackoverfow: 1,301,436

BWAAA HAAA HAAA!!!

Maybe in a few centuries, Rust can catch up to Java on Stackoverflow. Well, if people stop posting Java questions....

Seems most people really don't care for SJW software.

Re:So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rust?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that Android officially supports Kotlin prepare for Scala to drop to Rust-like levels.

Re:So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rust?

[OrangeTide]

My language will have 0 questions on Stackoverflow, because everything will be so intuitive and the documentation will be so excellent that there will be no need for even a novice to ask for help.

Re:So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rust?

[guruevi]

You mention languages as being hyped and then mention that people want other languages and give a list of more hyped languages.

People don't use Swift or Go or Rust, nobody uses it as a serious alternative to the established C/C++, Java. People by and large don't even want to use Python/C# if they were starting from scratch.

Re:So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rust?

[TechyImmigrant]

But does lstlisting support your language in latex?

Re:So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rust?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mention languages as being hyped and then mention that people want other languages and give a list of more hyped languages.

People don't use Swift or Go or Rust, nobody uses it as a serious alternative to the established C/C++, Java. People by and large don't even want to use Python/C# if they were starting from scratch.

I've used both C# and Java quite a bit lately. Ignoring politics, I think I may like Java a bit better, but then C# has better Linux support now. Realistically the two are not that different. There seems more options in C#. I've not used Python for anything significant, though it seems likely to worthwhile to learn given its adoption.

If I needed extremely tight high level/low level language integration, then c#/C++ does work well. Of course, few people actually need that. No idea about the rest, but I'd bet you see some of the others used for safety critical applications at some point, or at least the ones that remove some of the risks of c++.

Personally I'd like C# and Java to carefully merge, and take the best of both, including gui components. I'm less than certain we need both of them, as long as you can write once and truly run almost anywhere. It is not as if their design choices are vastly different.

Re:So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rust?

[angel'o'sphere]

That varies by county and usage.

C/C++ is pretty dead, mainly only used in embedded environments and as system languages for the OS.
Swift obvioulsy is strong on Macs and iOS, I wonder why you miss that.
Rust is growing in the Mozilla world.
Python is very strong in scientific data processing, e.g. climate research (processing in the sense of transforming formats and doing low level aggregations stuff, not in the sense of models)

C# is relatively strong in relation to Java in UK and USA, Germany and France are mainly Java (we actually have a serious lack of C# developers in Germany, because to many historical projects got started in C# when it was "en vogue", but developers hate it. java is so much more superior, well, at least the eco system)

So: yes, in my area you are right, no one wants to use C#. However Python is popular, for scripting in build and deploy environments e.g.

Re:So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rust?

[guruevi]

C/C++ is pretty heavily used for pretty much every interpreted language, most Python libraries are written in C/C++, pretty much every large project (think Apache, Linux, Windows, BSD (including Mac and iOS), Java, SAP, OracleDB, Chrome, etc. - every engine of sorts, from browsers to games are written in C or C++.

Swift has grown but is not nearly as ubiquitous as Apple makes it out to be, you can't replace 30 years of work in barely half a decade. Many frameworks are still either Objective-C and I find an astonishing amount of work is still being done in C/C++ even for "iOS apps" but even on Mac, you can't get away from a C-variant.

Rust is Mozilla, that's it, because their programmers suck at writing decent software (all Mozilla software has suffered from bloat, plugins and feature creep) they think creating YASL is going to help. But it suffers from a combination of the problems of Mozilla software and the problems any other safe language has. It's not performant, it's bloated and it's trying to do way too much (similar to Firefox/Thunderbird) to be a healthy language.

I also noted the difference between some European countries and the US. Belgium/Netherlands is also more Microsoft-geared. The problem with C# is not the C# language, which would be fine standalone (but then why bother) but the fact that Microsoft never bothered porting the "standard libraries" most C# environments have to Linux, BSD and the like. For most things, C# stuff works only on Windows and some of it works with Mono on Mac/Linux but then you once again run into the problems of Safe Languages (Bloated and Slow).

I work in research, Python is indeed used to wire up something quick or to translate from one system to the other (it has somewhat the same function Perl had 20 years ago) but I also work in HPC, most of what is started written in Python ends up written in C/C++ to be usable and fast, especially for multi-threading or parallel tasking, e.g.. to use on GPU or supercomputer compute nodes.

Re:So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rust?

[DuckDodgers]

The JVM was far less efficient in 2000 and few dozen MB of RAM overhead for a program running on it was a big cost. Today the JVM performance is excellent and the memory and startup overhead is insignificant. I'm typing this from a computer that's seven years old, and the JVM "Hello World" starts in 115 ms, vs. 15ms in the same hardware on C.

I think Ceylon will fade into oblivion just because it's so late to the space. I like the language features, I think it could be a better Kotlin.

Re:So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rust?

[DuckDodgers]

Nonsense. Even with Java 8 the Java language is years behind Scala/Kotlin/Ceylon.

1. If you want to make a Java class with 6 different fields that are set in the constructor and then final, with idiomatic Java syntax that's 16 lines of code. If you follow Java convention and make getters for the 6 fields you're up to 34. Scala, Kotlin, and Ceylon have things like a Scala case class or equivalent to handle it one line.

2. Java 8 does better with language literals for constructing lists, sets, and maps. But it still doesn't have the convenience of val nums: List[Int] = List(1, 2, 3, 4) in Scala or equivalent in others.

3. Java doesn't have convenient constructor overloading and default constructor or function input parameters. If you want to call a function that has 3 different optional inputs in any combination in Java, you either have to do lots of foo(null, null, null), foo(x, null, null), foo(null, y, z), foo(x, null, z), etc... or declare eight different versions of the function. Scala/Kotlin/Ceylon have default parameters, so you declare one function and still never pass in nulls.

4. Java if statements don't return anything. Scala and Kotlin (and Ceylon?) have if statements return a value, so that instead of using the ternary operator you can do y = if (x > 7) "bigger than 7" else "less than 7".

5. Java doesn't allow operator overloading. Scala goes berserk with it (I'm not a fan). Kotlin and Ceylon allow limited operator overloading in places where it makes sense. In both languages you can make a class that holds, say, imaginary numbers (1 + 3i) and then use operator overloading to manipulate them with regular +, -, /, etc... instead of Java's .add, .subtract, etc....

6. Java still has checked exceptions that must be declared and thrown in code that uses a lot of the older standard library. Scala, Kotlin, and Ceylon let you use try/catch when it's appropriate but doesn't force you to declare or catch checked exceptions.

So Java is in a constant game of catch-up with these languages, and even with the improvements in 8 and 9 it's still nowhere near as clean and straightforward to use as these three.

Re:So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rust?

[OrangeTide]

Damn, you've found the one weakness in my language. I guess I'll have to scrap the whole thing and start over, oh well, what's yet another programming language on the pile?

Re:So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rust?

[Anonymous Coward]

Being almost 8 times slower isn't "insignificant".

Re:So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rust?

[DMFNR]

Start up time is just about the worst metric the previous poster could have used to illustrate their point. Once the VM is up an running, in many cases Java is almost as fast as C [1]. I don't know how much storage a Java installation uses or how much memory the VM hogs, but people are bundling browsers and Javascript frameworks together in to 100+ MB text editors these days. I imagine Java is relatively svelte compared to a few of those types of apps installed on a modern computer. It is definitely slower and more bloated than a C program, but I think in proportion to the resources we have today it's close enough for most purposes.

[1] http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/java.html

Re:So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rust?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a good way to screw up KLOC count.

Re:So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rust?

[allcoolnameswheretak]

I think this is precisely the reason for Red Hat to hand Ceylon over to the Eclipse Foundation. Ceylon and Kotlin are the two biggest competitors in that sweet spot of "nicer Java". Kotlin becoming the quasi-standard for Android development is a huge blow to Ceylon. I'm just not sure if Red Hat handing the torch to the EF means they are hoping it will give the language some momentum, or if it means they are conceding defeat and dropping it, letting someone else clean up the pieces.
I guess it's a bit of both.

Re:So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rust?

[DuckDodgers]

It's not 8 times slower. It takes 100 ms extra to start, and then runs almost as quickly as C.

Check out the Great Computer Language Shootout Game, or the Techempower framework benchmarks.

Re:So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rust?

[luis_a_espinal]

You mention languages as being hyped and then mention that people want other languages and give a list of more hyped languages.

People don't use Swift or Go or Rust, nobody uses it as a serious alternative to the established C/C++, Java. People by and large don't even want to use Python/C# if they were starting from scratch.

Dude, people are moving away from Objective-C to Swift for new development in the iPhone area, and Kotlyn has some serious usage in Android. I'm in South Florida, not a hot market like the Bay Area, and here I'm seeing large companies using Go for platform development.

I don't see people moving away from Java on the enterprise, nor C/C++ in systems programming. But there are other areas where some (not all) new languages are seeing heavy use.

Re:So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rust?

[DuckDodgers]

You're right, and I'm sorry I didn't make that clearer. The extra 100ms was for the JVM startup, and the actual execution speed of Java is very fast.

If you want to see a good illustration of Java's speed, look at the Techempower benchmarks. In some cases Java still has the performance lead over C++. Only in one or two benchmarks does C++ have a substantial lead, and even then it's not even a 2x advantage.

Re:So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rust?

[DuckDodgers]

If you work at a place that puts a lot of stock in KLOC metrics, you have bigger problems than deciding what JVM language to use.

If all other things are equal between two languages, a developer will be more productive in the one that lets them accomplish more in fewer LOC without sacrificing readability. So just to be crystal clear, I'm not advocating you compare, say, idiomatic Java with obfuscated Perl that uses every Perl 5 implicit variable abbreviation trick in the book. That Perl may do twenty times as much per line, but good luck maintaining it. (I'm not knocking Perl. Well-written Perl is excellent. We use it for a lot of tasks at work. But that's because everyone working on it is far too smart to show off how clever they are by writing unmaintainable, unreadable abbreviated junk.) But for any Java program much more than a hundred lines wrong you can write a Kotlin/Ceylon/Scala equivalent with the same logic that's 50-90% shorter.

Re:So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rust?

[TechyImmigrant]

I know. mathchat and PILOT lost out to the same deficiency.

Re:So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rust?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can do #2 in Java just fine with: List nums = Arrays.asList(1, 2, 3, 4);

Re:So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rust?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets try again: List<Integer> nums = Arrays.asList(1, 2, 3, 4);

Re:So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rust?

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent post also matches my observation on Python. Many people that I know use Python for prototyping, but use something else (usually C/C++) for the real world/production cases, even in embedded world.

Re:So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rust?

[DuckDodgers]

That's either:

import java.util.List;
import java.util.Arrays; (or equivalently but not recommended, import java.util.*;)
List<Integer> nums = Arrays.asList(1,2,3,4);

or
java.util.List<Integer> nums = java.util.Arrays.asList(1,2,3,4);

Most other languages have literal syntax for lists, sets, etc... by default, and you don't have to waste your time with imports to use data structures that 70% of your source files will include anyway.

Is it the language or Slashdot...

[__aaclcg7560]

Whenever something JavaScript-related pops up on Slashdot, no one has ever heard of it.

Re: Is it the language or Slashdot...

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you provide an Amazon referral link to a book about Neo-Nazis? That would greatly improve your post.

Re:Is it the language or Slashdot...

[Anonymous Coward]

Affiliate link me harder wide boy.

Re: Is it the language or Slashdot...

[__aaclcg7560]

Can you provide an Amazon referral link to a book about Neo-Nazis?

On my reading list is "Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich" by Norman Ohler and translated by Shaun Whiteside. Nazi Germany was strung out on amphetamines when they started WW2. It wouldn't surprise me if Neo-Nazis were meth heads and/or drug traffickers.

Re:Is it the language or Slashdot...

[__aaclcg7560]

Affiliate link me harder wide boy.

Anti-Monkey Diaper Rash Cream is what you need.

Re:Is it the language or Slashdot...

[Anonymous Coward]

Next on your reading list.

Re: Is it the language or Slashdot...

[Anonymous Coward]

It wouldn't surprise me if you gained a lot of weight once you started your anti-psychotic meds.

Re:Is it the language or Slashdot...

[Chris Mattern]

Yeah, a paywalled link is really meaningful to 99% of us.

Re: So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rust

[Anonymous Coward]

Do any of those languages support Neo-Nazis? We need to know because it's important to never support Neo-Nazis.

What's the fallback plan for Rust?

[Anonymous Coward]

This situation raises a good point: what's the fallback plan for Rust, when it comes a time when Mozilla can't or won't support it any longer? Will it be given to the Apache Foundation, for example, and left to rot? Will the community even be able to sustain it? Will individuals and companies that used it be screwed?

Re:What's the fallback plan for Rust?

[Anonymous Coward]

>Will individuals and companies that used it be screwed?

If you thought using an obscure hipster language like Rust was a good idea then you deserve it.

Re: What's the fallback plan for Rust?

[Anonymous Coward]

Rust could possibly be turned over to Neo-Nazis once Mozilla no longer has a use for it. That's why you shouldn't use Rust.

Re: What's the fallback plan for Rust?

[MightyMartian]

Why is it you offer so much support to white supremacists? Perhaps you should make your way to the Daily Stormer, where I'm sure the Nazis will appreciate your sense of humor.

Re: What's the fallback plan for Rust?

[Anonymous Coward]

That would actually be funny if that happened.

Another reason to use C++.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is yet more proof that if you're working on a serious software project, you should use a proven, professional language like C++ that has multiple independent implementations and will survive being rejected by a single vendor. There's just no place for languages like Ceylon, Go, Rust, and Swift, in my opinion.

Re:Another reason to use C++.

[Anonymous Coward]

Swift seemed cool at first until it became clear that Apple would be making breaking changes to it every... single... year. Maybe now that that LLVM guy got forced out it won't suck so bad. We'll see.

Re:Another reason to use C++.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why did we ever leave FORTRAN? At some point someone went, assembler and FORTRAN aren't sufficient for writing my new compiler system. Let's invent BCPL as a variant of ALGOL 60, and then someone said it was too hard to write operating systems in BCPL and made B then C. Eventually someone realized it was to easy to write a C compiler and created C++ to solve that issue and saved many vendors.

Re:Another reason to use C++.

[Anonymous Coward]

At least in xcode you can upgrade your code, it does a pretty decent job. Or just select the older version of the compiler.

Perhaps because Scala raises more questions?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps Scala leaves more questions ope than Rust? And Java... oh, well.

Or Rust devels are just smarter than Scala devels? And Java... oh, well.

Re:Perhaps because Scala raises more questions?

[Gr8Apes]

Or perhaps Scala (and Rust) both have several orders fewer developers associated with them and consequently many order fewer new developers looking to enter their ranks?

Yet another Java Killer lang ... dead ?

[testman3]

Since almost 20 years, there are so much "Java Killer" touted languages that died and other that are dead-alive experiencing NDE. Meanwhile, Java is still there and kicking ... even though Oracle is doing so much little for it, even though Google tried to escape from it several time. Obviously, people do not use Java like 5 years before, as the app fundations has evolved ... but evolution means you are alive. Sure there are better features in this or that languages, but aside TypeScript I see little competition for yet another 5 years. Btw, Oracle did not even noticed something called IoT that Java was suited, for instance by repackaging JavaCard & J2ME ecosystem and bringing direct I/O API. Ceylon was nice, but it has "no killer" feature. I've never seen anybody outside a lab test case pushed Ceylon (outside Red Hat of course !). R.I.P. Ceylon ...

Re:Yet another Java Killer lang ... dead ?

[Billly Gates]

You mean like .NET?

Yes this is slashdot which views MS as the devil, but c#.net is what Java could have been if it were not for Sun Microsystems ineptitude and managerial incompetence.

I hate Oracle more than Microsoft and view Oracle as the number one threat to open source. Not Microsoft as they have just released .NET core 2.0 to open source and are now being friendly to other platforms.

Anyway I wish Redhat would have bought Java and made native compilers with native heavyweight gui methods but who am I kidding?

Re:Yet another Java Killer lang ... dead ?

[TechyImmigrant]

>Since almost 20 years, there are so much "Java Killer" touted languages that died and other that are dead-alive experiencing NDE. Meanwhile, Java is still there and kicking ...

Old languages that are a problem (in that they are crap, but lots of people are invested in it continuing) can exist in a Wiley- Coyote-over-cliff state for many decades. Like a black hole, ultimately doomed, but the process of shedding mass is so slow that it's hardly worth waiting for it - just ignore it and stay away if you have things to achieve.

Re: Yet another Java Killer lang ... dead ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like MS to make a Linux distro. It couldn't be any worse than Debian or Fedora or any other Linux distro that uses systemd, which I find are buggier and lower quality than even Windows ME was. If they made a reliable, systemd-free Linux distro, I'd seriously consider using it, and I might even consider paying for it were it good enough. If they bundle .NET Core and make it work seamlessly, I'd be very interested in using it.

Re: Yet another Java Killer lang ... dead ?

[Billly Gates]

I would like MS to make a Linux distro. It couldn't be any worse than Debian or Fedora or any other Linux distro that uses systemd, which I find are buggier and lower quality than even Windows ME was. If they made a reliable, systemd-free Linux distro, I'd seriously consider using it, and I might even consider paying for it were it good enough. If they bundle .NET Core and make it work seamlessly, I'd be very interested in using it.

I don't know if this is a troll but they kind of do. Ubuntu for Windows is Ubuntu without SystemD .... but runs on Windows :-/

Not a real option but cute toy thing to run some scripts. ALso .NET core 2.0 was just released and does run on Linux. I always preferred FreeBSD if I have do unix like stuff. I find handbook and docs amazing and a step ahead of Linux which tries to make gui and friendly tools to do things behind the scenes. FreeBSD has great long term support and even features lacking in Linux or are behind. ZFS, dtrace, jails, and for awhile it's TCP/IP stack was better too as Apache used to cream Linux easily until kernel 2.6.

Re:Yet another Java Killer lang ... dead ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ya, Oracle is potentially a huge threat to Open Source. M$ proved it a huge enemy of Open Source for pretty much their entire existence. WTF I 3 M$ NOW!

Re:Yet another Java Killer lang ... dead ?

[Anonymous Coward]

You should review Oracle open source contributions and compare to those made by Microsoft before talking about "threats".

About c#, well, I think it's the other way around as it was designed as a Java clone when the justice ruled 15 years ago that "Microsoft's Java" could not have Java in the name. They only left one feature off when implementing it: cross-platformness.

Re:Yet another Java Killer lang ... dead ?

[Billly Gates]

You should review Oracle open source contributions and compare to those made by Microsoft before talking about "threats".

About c#, well, I think it's the other way around as it was designed as a Java clone when the justice ruled 15 years ago that "Microsoft's Java" could not have Java in the name. They only left one feature off when implementing it: cross-platformness.

The reason I typed that is Oracle just made WINE and SAMBA a potential liability and illegal in their lawsuit agaisn't Android. What Google did was use a clean room implementation of Java by the Apache project. NO SOURCE CODE FROM ORACLE was used. Oracle sued saying they owned the API meaning for example if I write a book and you write one I can say I own your book because we both used the word "the"?!

So now MariaDB can be killed even if all the MySQL code is removed. Linux and FreeBSD would not exist anymore either as bell labs could say LOOK IT HAS CAT! We own the syntax.

This might be the death of all free software. Thankfully Microsoft has not sued wine or Samba yet and Oracle with MariaDB but thanks to that court they effectively changed laws through judicial activism to expand just because they are butt hurt their java phone failed. Boo!

This is far more dangerous than someone changing standards or making tying arrangements with vendors. We will see the result. I imagine SecureSH could be illegal next to as it uses telnet commands. This is just insanity and gee thanks Oracle. Thanks alot you greedy bastard.

Re:Yet another Java Killer lang ... dead ?

[angel'o'sphere]

Well,
as far as I can tell the Java eco system s much more mature than the .Net one.
And comments in XML (as in C#) who's brain dead idea was that?

and made native compilers with native heavyweight gui methods but who am I kidding?
And gone would be cross platform.

Anyway, if you need something like that, there are plenty of Java to native code compilers, just google a bit (Avian e.g.) and you can use SWT (oh chudder) as native GUI ... you pervert.

Re:Yet another Java Killer lang ... dead ?

[StormReaver]

Anyway I wish Redhat would have bought Java and made native compilers with native heavyweight gui methods but who am I kidding?

Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. We had native, heavyweight components in Java (the original AWT), but they caused major maintenance and cross-platform behavior problems. Swing was the answer, and is far superior.

Re: Yet another Java Killer lang ... dead ?

[zaphirplane]

I have some vague recollections that, some implementation files (not headers) looked ah identical, some people argued it's the obvious implementation others it was lifted. To me it looked that it was heavenly inspired by someone that read the source

Re: Yet another Java Killer lang ... dead ?

[zaphirplane]

Why is eclipse accepting it, they want to be the grave yard of projects with no community.
At least do the incubation period thing and dump it if a community doesn't materialize

Re: Yet another Java Killer lang ... dead ?

[Billly Gates]

I have some vague recollections that, some implementation files (not headers) looked ah identical, some people argued it's the obvious implementation others it was lifted. To me it looked that it was heavenly inspired by someone that read the source

Then all of SQL should be banned likely someone else wrote it first. Wine should be banned as they do use the same implementation (not same files). Regardless it was a clean room implementation and no files were copied similiar with the Sco scandal a decade ago who tried to pull the same thing on Linux.

Re:Yet another Java Killer lang ... dead ?

[LesFerg]

Comments are not in XML. Comments are just plain old comments with // or /*
You can use XML markup for inline documentation, for the purpose of extracting it to create API documentation. You shouldn't be using the XML markup for comments.

Re:Yet another Java Killer lang ... dead ?

[terjeber]

as far as I can tell the Java eco system s much more mature than the .Net one

Then you can't tell much. They are certainly on par, with .NET being well ahead in some ares and Java in others.

And comments in XML (as in C#) who's brain dead idea was that?

Yours, it just came straight out of your ass. Don't know of anyone else who's heard of it.

Reality: C# and .NET is now years ahead of Java in most aspects. They are also fully cross platform and open source. Even the C# compiler infrastructure is cross platform and open source.

Re:Yet another Java Killer lang ... dead ?

[Billly Gates]

Anyway I wish Redhat would have bought Java and made native compilers with native heavyweight gui methods but who am I kidding?

Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. We had native, heavyweight components in Java (the original AWT), but they caused major maintenance and cross-platform behavior problems. Swing was the answer, and is far superior.

IT SUCKED? Shoot I remember at Manhattan community college sitting on a Pentium III 450 mhz beast (expensive at the time and very shiny and new wishing I had something that good at home) and making a Hello World in AWT. 1 minute to load?! No really 1 freaking minute while the disk spun for eternity. Lord can you imagine a complex program like Quicken load on such machines written in java??

It was dark and hard to read on the 14 inch monitors at the time with a different font and button style than Windows NT 4.0 apps running in the background. It was not usable and offered no integrated feel. In 2006 when I finished my degree I played with Java again in a real course and Java 5 was new and exciting which had generics (funny C# had them for half decade already) and Sun put same lame styling like metal and motif feel but it still was horrible. I did this because I was a typical slashdot anti Windows zealout. I regret that as those who took the c# class had programming jobs :-(

Oh well.

Sun just gave up on Java and so have I. It is time to move on and consider it like COBOL for legacy mainframe and heavy server apps written 18 years ago when it was cool. Unfortunately C# has over taken it for most apps but we have some smaller ones like Python at least.

Re:Yet another Java Killer lang ... dead ?

[Anonymous Coward]

> outside Red Hat of course

Not even within RH. RHers are notorious for shitting on RH projects and the company wasn't doing anything to push Ceylon either. So RIP indeed.

Re:Yet another Java Killer lang ... dead ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I still can't figure out why anyone uses XML for anything...

Re: Yet another Java Killer lang ... dead ?

[MemeRot]

It was the style at the time.

I don't care that it's XML. You just type /// and it pops up ready to fill out.

Re:Yet another Java Killer lang ... dead ?

[angel'o'sphere]

Doc comments in C# are in XML ... probably you never document your code.

Reality: C# and .NET is now years ahead of Java in most aspects.
Any example?

They are also fully cross platform and open source.
They are not. No GUI or network library, for iOS, Android or Linux or mac OS.

Not going to invest my time

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't trust Red Hat due to Poettering's style of creeping development / taking from everybody else and putting everything but the kitchen sink into one program. I suspect a trap.

Re:Not going to invest my time

[Anonymous Coward]

Kind of like Microsoft's embrace-extend-extinguish, I think the Linux community has made a big mistake to give Red Hat that much control with Systemd.

Re: Not going to invest my time

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft never prevented my Debian installations from booting. Systemd has broken my Debian installation multiple times. The only reason it no longer happens is because I now use OpenBSD.

Re:Not going to invest my time

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, if he wanted to make his own operating system, go and make an operating system, don't fuck up Linux. It's the most retarded style of development I've ever seen - everything depends on each other, it's not modular, you can't pick and choose easily. In short, it sucks hard.

Re:Not going to invest my time

[Billly Gates]

Kind of like Microsoft's embrace-extend-extinguish, I think the Linux community has made a big mistake to give Red Hat that much control with Systemd.

Actually Microsoft has done an IBM like about face with open source and standards. I dare say they're even not evil anymore as they lost to Android and open standards from what I see so far.

Oracle and Redhat have done most damage. I hate Java now which I was a fan last decade. Sun ruined it and Oracle made a pact with the devil.

Who favors copyrighting whole freaking APIs? Oracle. Who has sued open source developers? Oracle. Who buys and forks things like MySQL? Oracle. Who changes standards? Redhat. Who makes things unpredictable when changing standards? Redhat.

Now who has opensourced proprietary APIs like .NET core? Microsoft. Who contributes to Freebsd and Linux for their VMs and adds provisioning for them in their cloud? Microsoft. Who has made their once proprietary development software and added Android vm and iOS support? Microsoft.

I think in 2017 we can safely say changing and extinguish standards is not Microsoft but Oracle and Redhat! I am not a fan boy nor work for MS. Just am frustrated and prefer not to live in the past anymore as Java is a could have been

Re:Not going to invest my time

[Anonymous Coward]

"Who favors copyrighting whole freaking APIs? Oracle. "

Who filed an amicus brief in support of them? Microsoft.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/02/microsoft-foresees-chaos-if-google-v-oracle-result-stands/

Sorry to burst your bubble, but they aren't on the side of the angels just yet.

CAPTCHA: absolve

Re: Not going to invest my time

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry Mr. Bubbles, they'll be an angel soon.

Re:Not going to invest my time

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. No. Microsoft does only what is good for Microsoft. Which is their fiduciary duty.

Re:Not going to invest my time

[Anonymous Coward]

> I am not a fan boy nor work for MS

Well, you should. I mean, there's already people on payroll for writing things similar to yours. It would be a shame to do it for free!

Regards

Re:Not going to invest my time

[Anonymous Coward]

They're the "angels" who are suing every Androind phone manufacturer and people using FAT32 in their products.

MS has only open sourced server-related stuff and integrated Linux stuff so you rent servers on Azure. Not because they're OSS-friendly (they're NOT!) but because it's gonna make them lots of money, and that this cloud thing is their new main revenue source.

It sure looks like they got you fooled...

Re:Not going to invest my time

[Anonymous Coward]

> Actually Microsoft has done an IBM like about face with open source and standards. I dare say they're even not evil anymore [...]

Microsoft is as evil these days as it ever was.

- Who issued developer tools which injected telemetry into binaries, phoning home *to Microsoft*?
- Who is pushing hard through lobby groups to lure schools into Tah Cloud?
- Who is earning through every sale of Android, without having contributed anything to it?

This to name but a few of their latest shenanigans. If you let me go a bit back in history...

Now that doesn't mean the others are angels: all of them biggies base their business model in being monopolists and holding the "users" (rather "wares") captive, and that's why I detest them all.

KILL THE DRAGON

[Anonymous Coward]

before he eats the sun!

Re: So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rus

[Anonymous Coward]

We have to take away the first amendment because it can be ised to support neo-nazis. It is important.

Re: So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rust

[Anonymous Coward]

It's good that Rust had fewer questions at SO than other langs. It means that Rust is a more straightforward language, it had better documentation, and it had a more helpful community. Programmers using Rust generally don't have questions, and if they do then they rarely have to go so far as SO to get an answer. That's why Rust is considered a language for professionals. It lets you get work done, instead of forcing you to ask questions all day.

Re: So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rus

[Anonymous Coward]

So has the left finally given up on repealing the 2nd amendment since the gun lobby will always block it? There's no 1st amendment lobby like there is for guns, so I guess the 1st's days are numbered.

It'll be OK

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as when it goes public they immediately and publicly condemn the Neo-Nazis. We can learn a thing or two from President Trump by doing the opposite of what he does.

Re: So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rust

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla is developing Rust because C++ just won't cut it for Mozilla's next-gen browser engine, Servo. Maybe you aren't pushing the boundaries of software development like Mozilla is, but C++ just doesn't work for truly large scale, multithreaded systems. New languages are needed, and Rust is the leader.

To recap:

[Anonymous Coward]

Another "Java-killer" language is abandoned by its sponsor.

The tech press still has a lousy record for identifying good ideas.

MS is still evil.

Nobody likes Oracle but it still keeps delivering, albeit slowly.

Re: So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rust

[guruevi]

I can see that Mozilla is getting better at writing programs... Firefox now takes up only 1.2GB of RAM.

Windows 10

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually Microsoft has done an IBM like about face with open source and standards. I dare say they're even not evil anymore as they lost to Android and open standards from what I see so far.

Have you seen Windows 10? More evil than ever, and crazy too.

Well Billy ...

[testman3]

Actually C# (which name does not sound like it is written ... unless you don't know how a sharp sign is written), was only a reaction to the story known as "RNI vs JNI battle". Sun had a native interface designed called JNI that is way too much complex. And MS decided to make something much more straightforward: RNI. This approach led to the JDirect way and was reused for the PInvoke grounds of .net was a much more easy way to call existing code. MS evey pushed a whole library name Windows Foundation Classes (WFC) which were actually there by default and would let you call all the Direct API to interract with Windows. MS tried to push Sun to accept RNI/JDirect as another way ... but Sun feared balkanization of Java in an "embrace an extend" known strategy from MS. When MS failed to convinced them, they did the more that could to prevent Java to enter in ISO and ECMA standard body (lobying thru known member or country representatives). At a given point of time, they just decided to build their own improved clone solution getting rid at the same time of the DNA, MFC & al stacks ... which could be still used in the "unmanaged" scenario but were no more "gout du jour" de facto. Actually, Java and .net only were competitors at the very beggining of .net when it was IBM stack (WAS+WSAD) vs MS ... once Eclipse was pushed in a smartmove against Sun (hence the name), game was over : full opensource & free stack on oneside ... the only option for MS was to try to follow. But remember where MS was gaining money from at that time ? Windows ! Now, the goal is to move to Azure only as a milking cow ... .net is of no use in that strategy if you compare it to Windows Linux Subsystem. with WSL, you simply run Linux (yes JVM included) directly ! Hence, they can provide direct linux container support. Since about 15years, I've seen no C# running in production outside a Windows host and nobody to MS zealot to even push the idea such an architecture has any point toward the competition. Noting, that at this time we are in a NodeJS trend, that is sucking most of the PHPs ... .net only remain because of the MS ecosystem (tools & solution like sharepoint) and the customer legacies. I don't see quite often new .net application. None of them are public sites. Only internal sites/backend ... Embrace and extend again ?

Re:Well Billy ...

[PmanAce]

There are many game engines coded in C# that don't run on windows, tons of android/iOS apps written in C# that obviously don't run on windows, tons of websites written in C# (MVC stack). You sure you know how to look for .Net applications?

Re: Well Billy ...

[MemeRot]

Xamarin uses c# for cross-platform ios/Android apps. It's a mature and popular mobile app platform. Note that neither ios or android are windows :)

You have to eat your own shit

[jgfenix]

What did Red Hat use Ceylon for? As far as I know nothing. I thought they developed it to use it in JBoss (among other things). You cant pretend people to adopt something you dont even use. At least Mozilla is using Rust in Firefox.

Re: So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rust

[pr0nbot]

Yeah - what's the point of having 16GB of RAM if applications are going to use it? I want my browser to use as little RAM as possible so that when I flick to an old tab it doesn't have it cached, it has to fetch and re-render the whole thing.

Elephant in the Room?

[gerald.edward.butler]

JetBrains is a Russian Company. How long before they are side-lined like Kapersky? What will that mean for Kotlin adoption/support? I guarantee you you will not be able to use Kotlin on any government project.

Re:Elephant in the Room?

[allcoolnameswheretak]

Comparing apples to oranges... JetBrains is a Russian Company, but Kotlin is an open source project on GitHub. Also a programming language is not as sensitive security-wise as an actual security software suite, obviously. I would also wager that JetBrains is not in the big business of government contracts anyhow. Even if any government decided to boycott them, it probably wouldn't even register on their radar.

Bah

[jimbo]

Whenever a new thing happens, small or big, "media outlets" will call it InsertBrandHere-KILLER because... clickbait.