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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."

17 of 97 comments (clear)

  1. Yet another Java Killer lang ... dead ? by testman3 · · Score: 2

    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 ...

    1. Re:Yet another Java Killer lang ... dead ? by Billly+Gates · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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?

    2. Re: Yet another Java Killer lang ... dead ? by Billly+Gates · · Score: 2

      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.

    3. Re:Yet another Java Killer lang ... dead ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      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.

    4. Re:Yet another Java Killer lang ... dead ? by Billly+Gates · · Score: 2

      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.

    5. Re: Yet another Java Killer lang ... dead ? by MemeRot · · Score: 2

      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.

  2. Re:So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rust? by OrangeTide · · Score: 2

    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.

    --
    “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
  3. Re:Not going to invest my time by Billly+Gates · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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

  4. Re:So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rust? by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 2

    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.

    --
    Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  5. Re:So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rust? by guruevi · · Score: 2

    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.

    --
    Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
  6. Re:So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rust? by DuckDodgers · · Score: 2

    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.

  7. Re:Not going to invest my time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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...

  8. Re:So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rust? by OrangeTide · · Score: 2

    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?

    --
    “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
  9. Re: So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rust by guruevi · · Score: 2

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

    --
    Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
  10. Re:So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rust? by DMFNR · · Score: 2

    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

  11. Re:So it's dead? Lost out to Go, Swift & Rust? by allcoolnameswheretak · · Score: 2

    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.

  12. You have to eat your own shit by jgfenix · · Score: 2

    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.