Re:The real 90s versus outdated 00s software
on
Java Is So 90s
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
You seem to think that background threads magically create more cycles out of fairie dust.
No, I never implied that.
Background thread or not, the GC and the JIT'er take CPU cycles, (and lots of them). The only time you get a benefit from background threads is when the foreground process is blocked waiting for something else.
Exactly. In earlier implementations of Java the foreground process would be blocked waiting for JIT or GC.
All too often you're left waiting all right (for the JIT'er to finish, or for the GC's time slice to end).
Not with a good scheduler and the correct settings for the JVM. If this were true, then implementations of Java which also use JIT and GC would not be suitable for high-performance real-time control, where you must never be left waiting for anything! They are.
Just because something uses background threads doesn't mean it mysteriously improves performance.
It can't improve overall performance, but it can certainly improve things like start-up delays and event response times.
Re:Java use slipping? You have to be joking
on
Java Is So 90s
·
· Score: 1
You call that evidence of the popularity of Java? Are you kidding?
How else would you interpret it? as evidence of declining popularity of Java?
Sourceforge is an interesting example, as it shows increasing popularity of Java for open source projects... which given the usual (and partly correct) rants on/. about Java not being open is rather ironic!
I'm guessing you haven't actually browsed the projects on sourceforge recently. There's a lot of half-assed crap on there -- many are just abandoned pipe-dreams.
Of course this is true. It is true for most projects in any language. But it is irrelevant to the matter of popularity.
Re:The real 90s versus outdated 00s software
on
Java Is So 90s
·
· Score: 1
I like Java, but it's only cross platform in theory.
There may be some areas where Java is poorly cross platform, but in recent years I have not found any. If large and complex applications such as Tomcat and JBoss can be deployed as a single Java binary for any platform with a certain level of JVM or greater (from any JVM supplier) then there should be few problems if any for the general developer.
In fact, it is very common indeed for Java development to be done on Windows and then deploy on Unix/Linux. This is standard practice, and there are few reports of problems.
Re:The real 90s versus outdated 00s software
on
Java Is So 90s
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
A background thread doesn't help you the first time you access the application. It still has to JIT before the code can execute.
No, this is not true. What happens is that the code starts up as interpreted so that the program can proceed without any JIT at all. Then, in the background, the performance profiling starts and time-critical sections of the code are translated. This is the way that the Hotspot optimiser works on modern VMs, and it is very effective in reducing start-up times.
Re:The real 90s versus outdated 00s software
on
Java Is So 90s
·
· Score: 1
Wasn't the entire point of Swing to be hardware-INdependent? Not that I promote that; to the contrary, I think reinventing the wheel when there is one that is 99% round is a waste of time, and is generally the byproduct of a developer with too much ego and not enough work.
Good point. Swing was never hardware-independent, just like the particular implementation of a Java VM is not hardware-independent. The point of Swing is that your GUI code and the look-and-feel of your application can be totally hardware and platform-independent. However, this does not prevent the Swing libraries on any given platform from making full use of hardware and OS-specific software. Swing graphics can automatically make use of DirectX and OpenGL. This also does not prevent the development of a look and feel that matches the native GUI for a platform accurately. Apple have done this for Swing on MacOS/X, and Sun and Microsoft are working on this for Windows Vista.
As far as the CLR vs the Java runtime goes, Java byte code is fairly specific to java. It's possible to create non-Java languages that target the byte code, but it's not particularly practical. The CLR, on the other hand, was designed from the start with the idea of multiple language support.
I think this is something of a myth. There are over 200 languages that run on Java byte code, hugely more than run on the CLR. The CLR was not that well-designed for multiple languages - almost all the languages that run well on it are in some way adapted to be Java/C# like in their requirements (hence the significant changes from VB6 to VB.NET).
Re:The real 90s versus outdated 00s software
on
Java Is So 90s
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Yes, Java can equal C++ in terms of performance, if you ignore JIT startup lag, ignore the bloated memory footprint, and ignore the insanem performance losses when the garbage collector kicks in.
No.
There is no JIT startup lag in modern VMs - the JIT is not called at startup - it is a background thread.
There is no bloated memory footprint. Java applications (as in J2ME) can run in only a few hundred kilobytes. The simplest standard Java apps can run in only a few MB, which on machines with 256MB or greater is totally insignificant. Server-side apps can securely share the same VM, so can take up even less memory.
There are no performance losses when the garbage collector kicks in on modern VMs, as the garbage collection can run in the background. As proof of this, Java can now be used for real-time applications (such as in aeronautics) where any garbage-collection delay would be disastrous.
but don't let anyone tell you that PHP is not scalable, that is simply not true.
Depends what you use it for. For applications that need very high performance, (which requires things like isolation from the database and application-scope caching) PHP simply won't work.
Simply saying 'PHP is scalable' is too simplistic.
Re:The real 90s versus outdated 00s software
on
Java Is So 90s
·
· Score: 1
hate: verbosity!!! dogmatic approach -> there is one way to do anything
I can't understand this statement. There is a huge development community around Java, and there is almost never one way to do things. Take a look at persistence, web frameworks, GUIs etc and you will see a range of alternatives.
java's security model is limiting as is it's speed.
I don't understand this either. Java's security model is totally customisable - in stand-alone Java apps there is by default no security at all! As for speed, Java now routinely matches C++ performance in all areas - networking, numerics etc. So how are these limiting?
Re:The real 90s versus outdated 00s software
on
Java Is So 90s
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
However, it also seems to me that Java is just not keeping up. It's windowing libraries still suck. Its VM barely improves with each release.
Eh?
Java 5.0 VMs are vastly better than previous releases, with more optimisations and better garbage collection. They can routinely equal C++ in terms of performance. As for the windowing libraries, Swing is now hardware accelerated and totally indistinguishable from 'native' GUIs on MacOS/X and Windows Vista.
Java use slipping? You have to be joking
on
Java Is So 90s
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Can't predict with any degree of certainty wether it will rain or snow a few days from now but they can predict that a crack in the ground now will form an ocean in a million years. In the middle of a desert. Ok.
The weather is rapidly changing and chaotic. The movement of tectonic plates is slow and steady.
But everything to do with solar and cosmic radiation which sucks just as bad.
In practise it may have little or no effect on us, other than giving spectacular aurorae. The Earth's atmosphere is good protection against this radiation.
Some people say that the real "global warming" problem has to do with increased energy output from the sun. Good luck stoping that one.
That contributes partly to global warming, but it is nowhere near enough to explain the magnitude of warming that has been observed. The implication of this statement is that those modelling climate change are ignorant of solar energy changes and haven't taken it into account. They have.
The earth's magnetic poles are moving and weakening:
Which has nothing to do with global climate change at all.
What's wrong with believing that the "Intelligent Being" *designed* evolution? That the Being designed this whole system we live in and all the laws that govern it.
It may be valid to assume that the laws were designed, but the more we find out about evolution the more it looks like it basically happens by itself - it does not need a designer. In that case, why go to the bother of assuming one?
The article says : "Peripheral device driver support was also a hot-button issue. In particular, USB device and networking printing were mentioned as key areas that needed improvement."
For mass consumption, this is the biggest problem I have seen.
I may just have been lucky, but I have found in recent distribution that driver support (including for USB devices) has been excellent. A recent Ubuntu install was the first time I have ever installed an OS which fully detected and installed all my hardware - video, sound system, wireless network, USB etc. with no prompting from me at all. On the same machine, Windows requires additional drivers. I have always found Windows network printing to be far more problematic.
True, but neither embedded binary information nor obfuscated tags are irrelevant since we are discussing whether opening up the XML formats will actually result in an open standard which can be implemented by competitors.
Embedded binary information is irrelevant because it isn't XML. XML is merely being used as a container for the information.
creating a good and genuinely open XML format requires the will to do so...and somehow I have the feeling that the will of some parties is not that strong.
All the people who contributed to the Linux project can now assume that they have taken part in building weapons that kill real people.
No they shouldn't, as what is the alternative? To design an OS that can't handle high-performance real-time systems? The same sort of systems are used in situations which protect life, such as commercial aircraft.
Microsoft's platform has offered millions of programmers a fairly amazing platform to make software that not only works in a standard way familiar to users, but also interacts with other programs.
A fairly amazing platform for programmers? I beg to differ. Ever since I started to develop for Windows in the mid-80s I saw what a mess the platform was in so many ways. There were other GUI systems available (even for DOS) that were cleaner and simpler. There was, of course the Mac.
My company only maintains a few Novell servers and we HATE them.
We love them. They are rock solid stable and virtually maintenance-free.
WordPerfect was always terrible except when it was running solely under DOS.
Terrible how? We still have users who use WordPerfect/Corel Office under Windows and love it, as it is far more tailored to their use than MS Office.
My users (nearly 90% in our last questionnaire) love the Word interface and look-and-feel.
I couldn't let this pass! (1) Have you shown them anything else recently? (You have to bear in mind that users will always prefer the familiar) (2) What do you mean by the Word interface? The thing keeps changing every few years, often in ways that makes it different from the main Windows GUI.
My first guess would be plankton. There's many times the amount of plantlife in the oceans and other bodies of water than on all of the landmasses.
You are right. In the long term plant life on land is more or less neutral in it's effect on CO2. This is because plants either die and decay, or burn in fires. These processes release back the CO2. In the sea things are different - plankton sink when the die and CO2 gets deposited on the seafloors.
Will the enviro wackos just hurry up and get that court order against Sol to stop warming up the solar system.
The output of the sun varies, and we are going through a period of increased activity. However, there has been a lot of research into this, and the increase simply isn't enough to explain the current level of global warming.
I wish that some people would accept that climate scientists actually know what they are talking about. To assume that they have not taken variation in solar radiation into account is absurd.
Slashdot Mirror
You seem to think that background threads magically create more cycles out of fairie dust.
No, I never implied that.
Background thread or not, the GC and the JIT'er take CPU cycles, (and lots of them). The only time you get a benefit from background threads is when the foreground process is blocked waiting for something else.
Exactly. In earlier implementations of Java the foreground process would be blocked waiting for JIT or GC.
All too often you're left waiting all right (for the JIT'er to finish, or for the GC's time slice to end).
Not with a good scheduler and the correct settings for the JVM. If this were true, then implementations of Java which also use JIT and GC would not be suitable for high-performance real-time control, where you must never be left waiting for anything! They are.
Just because something uses background threads doesn't mean it mysteriously improves performance.
It can't improve overall performance, but it can certainly improve things like start-up delays and event response times.
You call that evidence of the popularity of Java? Are you kidding?
/. about Java not being open is rather ironic!
How else would you interpret it? as evidence of declining popularity of Java?
Sourceforge is an interesting example, as it shows increasing popularity of Java for open source projects... which given the usual (and partly correct) rants on
I'm guessing you haven't actually browsed the projects on sourceforge recently. There's a lot of half-assed crap on there -- many are just abandoned pipe-dreams.
Of course this is true. It is true for most projects in any language. But it is irrelevant to the matter of popularity.
I like Java, but it's only cross platform in theory.
There may be some areas where Java is poorly cross platform, but in recent years I have not found any. If large and complex applications such as Tomcat and JBoss can be deployed as a single Java binary for any platform with a certain level of JVM or greater (from any JVM supplier) then there should be few problems if any for the general developer.
In fact, it is very common indeed for Java development to be done on Windows and then deploy on Unix/Linux. This is standard practice, and there are few reports of problems.
A background thread doesn't help you the first time you access the application. It still has to JIT before the code can execute.
No, this is not true. What happens is that the code starts up as interpreted so that the program can proceed without any JIT at all. Then, in the background, the performance profiling starts and time-critical sections of the code are translated. This is the way that the Hotspot optimiser works on modern VMs, and it is very effective in reducing start-up times.
Wasn't the entire point of Swing to be hardware-INdependent? Not that I promote that; to the contrary, I think reinventing the wheel when there is one that is 99% round is a waste of time, and is generally the byproduct of a developer with too much ego and not enough work.
Good point. Swing was never hardware-independent, just like the particular implementation of a Java VM is not hardware-independent. The point of Swing is that your GUI code and the look-and-feel of your application can be totally hardware and platform-independent. However, this does not prevent the Swing libraries on any given platform from making full use of hardware and OS-specific software. Swing graphics can automatically make use of DirectX and OpenGL. This also does not prevent the development of a look and feel that matches the native GUI for a platform accurately. Apple have done this for Swing on MacOS/X, and Sun and Microsoft are working on this for Windows Vista.
As far as the CLR vs the Java runtime goes, Java byte code is fairly specific to java. It's possible to create non-Java languages that target the byte code, but it's not particularly practical. The CLR, on the other hand, was designed from the start with the idea of multiple language support.
I think this is something of a myth. There are over 200 languages that run on Java byte code, hugely more than run on the CLR. The CLR was not that well-designed for multiple languages - almost all the languages that run well on it are in some way adapted to be Java/C# like in their requirements (hence the significant changes from VB6 to VB.NET).
Yes, Java can equal C++ in terms of performance, if you ignore JIT startup lag, ignore the bloated memory footprint, and ignore the insanem performance losses when the garbage collector kicks in.
No.
There is no JIT startup lag in modern VMs - the JIT is not called at startup - it is a background thread.
There is no bloated memory footprint. Java applications (as in J2ME) can run in only a few hundred kilobytes. The simplest standard Java apps can run in only a few MB, which on machines with 256MB or greater is totally insignificant. Server-side apps can securely share the same VM, so can take up even less memory.
There are no performance losses when the garbage collector kicks in on modern VMs, as the garbage collection can run in the background. As proof of this, Java can now be used for real-time applications (such as in aeronautics) where any garbage-collection delay would be disastrous.
Other than that, you are correct.
but don't let anyone tell you that PHP is not scalable, that is simply not true.
Depends what you use it for. For applications that need very high performance, (which requires things like isolation from the database and application-scope caching) PHP simply won't work.
Simply saying 'PHP is scalable' is too simplistic.
hate:
verbosity!!!
dogmatic approach -> there is one way to do anything
I can't understand this statement. There is a huge development community around Java, and there is almost never one way to do things. Take a look at persistence, web frameworks, GUIs etc and you will see a range of alternatives.
java's security model is limiting as is it's speed.
I don't understand this either. Java's security model is totally customisable - in stand-alone Java apps there is by default no security at all! As for speed, Java now routinely matches C++ performance in all areas - networking, numerics etc. So how are these limiting?
However, it also seems to me that Java is just not keeping up. It's windowing libraries still suck. Its VM barely improves with each release.
Eh?
Java 5.0 VMs are vastly better than previous releases, with more optimisations and better garbage collection. They can routinely equal C++ in terms of performance. As for the windowing libraries, Swing is now hardware accelerated and totally indistinguishable from 'native' GUIs on MacOS/X and Windows Vista.
I can't take this seriously after Java has recently taken over from C++ as the most popular language on sourceforge:
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=12778
Java is a popular and versatile language. Software development involves far more than the very restricted aspects covered by LAMP.
Can't predict with any degree of certainty wether it will rain or snow a few days from now but they can predict that a crack in the ground now will form an ocean in a million years. In the middle of a desert. Ok.
The weather is rapidly changing and chaotic. The movement of tectonic plates is slow and steady.
But everything to do with solar and cosmic radiation which sucks just as bad.
In practise it may have little or no effect on us, other than giving spectacular aurorae. The Earth's atmosphere is good protection against this radiation.
Some people say that the real "global warming" problem has to do with increased energy output from the sun. Good luck stoping that one.
That contributes partly to global warming, but it is nowhere near enough to explain the magnitude of warming that has been observed. The implication of this statement is that those modelling climate change are ignorant of solar energy changes and haven't taken it into account. They have.
The earth's magnetic poles are moving and weakening:
Which has nothing to do with global climate change at all.
What's wrong with believing that the "Intelligent Being" *designed* evolution? That the Being designed this whole system we live in and all the laws that govern it.
It may be valid to assume that the laws were designed, but the more we find out about evolution the more it looks like it basically happens by itself - it does not need a designer. In that case, why go to the bother of assuming one?
The article says : "Peripheral device driver support was also a hot-button issue. In particular, USB device and networking printing were mentioned as key areas that needed improvement."
For mass consumption, this is the biggest problem I have seen.
I may just have been lucky, but I have found in recent distribution that driver support (including for USB devices) has been excellent. A recent Ubuntu install was the first time I have ever installed an OS which fully detected and installed all my hardware - video, sound system, wireless network, USB etc. with no prompting from me at all. On the same machine, Windows requires additional drivers. I have always found Windows network printing to be far more problematic.
Actually, it's just handling a simulation. You really should read the fucking article. Hell, just skim it, at least.
Whether or not it is a simulation is irrelevant. That simulation is still part of the process of building and testing weapons.
True, but neither embedded binary information nor obfuscated tags are irrelevant since we are discussing whether opening up the XML formats will actually result in an open standard which can be implemented by competitors.
Embedded binary information is irrelevant because it isn't XML. XML is merely being used as a container for the information.
creating a good and genuinely open XML format requires the will to do so...and somehow I have the feeling that the will of some parties is not that strong.
This could well be the case.
All the people who contributed to the Linux project can now assume that they have taken part in building weapons that kill real people.
No they shouldn't, as what is the alternative? To design an OS that can't handle high-performance real-time systems? The same sort of systems are used in situations which protect life, such as commercial aircraft.
The GPL is for
Oh! Did you have to bring the way office looks into this?
I didn't. You are responding to the wrong post.
XML is just a language, you can make the documents as incomprehensible as you want....
True, but you gave a bad example, as you were illustrating how embedded binary information can look incomprehensible, which is irrelevant.
XML can be made difficult to read through the use of meaningless tag names or attributes.
The point of XML is that it can be made easily human readable (and good XML should be) - in fact this was one of the original design considerations.
Microsoft's platform has offered millions of programmers a fairly amazing platform to make software that not only works in a standard way familiar to users, but also interacts with other programs.
A fairly amazing platform for programmers? I beg to differ. Ever since I started to develop for Windows in the mid-80s I saw what a mess the platform was in so many ways. There were other GUI systems available (even for DOS) that were cleaner and simpler. There was, of course the Mac.
My company only maintains a few Novell servers and we HATE them.
We love them. They are rock solid stable and virtually maintenance-free.
WordPerfect was always terrible except when it was running solely under DOS.
Terrible how? We still have users who use WordPerfect/Corel Office under Windows and love it, as it is far more tailored to their use than MS Office.
My users (nearly 90% in our last questionnaire) love the Word interface and look-and-feel.
I couldn't let this pass! (1) Have you shown them anything else recently? (You have to bear in mind that users will always prefer the familiar) (2) What do you mean by the Word interface? The thing keeps changing every few years, often in ways that makes it different from the main Windows GUI.
My first guess would be plankton. There's many times the amount of plantlife in the oceans and other bodies of water than on all of the landmasses.
You are right. In the long term plant life on land is more or less neutral in it's effect on CO2. This is because plants either die and decay, or burn in fires. These processes release back the CO2. In the sea things are different - plankton sink when the die and CO2 gets deposited on the seafloors.
Will the enviro wackos just hurry up and get that court order against Sol to stop warming up the solar system.
The output of the sun varies, and we are going through a period of increased activity. However, there has been a lot of research into this, and the increase simply isn't enough to explain the current level of global warming.
I wish that some people would accept that climate scientists actually know what they are talking about. To assume that they have not taken variation in solar radiation into account is absurd.
That's by far long enough for us to go extinct.
While global warming could well cause all sorts of serious problems, it is extremely unlikely that it is going to make us extinct.