On 2 June 2011 13:04, phil swenson <[email protected]> wrote: > I think that for another language to seriously challenge Java on the > JVM it would need the following: > > - killer application (equivalent to Ruby on Rails for example) >
Akka > - good IDE support > IntelliJ is absolutely production ready, beta releases of Eclipse support are catching up rapidly > - have a much improved syntax/feature set, but not overly complex > Such as adding closures, adding type inference, allowing symbolic method names and adding an infix method call notation, dropping the restriction that interfaces can't contain concrete methods, and removing checked exceptions? > - be somewhat similar to Java - (not a crazy different syntax like Closure) > Okay, this one is more subjective. Scala is certainly different from Java (but not crazily so, like Clojure is). It's hard to imagine how those differences could be reduced without hobbling the language though. > - major backer > Typesafe, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, FourSquare, Amazon > - statically typed > Yes. > - similar performance to Java > Slower in some cases, faster in others > - easy integration with existing java libraries. > It was a core design goal > Groovy is the closest to this.... VMWare now owns groovy development > (major backer). Gradle and Grails are the "killer applications". IDE > support is quite good. It is fairly similar to Java and has excellent > Java integration. > > But critically, it lacks static typing and performance. > > Sadly, no other alternative comes close IMO. So we seem to be stuck > with java the language for the foreseeable future. > > I'm hoping to ask James Strachan (creator of Groovy) some of his opinions on this at Scala Exchange 2011*, where he's giving the day 2 keynote speech about Scalatra (a Scala template engine that he created, the same one as mentioned in podcast #353) * http://skillsmatter.com/event/scala/scala-exchange-2011 My personal feeling is that a key driver for any new language is the ability to cope with some problem that's becoming increasingly prevalent, and which can't easily be solved in the language being replaced. With C++ -> Java, the old problems were modular compilation (a small change could force a 2 hour recompile), and memory management. Java's class files, virtual machine, and garbage collection were a breath of fresh air. The current problem it that Moores law now has an expanding waistline, it's going outwards into more cores and not upwards into clock speeds, so we're looking to double core counts every 18 months. My laptop already has 4 cores. That only needs to double 5 times to hit 1000 cores, 5 * 1.5 years = 7.5 years, so we're looking at well under a decade here, and that's assuming the manufactures don't reduce core size and multiply them even faster for the power savings that brings. You can expect server class hardware to move even faster. So add to the list of requirements: - Must be well suited to handle concurrency on a large (100+ core) scale? Because that's where the next big driver will be for people to shift away from Java, and there are currently only two sufficiently mature languages on the JVM that can deal with this: Scala and Clojure. > > On Thu, Jun 2, 2011 at 4:14 AM, Kirk <[email protected]> wrote: > > Well, I remember a few years ago when this guy named Bruce Tate wrote > this > > interesting little book called "Beyond Java". It sparked a debate in TSS > > that was (and most likely is) the single most responded to post. The > short > > message was; Java got us to a place that we couldn't have gotten to any > > other way and now that we're here, how do we go even farther. It is a > > question that we never will and never should stop asking. So far the > answer > > has been, well, lets look at what the other guys are doing and if it > makes > > sense drag it back into Java. Eventually, that tactic will fall over on > it's > > self and then we'll really have to answer the question, what is beyond > Java. > > Regards, > > Kirk > > On Jun 2, 2011, at 11:12 AM, Moandji Ezana wrote: > > > > 2011/6/2 Cédric Beust ♔ <[email protected]> > >> > >> I am the first one surprised by this fact, to be honest, I just can't > >> believe how resilient Java is despite its old age. > > > > Are you surprised because you'd expected it to be replaced by something > > better or by something newer? Of the other top 20 languages in the Tiobe > > Index (FWIW), only C# is significantly newer than Java. So old age > doesn't > > seem to negatively impact popularity. Even how much language quality > > influences popularity is a massive (and oft-repeated) debate. > > So how is Java's resilience surprising? > > Moandji > > -- > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > > "The Java Posse" group. > > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > > [email protected]. > > For more options, visit this group at > > http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en. > > > > -- > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > > "The Java Posse" group. > > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > > [email protected]. > > For more options, visit this group at > > http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en. > > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "The Java Posse" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en. > > -- Kevin Wright gtalk / msn : [email protected] <[email protected]>mail: [email protected] vibe / skype: kev.lee.wright quora: http://www.quora.com/Kevin-Wright twitter: @thecoda "My point today is that, if we wish to count lines of code, we should not regard them as "lines produced" but as "lines spent": the current conventional wisdom is so foolish as to book that count on the wrong side of the ledger" ~ Dijkstra -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
