On Tuesday, May 15, 2012 12:03:09 AM UTC+2, clay wrote:
>
> You created a one line thread linking the Xamarin blog post titled, 
> "Android Ported to C#". 90% of that is obnoxious, flame bait, flame war 
> stuff. First, Android is mostly C code. They just ported the Java parts to 
> C#.
>

They cross-compiled over a million lines of code and thereby in effect 
replaced the core DNA of Android (Dalvik). Most everything you do on 
Android, involves going through Dalvik. You can't make calls, raise events, 
talk to the web etc. from the NDK.
 

> Sure, if a company has a heavy committment to C# and wants to port to 
> iPhone/Android or keep some common C# code across all 
> iPhone/Android/Windows Phone (although almost anything that touches an API 
> will still require different code branches), they make a practical product. 
> But their posts are beyond obnoxious, their benchmarks are outrageous, and 
> they have a militant fan base that amplifies that flame war mindset.
>

Don't throw rocks when you live in a glass house. Do they have an agenda to 
push? Absolutely. However, calling people who like a revamped Java (which 
is all C# really is when you get to the bottom of it) for militant fans is 
pushing it. I've been writing in Java almost since it's inception. The lack 
of harmony, standardization and features has become abundantly clear over 
the last ½ decade where a blind commitment to backwards compatibility in 
particular, has manifested itself as a supertanker, without a captain, 
moving only on inertia. Eventually all the kinetic energy will have been 
depleted and I see little evidence of Oracle being able to boost it - only 
a pragmatic Google has launched a tug-boat, which oddly the lawyers up in 
front are trying to cut the cables to.
 

> Was Scala or Kotlin or Gradle or Hadoop or IntelliJ created out of 
> frustration? To some extent every great technology could arguably have come 
> from frustration, but I don't see any reason to single out innovations in 
> the JVM space in this regard.
>

More or less yes, and I think it's pretty telling that in the last half a 
decade alternative languages on the JVM went from being a silly 
theoretical exercise to a necessity. When following mailing lists for these 
alternative languages, it's all to clear how people are trying 
to shoehorn stuff into the JVM which is was not meant to support. This is 
particular evident within the dynamic language camp, which is seeking the 
likes of a DLR. Also, consider how many luminaries have left the official 
JDK space out of the same frustration... Neal Gafter comes to mind as one 
of the most prominent, with his "Thoughts about the future of the Java 
Programming Language" blog has remained unchanged since 2010.

And I'd agree that most of the JVM ecosystem innovtion has not been at the 
> official JVM level. In some ways that is a positive. I'm hoping that the 
> official JVM picks up the pace. I'm hoping that that things like Jigsaw 
> deliver genuine innovation and that Java moves to an app-specific library 
> rather than a system-level product (which Mono already does).
>

That's also my hope. If I did not care about Java at all, I would not hang 
out on this forum. It's just that... after so much waiting for lambdas, a 
decent calendar API etc. one starts to look elsewhere - to where a core 
technology is being pushed by engineers from the bottom up. While it's true 
we have Scala, Fantom, Kotlin, Ceylon etc. occupying this space, and I can 
pick and choose for our own hobby projects, that does not fare well with a 
small to medium corporation seeking standard technology. This is where .NET 
excels and will continue to grow marked share at the expense of Java. Which 
is a shame, we need competition in order to avoid growing stuck in one 
place.

Google should've bought Oracle, submittet a cleaned up rebooted Java and 
the JVM as an open standard and things could've looked much more 
interesting.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Java 
Posse" group.
To view this discussion on the web visit 
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/javaposse/-/QDU0awMSgIgJ.
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.

Reply via email to