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Comment by tnr23 | Hacker News Reader

already porting everything away from Java

After almost 20 years, I've too moved away from Java for personal projects years ago. But I'm doing this just because Java has become boring, and I've always preferred natively compiled languages anyway. I can't see anything wrong with how Oracle has handled this. OpenJDK is the reference implementation, and is licensed under the GPL with classpath exception. What else is Oracle supposed to do?

Relevant - http://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology

To what if don’t mind asking?

I'm moving to Go, as much as I dislike the language. Java is bulky. I need to buy servers from Linode, but on a budget. Because Java 11 is not supported on the alpine docker, the apps take up 512 MB even with stack set to 128k and heap at 64m. I can do the same systems in Go for a fraction of the sitting still memory consumption. I also get better performance/MB of RAM.

Add to this that Spring is becoming a sprawling behemoth with massively outdated tutorials lurking in the top results of Google. At this point I wanted something that was easy, GC'ed, with good tooling. That's Go. DLang looked promising, but it's not easy. It also suffers from the out-of-date tutorials and books issue (my D book still says I have to pick between Pheobos and Tango collections). C++ seemed like overkill. Go provides a simple binary with a simple runtime with a simple RAM pattern.

I do like Java. I know it well. I'm literally typing this with a Java Ring on (https://www.ebay.com/itm/JAVA-RING-RARE-Sun-Microsystems-JAV...). Sadly, the JVM at this point doesn't fit my needs. Go is pretty terrible in some of aspects, errors and the way the community decides to carve files up, and the annoying way functions on structures float freely within a file, but I couldn't find another language that compiled to a binary, was simple, and had good library support for threading (so OCAMLs out)and RabbitMQ.

I suppose you ruled out Rust because of the lack of simplicity?

The choice for between them is like asking, "Do I start my project today or do I learn Rust and start it in 3-6 weeks?"

If you don't already know Rust I'd never recommend it for a project from a "your requirements meet its strengths" perspective. Python or Go you can pick up as you go pretty easily. Even Java can annoying if you're new just getting set up with Maven and Intellij.

Rust is on my "Things I'm Excited to Sit Down and Learn" list but it's not something you'd pick up in 2 days. Learning Rust is a project unto itself.

What about .NET Core?

Three things. Core, to my knowledge doesn't compile. It has an option to bundle the VM, but I've never played with it much. Two, I solely run Linux. My understanding is that Linux is still the redheaded step child of MS. Finally, I don't like MS. This is a bias that is waning with my use of VSCode. I don't want to spend the money on the licenses. Also, I got bit by a compiler error in VB.net where branches of IFs were ignored. You'd enter the first block (if true), then fall into the second (else). All that combined soured me on MS.

There's a lot of work being done on making Java more container friendly. E.g., Project Portola [1] (Java on Alpine Linux), jlink and modules, and Valhalla would likely reduce memory consumption. You can even compile some Java apps AOT these days with native-image. Plus, there are plenty of lightweight alternatives to Spring.

[1]: https://openjdk.java.net/projects/portola/

any GOOD reason why porting existing stuff that works ?

Doubt it honestly. Seems to me like the main group of people up in arms about it are those who never did serious Java development anyways.

Comments on HN vary very widely in quality, but articles about Java or the JDK currently seem to attract particularly passionate low-quality comments. Does it somehow tickle the same neurons that Microsoft did back in the days of Micro$haft Winblowz 95?

If you think Java has it bad, I invite you to read every thread about C++.

PHP projects also get a lot of hate from people that have no idea about PHP, they just learned that some noobs wrote bad code with it, it is not a pretty or cool language but only bad developers would port existing project from PHP just because the language is not cool.

Even if the hate is poor at least C++ gets quasi-technical hate. 90% of low effort complaints on HN are about Oracle v Google. I'd take morning and groaning about GC or boring verbosity language over that in a heart beat.

Because Java is an ecosystem that is dying, and the sooner you move away from it the less pain you will have in the long term.

So if you have years of developers hours n a Java project you throw it away and start over with cool new tech that may also be not cool when your port is done?

As long as the current code works, you can add new features and fixes to it, there is no reason to change. For new projects you should use teh best tool for the job.

No, not necessarily the latest “cool tech”, just something other than Java. Just because you’ve spent a lot of money and time on the Java platform doesn’t mean continuing to throw resources at it isn’t a example of the sunk cost fallacy at work.

Sunk Cost Fallacy? Sounds like the fallacy fallacy! [0][1]. Joking aside, that's incredibly misapplied.

More seriously, I'm curious where you work or what parts of the industry you're privy to. It's everywhere from where I'm standing. Tons of companies are built on millions of jvms. LinkedIn, Google, Twitter, Amazon, etc. I know personally but I'm sure every third other tech company in the valley at least too.

[0]: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Fallacy_fallacy [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy

I'll take your fallacy fallacy and raise you a fallacy fallacy fallacy.

Just to remind you, there was an entire industry built around Flash and Silverlight too. The people responding to me seem to think I'm advocating a quick rewrite (whatever that means), but all I'm saying is that from where I stand Java will not last in the long term without serious changes within Oracle. It would be better to have a transition plan now than no transition plan on a dying platform.

I was sort of expecting to be flamed, but I can assure you I'm not interested in revealing to flamers where I work...

Curious, what change within Oracle do you want to see?

Java is still free, so it can't be that.

So your boss comes to you and says that the users want some new feature X, you will say that it will take your 3 years since you need to rewrite everything in Rust or Go and I would say I can do it by using library or CLI app X and integrating in our project, it could take a few days.

What do you think will happen? Do you think that a sane boss will approve you wasting resources to port it to cool tech X instead of fixing the current needs. The only projects that have no choice and must do a porting are Flash based projects because soon will be probably impossible to get regular users to have Flash in a browser.

That's kind of my point really. When, as I believe is going to happen, Java inevitably becomes unusable, unmaintainable or costly to license (we are talking about Oracle here) then a new project to replace the existing system will inevitably be commissioned.

All I am saying is that good management is to look at the risks of sticking with Java and find a migration path earlier, because the longer you wait the more expensive it becomes to move away. And one day you will find you have no choice, and then it will be very expensive.

It is possible to maintain and even add essential features to a legacy system whilst migrating to a new system. Happens all the time.

The probloem is that you do not understand Java ecosystem and you are spreading FUD,

First of all you have OpenJDK that is part of Debian, everyone knows that Debian is very strict about licensing so if it is part of Debian there will be nothing that will make Java retroactively unusable without a paid license.

I never mentioned licensing.

Then what is your point, what is the reason to port? Everyone can keep running the existing Java projects with the current JVM and the current libraries for a long time.

I am not sure what your work experience is but I worked in small companies that use boring old tech, maybe it would be cool to use some cool language or cool framework but then you still get left behind when the language has a new incompatible version or the frameworks have a new version, the purpose is to keep the project working for the users, we not fix what is not broken.

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