[hashrate]

Interesting read.

I think the whole idea of "We need to replace Java with [Insert Language]" is much more complicated topic than just saying "X is free , Java is owned by Oracle".

Even is this is true , Java is by far one of the most performant programming language that exist on earth.

People just don't realize the hundreds of millions of dollars that went into the JVM and the JDK.

Even if they are great alternatives like Go or .NET , they either come with huge limitations in performance or their ecosystem.

Per say , finding JVM developers isn't that hard, regardless of the geography. However , finding Go developers outside of the Bay Area ? Good luck with that.

The issue with Patent on the JVM is well know and there is very little to nothing that we can do about it.

[acdha]

Java is better than it used to be but you’re significantly overselling performance as a competitive advantage. Many other languages have no trouble producing code which is as fast or faster, and Java is still shaking the culture of excessive complexity which has squandered much of the hard work in the JIT.

The ecosystem is a much better argument since it’s certainly massive, as is finding developers, although quality varies wildly in both cases.

[village-idiot]

More than that, speed is vastly overrated in a lot of cases.

[acdha]

True, although that has a way of becoming important after awhile. That’s why I prefer to focus on complexity and clarity as it’s much harder to make convoluted code when it becomes important.

[village-idiot]

It’s nit picking, but I think a more correct statement would be “lots of small performance mistakes add up over time”. It’s very rare that I see a project needing a new language for performance reasons, but I see projects that need refactoring for performance all the time.

[repolfx]

The Google / Oracle case didn't end up being about patents because they were all invalidated or deemed not to apply, iirc.

It ended up being about copyrights and whether or not you can copyright APIs.

It's unfortunate that Oracle chose to break the long-standing convention on this topic, however, it's not entirely surprising that eventually someone did. It's not at all clear why APIs should not be copyrightable, given the intent and wording of copyright laws and treaties - it's merely a convenient collective belief the software industry has had. It's now being tested in court and apparently splitting judges both ways.

I would also note that you always take such risks when building on platforms. The web is basically driven by Google these days, with other browser vendors either struggling to keep up or just giving up entirely (see, Safari) creating a new "works best in IE" era. And Google's stewardship of the web is hardly uncontroversial. Lots of obvious, major technical problems go unresolved for years or decades. AMP seems to be upsetting a lot of people. And of course there's not much stability: the web guys don't seem able to pick a direction and stick with it (e.g. web components/shadow dom stuff).