[chrisseaton]

It's a feature, not a bug.

Java is stable, and evolves with a huge amount of thought (they employ theorists to model the impact of changes to the Java language even.)

The benefit of this is a long-term platform, and an excellent implementation. Due to this Java has become the platform where the majority VM research is done, which means Java has many excellent state-of-the-art garbage collectors and a JIT a level beyond that of C#.

[maxlybbert]

Java has a long history of saying “we don’t support that feature because it’s d-a-a-a-angerous.” Personally, I think that’s an insult to Java programmers, but Java programmers don’t seem to take it the same way. They’re happy that somebody at Sun or Oracle is able to keep all the sharp corners away from them.

[saagarjha]

You know, coming from Java and seeing new languages like Go say the same thing except for features that Java had essentially forever is just maddening.

[rini17]

So...if somebody hands you responsibility for a codebase, you're happier when the language has sharp corners and bleeding edge scars?

[maxlybbert]

I’m annoyed that things aren’t “complex,” “brittle,” “difficult,” etc.; they’re just “dangerous.” They’ll draw blood through the computer screen. I know programmers who have actual fear of pointer arithmetic even though they have no idea what it is.

To be fair, Java has a lot to recommend it. For one, there are, of course, an incredible number of packages available to build off of. But I find it incredible that the language that replaced finalizers with phantom references still says pointers are too dangerous for programmers.

[logicchains]

>which means Java has many excellent state-of-the-art garbage collectors and a JIT a level beyond that of C#.

Unfortunately this isn't enough to make up for the latency hit from not being able to directly stack allocate things like C# allows (especially with its recent addition of Span<T>).

[chrisseaton]

> make up for the latency hit from not being able to directly stack allocate things

Java does better than direct stack allocation - it does automatic scalar replacement instead.

[logicchains]

Can automatic scalar replacement turn my ArrayList<Pair<Long, Double>> into the equivalent of std::array<std::pair<int64_t, double>, N> (or Span<Tuple<long, double>>)?

[chrisseaton]

It doesn't turn it into the equivalent of another data structure, and it doesn't allocate it on the stack, that's why it's better. It turns each value in the collection into a dataflow edge which then goes into a register, or the stack, or anywhere.

[inamiyar]

This seems really interesting, do you have any sources I can look into for more information along these lines?

[gpderetta]

so does any decent compiler. But to do that in java you first have to prove it is safe, which is hard.

[higerordermap]

Java has state of the art garbage collectors because java programs are state of the art garbage generators.

JVM is not the best in all areas.