Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by lxgr 807 days ago
Let's please not justify bad/bloaty plugin/extension runtimes with "at least it's not as bad as Electron".

A framework producing a Hello World application, even if it has a GUI, with a double- or triple-digit size in MB and memory consumption on the same order, is doing something very wrong.
2 comments
kaba0 806 days ago
With all due respect, that’s just a dumb conclusion. Optimizing for hello world is dumb - if the primary use case of a given framework is larger scale, than it is more than right with such a size.
link
davidalayachew 805 days ago
Well, you are partially correct that the tool in question is optimized for larger projects. But the fact that there isn't an option (in the standard lib) for smaller projects is absolutely a problem. I think that is their point.
link
davidalayachew 806 days ago
The example in question is very much a "include-more-than-you-need-by-default" problem. So, bloat.

Java lets you include only the parts of the JDK that you need for your app. These parts are called modules.

Unfortunately, all modules MUST include the base module (java.base), which is ~22MB. And if you add a GUI (java.desktop), that's another ~13MB. And since the linked example uses Java FX, there is yet another layer on top of that.

Java is doing a lot of work to bring that number down by a lot. More to come.

link
obdev 805 days ago
May I ask how do you solve the problem that almost none of the 3rd party libraries in Java ecosystem use modules?

Last time I checked, jlink tool refused to make use of those "automatic module" dependencies when creating an image.

link
davidalayachew 805 days ago
That information is several years out of date. At best, the build tools in the ecosystem don't do a great job of supporting modules, but that's about it.

And your comment about `jlink` MIGHT be true if your application is nor modular/ does not use modules with a well-formed `module-info.java`. I haven't tried an automatic module in a long time. If your application is modular, everything happens as expected. I do this for all the builds for all of my projects. Last build from last night confirms that it still works, and works well.

link