Reality check: Java 8 finally catches a multi-core break Two years later than planned, Oracle has made Java ready for a multi-core processor world. The database giant has announced general availability of Java 8, calling it a “major new release”. Java 8 is important because it’s the base spec for Java Enterprise Edition, as well as feeding the free and open-source implementation of …
Get real!
Peter Van Der Linden was saying Java's performance was miles better back in 1999! FFS! It fair screams along these days and is easily the match of almost any compiled language. Granted it was shit when we were using for applets ( remember coding those anyone? ) back on basic Pentium boxes around '96.
Can't see that Google would base their entire mobile O/S on a poorly performing language where there are limited resources and almost every CPU cycle counts!
Any decent (not over engineered!) java program will run at about 1 and a half times the speed of the equivalent C++ program.
The difference is the Java will be debugged and in production while the C++ programmer is still trying to sort out his memory leak in between arguing with his colleagues over what Soustrup really meant to say in chapter 13.
"Java's performance is abyssmal, as is it's scalability".
You see, that's a drawback of posting as AC. No one has any idea where you come from, or what your motives are. Your statement is factually untrue, yet it is couched in very decided and forceful language. Why are you so keen to talk Java down? Are you an M$ shill, or just someone who tried Java without sufficient study and preparation?
Without any of that information, we are (alas) likely to draw the worst conclusions.
By the way, there is only one "s" in "abysmal". And Lynne Truss will be calling on you to explain the proper use of apostrophes. I often wonder about the implications for a person's ability to design and write complex code, when they can't even manage the relatively simple task of writing plain English.
"Without any of that information, we are (alas) likely to draw the worst conclusions."
Specious bollocks. You're just guaranteed to use it as an excuse to dismiss anything you don't like.
"By the way, there is only one "s" in "abysmal". And Lynne Truss will be calling on you to explain the proper use of apostrophes. I often wonder about the implications for a person's ability to design and write complex code, when they can't even manage the relatively simple task of writing plain English."
I wonder too, but realise using it as an attempt to discredit someone is even more feeble than the AC bullshit you're pulling.
Different AC, but then you won't want to believe that, will you?
"It's daft to call someone a MS shill for talking down Java, when the exact same ignorant arguments can be levelled at .NET (slow, interpreted, etc)".
Your remarks are not logical. The AC whom I criticized had attacked Java, not .NET. The fact that .NET is, arguably, open to a similar attack has nothing to with it.
If I were to criticize you for being illogical, my comments would not be proved invalid if someone were to show that I, too, was sometimes illogical.
It is illogical to attack a product which competes against your own with arguments which can equally well be levelled at your product by the type of uneducated person who just hears something on the web and parrots it. It increases 'awareness' of criticisms generally. It's not in MS' interest to have people talking about "how interpreted languages are slow".
> Are you an M$ shill
That's against the House Rules, be careful.
Also logically unlikely. MS have a lot invested in JIT-based technology and don't especially pimp their C++ compiler (except, bizarrely, where it's Managed C++ and therefore using JIT anyway).
The "lolz me so superior me no use M$" thing may give you an erection but it's not helping your rational thought much.
NASDAQ's largest stock exchange system called INET, and their largest derivative system called Genium INET are both completely or partly written in Java. Now I am talking about the crucial matching engine which handles all incoming orders. The matching engine needs to be extremely fast, as there are lot of High Frequency Traders capitalizing on speed. The worlds fastest and largest stock exchange systems, are written in Java or C++. NASDAQ claim to have the fastest exchange system in the world, and with greatest capacity with latency downwards 100 microseconds or faster, and throughput of millions of orders. As both systems are written in Java, the secret sauce is to avoid trigger the garbage collector. This is done by preallocating all objects and reuse them, so they will never be garbage collected. With garbage collection out of the way, you can reach extreme performance, suitable to the fastest and largest systems in the world, juggling billions of USD every minute.
So, no, Java is not slow. Exchanges rely on speed, that is how they attract customers. Slow exchanges are not interesting for HFT firms. If the exchanges could rewrite their systems from Java to C++ for faster performance, they would. But they dont. And also, the fastest HFT firms are sometimes using Java in their most critical parts. Others use C++.
Luckily Java has had multi-threaded development capability since day 1, and this isn't the first time it has been made easier to use - the Java Concurrent frameworks are now very old, for example.
What the lambda expressions actually do is allow the programmer to express, concisely (a big problem with Java, previously you would have had a bulky inner class implementing a functional interface) a more functional model of programming that so happens to also make it easily multi-threaded.
Stop right there.
C# does have anonymous functions but those are a different beast (although you can invoke them with lamdas). Lamdas provide support for anonymous delegation.
No, lamdas do not provide automatic multithreading (and I would bet good money that they won't in Java either) but the syntax does make it simple to delegate to another thread.
Fewer!
Stylistically, that would be my preference as well, albeit only due to familiarity; but insisting on the distinction is suspect pedantry. Even prescriptivists have a hard time justifying this particular shibboleth. "Less" applied to countable objects has a long pedigree, and though there is considerable and apparently growing affection for preferring "fewer" for discrete quantities, the former usage is still well-represented. The AUE FAQ has more.
In any case, by far the better change would be to eliminate the redundant and awkward phrase "lines of". Better yet, rephrase the entire clause, and quite possibly the entire sentence it comes from.
Nobody said it didn't support threads. But you had to create and run the threads yourself, make sure they don't fight over the same data dangerously, etc... this is the traditional model of multi-threading very similar to using threading in MFC/Win32. More modern approaches mean parallel logic can be automatically split off to threads without you having to do it, in a similar idea to how Java doesn't make you have to manage memory, but does it for you.
As a non-English speaker I'd welcome it if someone could point me at a plausible differentiator between "use" and "utilize". As far as I'm concerned, it's just used/utilised (I like UK English, hence "s") to make things sound more managerial in places where "use" would do just as well.
Not a grammar nazi, just genuinely curious. I have as yet not been able to figure this one out..
Sorry, "administrate" is simply WRONG. Administrators *administer* things, IT system or not.
Anyone who uses it looks ignorant as hell, frankly.
As to "utilise", yup, 9 times out of 10, it's just management-wank-speak. I don't actually think I've seen it used accurately in an IT brief.
"Utilise" can also mean that you use something for a purpose it's not specifically designed for - you can use a screwdriver to turn a screw, or you can utilise a kitchen knife. Same concept as the "making useful" meaning described above.
'and why "administrate" over "administer" ?'
"Administrate" is a verbal outrage, for which there is no excuse. Although some people tend to write and speak badly, we should never accept it passively. Language is everyone's common possession, and when badly used it smothers and hinders everything we do together.
The mechanism by which such words arise is psychologically simple enough. From "administer" we produce the noun "administration". Then someone ignorant hears that, and produces the back-formation "administrate". Similarly, people have commented on things for centuries. Then a new job appeared: commenting on sports events. Because "commenter" sounds a bit clumsy, these people were called "commentators". And that led to the erroneous back-formation "commentate".
I am not a grammar nazi or an English teacher, but have been told I write well. So as a practical matter, I prefer "use" to talk about a transitional relationship - i.e., "I used the shovel for 5 minutes to dig a hole." I would prefer "utilise" to say that something is more permanently incorporated in a function, i.e., "this new car utilises a huge V8 to get 600hp and fantastic acceleration". It is clear that the car is going to have that V8 under the hood for quite some time. Or, you could more topically say that "this class utilises this subclass to provide transparent multi-threading". Unless you re-write the class, it will always have that utilisation.
Not saying that in practical conversation you can't say "this class uses this subclass". It works, they are synonyms. But I like to differentiate, and I have seen similar uses from other authors.
Just don't get me started on "utilise versus utilize". Please.
Of course, a dictionary is still a useful resource. I like the Oxford English Dictionary, which focuses on British English but usually notes American differences. For "utilize", it says:
utilize or utilise
n verb make practical and effective use of: he was determined to utilize the new technology.
DERIVATIVES
utilizable adjective
utilization noun
utilizer noun
ORIGIN
C19: from French utiliser, from Italian utilizzare, from utile (see utile1).
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"if someone could point me at a plausible differentiator between "use" and "utilize"."
There isn't one. However one of the laws of the corporate workplace is the more syllables you use/utilise , the more intelligent you sound to your peers. Ergo (and a bit of latin helps too) , some people love using long words where short ones would work just fine.
Non-English-speaking Anonymous Coward, yes, it’s common in some areas to use utilize as an overstuffed synonym for use. The proper meaning of utilize is “to make useful”, e.g. “I finally utilized that chocolate teapot — as an afternoon snack for my co-workers.”, as opposed to trying to use it as a teapot.
"“I finally utilized that chocolate teapot"
Thats no different to saying "I finally used that chocolate teapot". You simply put it in the past tense. There's no difference in meaning.
You're quite wrong, and missing an apostrophe.
"utiliize", as Irony Deficient pointed out, denotes "make useful". Literally it means "cause to have utility". That is very different from "use", which denotes consuming the utility of the object.1 If you're unable to perceive the difference, may I suggest a course in critical thinking?
"Utilize" is often - perhaps most often - used as a bloated synonym for "use", true, but that does not mean there is no denotative distinction between the words.
1This may be "consume" in the non-diminishing sense, as one consumes the text of a book in reading it.
The canonical Dilbert reference is http://search.dilbert.com/comic/Facilitator (the bottom two strips). Note that the PHB insists on longer, more pompous, rather soggy bureaucratese. "Utilize" instead of "use", "implement" instead of "do", even marginal lengthenings such as "object-orientated" instead of the proper "object-oriented". In most of these cases there is a small difference in meaning, but usually that is not the point. Some people just like to sound more important, and believe that using longer and finer-sounding (to them) words will achieve that.
Sir Winston Churchill, generally acknowledged to be a good speaker and writer, put it this way:
"Broadly speaking, short words are best, and the old words, when short, are best of all". (Speech on receiving the London Times Literary Award, November 2, 1949)
See also George Orwell's brilliant essay "Politics and the English Language", every word of which rings as true today as it did when written 70 years ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_and_the_English_Language
Java on the desktop is dead, it's primary use these days seems to be to infect your computer with malware. The best thing to do is deinstall it. I bet about 99% of people will never need it.
Servers and mobiles seem to be a success area, but really it's depressing to see smartphones running Java apps..
Java on the desktop is dead, it's primary use these days seems to be to infect your computer with malware. The best thing to do is deinstall it. I bet about 99% of people will never need it.
Sounds like random shock talking points from one of the "N arguments to make the heads of [some political opponent you want to antagonize today] explode" posts that one can regularly find on confusenik websites, written by people actually unable to develop a coherent train of thought.
Servers and mobiles seem to be a success area, but really it's depressing to see smartphones running Java apps
Which ones run Java?
the Dalvik engine, which is Google's implementation of a Java VM
U wot M8?
> the Dalvik engine, which is Google's implementation of a Java VM.
Yes, except it is not 'Google's'* nor is it a Java VM**.
ART*** is Google's new Dalvik VM.
* """It was originally written by Dan Bornstein"""
** """Unlike Java VMs, which are stack machines, the Dalvik VM uses a register-based architecture."""
*** """a replacement, called Android Runtime (ART), that should improve the performance of Android apps by a huge margin."""
Java on the desktop is dead, it's primary use these days seems to be to infect your computer with malware.
Actually, I suspect its primary use these days is to run the 6th most best selling PC game of all times. Wikipedia says:
By March 2012, Minecraft had become the 6th best-selling PC game of all time. As of February 3, 2014, the game has sold over 14 million copies on PC and over 35 million copies across all platforms.
@Conrad Longmore: citation required.
I'm not aware of much use of Java for locally-hosted desktop applications, but I don't have the advantage of your omniscience.
I can assure you, however, that it's extensively used via applets and Web Start applications. I used to think that applets were just a way of embedding gadgets in web pages, and that they were obsolete when better HTML and client script came along. Since then I've worked on several market-leading trading platforms that are written in Java and delivered over the Web.
Applets? Maybe, but not for much longer. And I say this as someone who develops them - I can not in good conscience recommend them to my clients any more, as we can't guarantee they'll run from one release to the next due to unpredictable changes in the security model. Applets are dead.
Agreed. Anyone claiming that Java is dead on the desktop should visit software houses developing trading platforms for banks.
I use to work on one of those. There was simply no other choice. General observation is Java is flexible enough to allow work-arounds for all its failings at that time.
My only problem is the way articles are scripted here with loop holes that gets so easily picked up.
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