I'm quite serious here, no joking ... Make a version of D for the JVM and it'll be a big success for the language and a business case at the same time. So many Java developers are meanwhile really not amused anymore about the slow language development of Java. Even C# is ways ahead of Java and does not have to carry problems from earlier premature decisions. The success of Scala, Groovy and JetBrains seeing a business case for Kotlin comes for a reason.

-- Oliver

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 14:00:16 -0800, OlliP <jeti789@web.de> wrote:

> I'm quite serious here, no joking ... Make a version of D for the JVM and it'll be a big success for the language and a business case at the same time. So many Java developers are meanwhile really not amused anymore about the slow language development of Java. Even C# is ways ahead of Java and does not have to carry problems from earlier premature decisions. The success of Scala, Groovy and JetBrains seeing a business case for Kotlin comes for a reason.
>
> -- Oliver

Both the JVM and the CLR are unable to fully express D in their bytecode. The CLR could do most things but Ranges/Slicing where ridiculously slow. The development never progressed much beyond that. Although, i've always wondered if it would be possible on a newer version of the CLR...

-- 
Adam Wilson
IRC: LightBender
Project Coordinator
The Horizon Project
http://www.thehorizonproject.org/

On Tue, 2013-02-26 at 23:00 +0100, OlliP wrote:
> I'm quite serious here, no joking ... Make a version of D for the JVM and it'll be a big success for the language and a business case at the same time. So many Java developers are meanwhile really not amused anymore about the slow language development of Java. Even C# is ways ahead of Java and does not have to carry problems from earlier premature decisions. The success of Scala, Groovy and JetBrains seeing a business case for Kotlin comes for a reason.

We just went round this in great detail a few weeks ago, can I get you to check back in the mail logs first. I am not going to rehearse all the debate from back then and I hope I don't see a whole new thread covering all the same ground. The summary is that D on the JVM is like C++ or C on the JVM, a non-starter.

The implied criticism of Java against other languages has some merit but that is a whole other debate, which we also had on this list a few weeks ago so no repeat. Summary is that Kotlin exists because JetBrains didn't want to use a dynamic language, Groovy, but this was before Groovy had strong static compilation; and Java 8 is a game changer that threatens Scala, and Kotlin.

You missed out Ceylon from your list, it is threatened by Java 8 as well.

Groovy has a role in partnership with Java 8 so is not threatened in the same sense. Exactly the opposite in reality due to is being a dynamic language with a static capability.

'Nuff said?

-- 
Russel. ============================================================================= Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder@ekiga.net 41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel@winder.org.uk London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder

> ... Java 8 is a game changer that threatens
> Scala, and Kotlin.

Well, Kotlin has the ability to generate Javascript. This could turn into a killer feature as Javascript is growing in importance, e.g. Node.js, html5+Javascript and the importance of Javascript for Web GUIs as such. I hope they can make it as the language IMHO is really well designed.

>
> You missed out Ceylon from your list, it is threatened by Java 8 as
> well.

Ceylon is not made for interoperability with Java such as Groovy, Kotlin, Scala. I don't think they stand a chance if the Java eco system cannot be easily re-used. I don't understand what the Ceylon guys are thinking.

-- Oliver

On Wed, 27 Feb 2013 06:57:04 +0000
Russel Winder <russel@winder.org.uk> wrote:

> and Java 8 is a game
> changer that threatens Scala, and Kotlin.
> 

You've mentioned this before in another thread, and you've got me curious: What aspect (or aspects) of Java 8 are there that make it a game-changer?

You've obviously been keeping up on Java developments far, far more
than I have (I've mostly been ignoring it since ~v5 when I jumped
ship to C#/D), so all I know is what I've just looked up on Wikipedia.
The lambdas/closures do indeed sound like a very big deal for Java (I
can't help recalling the infamous old Sun whitepaper that
attempted to show they were unnecessary ;) ). But is there more
*really* significant stuff (I assume there is), or is that the main
reason for Java 8's significance?

On Wed, 2013-02-27 at 17:40 -0500, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> On Wed, 27 Feb 2013 06:57:04 +0000
> Russel Winder <russel@winder.org.uk> wrote:
> 
> > and Java 8 is a game
> > changer that threatens Scala, and Kotlin.
> > 
> 
> You've mentioned this before in another thread, and you've got me curious: What aspect (or aspects) of Java 8 are there that make it a game-changer?
> 
> You've obviously been keeping up on Java developments far, far more
> than I have (I've mostly been ignoring it since ~v5 when I jumped
> ship to C#/D), so all I know is what I've just looked up on Wikipedia.
> The lambdas/closures do indeed sound like a very big deal for Java (I
> can't help recalling the infamous old Sun whitepaper that
> attempted to show they were unnecessary ;) ). But is there more
> *really* significant stuff (I assume there is), or is that the main
> reason for Java 8's significance?

The lambda expressions and the default (aka defender) methods in interfaces remove the need for the vast majority of anonymous classes. This isn't just a massive shortening of Java code, it is the introduction of functions as (almost) first class entities to the language. Lambda expressions are not simply shorthand for anonymous classes, that would be highly inefficient, the implementation of lambda expressions is in terms of method handles and invokedynamic. Add to this call site type inference and the system is really very neat.

The real game changer is the move from always having explicit iteration to having internal iteration. OK so map, filter, reduce and the like have been around in languages wince 1957-ish generally and on the JVM for about 10 years with Groovy, Scala, etc. but to bring this to the major language, Java, changes the whole outlook for JVM-based programming — if Java programmer update to Java 8 thinking.

The real point is that this all makes data parallelism trivially easy for the programmer:

	stream.parallel()

delivers up a stream that will be handled with maximum parallelism for the current platform. OK so it can be abused or misused, but it changes Java from what it was to something fit for the multicore world without programmers having to faff around with threads, locks, semaphores, monitors, and all the low-level stuff applications programmers have been forced to use for the last 50 years.

Why am I keeping up? I am involved with Groovy
(http://groovy.codehaus.org) and especially GPars
(http://gpars.codehsu.org). I am a member of The London Java Community
(LJC) which has an elected seat on the JCP EC. I am also a bit
associated with the JSR166 work.

-- 
Russel. ============================================================================= Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder@ekiga.net 41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel@winder.org.uk London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder

On Thu, 2013-02-28 at 06:48 +0000, Russel Winder wrote: […]
> (http://gpars.codehsu.org). I am a member of The London Java Community
[…]

The GPars URL is, of course, http://gpars.codehaus.org, not what is above.

-- 
Russel. ============================================================================= Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder@ekiga.net 41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel@winder.org.uk London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder

On 2013-02-26, 23:00, OlliP wrote:

> I'm quite serious here, no joking ... Make a version of D for the JVM and it'll be a big success for the language and a business case at the same time. So many Java developers are meanwhile really not amused anymore about the slow language development of Java. Even C# is ways ahead of Java and does not have to carry problems from earlier premature decisions. The success of Scala, Groovy and JetBrains seeing a business case for Kotlin comes for a reason.

I'm not entirely sure if that'd even be possible - some features of D might be impossible to do on the JVM (uints and the like come to mind, other examples probably exist. Not sure if workarounds exist).

A bigger problem in the short term is finding someone to do this. Walter is kinda busy with DMD, while LDC and GDC have rather limited teams mostly just playing catch up with DMD. If you want to do it, go ahead. It's sure to be a challenging and interesting project.

-- 
Simen

On Wednesday, 27 February 2013 at 09:32:21 UTC, OlliP wrote:
>
>> ... Java 8 is a game changer that threatens
>> Scala, and Kotlin.
>
> Well, Kotlin has the ability to generate Javascript. This could turn into a killer feature as Javascript is growing in importance, e.g. Node.js, html5+Javascript and the importance of Javascript for Web GUIs as such. I hope they can make it as the language IMHO is really well designed.
>
>>
>> You missed out Ceylon from your list, it is threatened by Java 8 as
>> well.
>
> Ceylon is not made for interoperability with Java such as Groovy, Kotlin, Scala. I don't think they stand a chance if the Java eco system cannot be easily re-used. I don't understand what the Ceylon guys are thinking.
>
> -- Oliver

Except scala, I'm not really a specialist. But clearly scala have some very good bits in it and I'm sure it can stand by itself. See for instance the traits system.

On Wednesday, 27 February 2013 at 06:57:16 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:
> The summary is that D on the JVM is like C++ or C on the JVM, a non-starter.

Interesting, can java into CTFE and compile-time code generation?