Java 11 Released As The First Java LTS Release

[Vistaus]

How does that satisfy the need for Java 7+? The point of these post Java 6 features is not to improve performance but to make the life more bearable.

Why do they need to spend tons of resources when they're working on replacing Android with Fuchsia anywa (which uses Flutter rather than Java)?

[Vistaus]

How the hell does Rust replace the Java eco-system for Android ? What would you even use for the GUI with Rust ?

Qt works on Android, so I imagine you just wrap a Qt GUI around Rust. And if not, maybe you can tie it to Flutter?

[Vistaus]

Because coding in Android is so boring. You have to write so much boilerplate code, and write with so much legacy stuff without any nice modern things you are used to. It is a pain to be an Android developer.



I don't know if Kotlin will still be relevant in a year or two or if it will be forgotten.
Also Kotlin have pretty weird syntax and strange concepts such as companion objects.
It would be nice with better Java support in Android.
Maybe Android development wouldn't be so awful if it supported the latest of Java.

Just use Flutter then.

[przmk]

Qt works on Android, so I imagine you just wrap a Qt GUI around Rust. And if not, maybe you can tie it to Flutter?

While such bindings already exists, they're a pain in the ass to use and definitely not in a stable state.
On the other hand, the Java eco-system for Android is very mature and Android Studio is a complete IDE with lots of quality tooling.
I love Rust but it doesn't even have proper auto-complete.

[uid313]

Why do they need to spend tons of resources when they're working on replacing Android with Fuchsia anywa (which uses Flutter rather than Java)?

If Fuchsia will ever be used for real or if it stays or ends up just a research project.
Even if Fuchsia gets into the real world, maybe by then Flutter is no more and they replaced it with something else.

Just use Flutter then.

Hard to know if even Flutter will be around. Google is always making new stuff, then abandoning them.

[uid313]

Kotlin it's backed by Google and ofically promoted at their I/O events in last years. More likely Kotlin is skyrocketing.

iMO Kotlin is better than Java 8, has a cleaner syntax. Competition is good.
Also it compiles to Node.JS

Google is known to launch new things then abandon it later. You can't trust Google to stay committed to anything.

Maybe Kotlin is nicer than Java 8, but what about Java 9, 10 and 11?
Also Kotlin syntax is pretty weird, "var" and "val" looks almost the same and is easy to confuse.
It has this weird concept of "companion object", which is unfamiliar to me, I've never seen it before in any other programming language.

[caligula]

Why do they need to spend tons of resources when they're working on replacing Android with Fuchsia anywa (which uses Flutter rather than Java)?

You can also compile Java into native code. ReadyTalk made a very lightweight runtime. Why Java is still alive? All of these are true

• Java can be compiled/transpiled to JS, WebAssembly, JVM bytecode, Dalvik bytecode, ART AOT bytecode/native, .NET runtime, and pure native
• They even made a special CPU that could run Java bytecode as its native language
• Many languages target JVM
• Some of those languages can also target JS/WA
• Languages that target JVM are nice due to the large availability of existing code/libraries that can be used
• JVM has a nice ecosystem of development tools
• JVM is one of the most advanced language runtimes available
• Legions of cheap labor know Java
• Java/JVM is totally free / open source
• It doesn't really matter which language you use - they all pick new features from a common pool of ideas. In few years Java will adopt more features from Scala/Kotlin and maybe Java 20 or 21 will look like Kotlin does today.
• Why this is true? Look at Pascal or Basic. The latest versions of Object Pascal & Visual Basic have classes, lambdas, generics, ...

[caligula]

I would argue that Kotlin is Scala--, but because of the Scala features the Kotlin developers skipped it has three advantages over Scala:

1. Kotlin has faster compile times partly or totally due to Scala features that are missing. (Supposedly a brand new Scala compiler will be very fast, but it's not released yet.)

I would say that almost all JVM applications are pretty lousy when it comes to starting up quick. There are multiple reasons for this - the huge default class library, sucky JIT engine without AOT and the way the tools are used is that there's lots of restarting of the VM. They also love to allocate memory everywhere with no particular reason. On top of that, I've read the Scala compiler was an unmaintainable mess (massive use of their cake anti-pattern). They later learned that some features are extremely slow. The Scala 3 will probably be somewhat faster to type check and the lookups for implicits are faster, but we'll see. Their over-engineered build tool (SBT) also sucks.

[Delgarde]

It has this weird concept of "companion object", which is unfamiliar to me, I've never seen it before in any other programming language.

The term is unfamiliar, but the concept isn't that weird – it's not dissimilar to having class-level variables and methods in Python, or prototypes in Javascript. Essentially, it's a guaranteed-singleton object that can encapsulate state at the class level, rather than the instance level. In Java, the only way to achieve that is with static fields and methods, but that's pretty limited... no inheritance, no ability to pass that state around, etc.

It's kind of a niche feature, since storing class-level state is *usually* a bad idea, but it does have it's uses.

[Vistaus]

While such bindings already exists, they're a pain in the ass to use and definitely not in a stable state.
On the other hand, the Java eco-system for Android is very mature and Android Studio is a complete IDE with lots of quality tooling.
I love Rust but it doesn't even have proper auto-complete.

What do you mean "not in a stable state"? Flutter is very stable.