GraalVM 21.2 Released With New Optimizations, Better Linux AArch64 Support

[elatllat]

... fully open ... your information ... out of date ....

I said ecosystem not just the select components.

My assertion that the .NET ecosystem is Windows reliant is supported by your example.

Maybe my knowledge of Linux market share is out of date but I'm assuming it's ~96% until I'm shown otherwise.
Amusingly your example is boasting a non windows front end;

(curl -v https://meta.stackexchange.com > /dev/null ) 2>&1 | grep via
< via: 1.1 [B]varnish[/B]

Anyway like I said I'm just answering why it's interesting for some; to each their own.

[onlyLinuxLuvUBack]

"I'm with Nim" or I'll go go but what would the equivalent graalVM program look like? you can compile to .exe/bin ? 1 file copy distribute a program ?

[Sonadow]

So what is Graal?

Is it supposed to be a replacement to Hotspot or an entire replacement for OpenJDK?

[Sonadow]

Microsoft CLR and CIL is open too.
In my limited experience, I very much prefer .NET over Java.

Interestingly Microsoft have a build of OpenJDK.

Never knew that. Are those builds of the vanilla OpenJDK sources, or do they have any unique Microsoft patches included?

[krzyzowiec]

Ironically, I think C# being so good is what sort of killed the opportunities of the CLR off as a multi-language platform. Just like JavaScript, Java is such a horrible language that it forced people to make different languages to compensate for it's shortcomings (since people were forced to use it from an extensive marketing campaign). You don't really see the same thing in .NET despite it's prevalence.

It was Microsoft’s closed nature at the time that killed its potential. They are more open now, but it’s too late.

Scala and Clojure were both made because the JVM is a good runtime, and Java has good libraries. Both languages are pretty radical in comparison. In fact there was a Clojure for the CLR as well, but I’m not sure how active they are compared to the Java version. (the JavaScript version is quite active)

Kotlin is the only one that could be said to be trying to replace Java, and to be fair to Java, C# had the benefit of hindsight. It came out six years later.

It’s like saying C is a horrible language and Rust is so much better. It’s true, but it’s not a fair criticism when you get to watch the other language develop and learn from its mistakes.

[krzyzowiec]

Microsoft CLR and CIL is open too.
In my limited experience, I very much prefer .NET over Java.

I’m not a fan of Java myself. It’s too finicky like C, but also more complex, forcing you to rely on an IDE for support. Kotlin is a really good alternative language that feels modern. In particular, their coroutines are amazing, and something Java is working on adding at some point in the future.

[krzyzowiec]

So what is Graal?

Is it supposed to be a replacement to Hotspot or an entire replacement for OpenJDK?

You could call it a HotSpot replacement, but it is more than that. It also allows you to combine multiple programming languages in the same project, and create native executables with the expected low footprint and fast startup time. So you can finally do command line tools in Java if you wanted, without suffering from high memory and startup costs, or having to have the Java runtime installed.

[Ironmask]

It was Microsoft’s closed nature at the time that killed its potential. They are more open now, but it’s too late.

Scala and Clojure were both made because the JVM is a good runtime, and Java has good libraries. Both languages are pretty radical in comparison. In fact there was a Clojure for the CLR as well, but I’m not sure how active they are compared to the Java version. (the JavaScript version is quite active)

Kotlin is the only one that could be said to be trying to replace Java, and to be fair to Java, C# had the benefit of hindsight. It came out six years later.

It’s like saying C is a horrible language and Rust is so much better. It’s true, but it’s not a fair criticism when you get to watch the other language develop and learn from its mistakes.

That is pure delusion and C# has always been a widely popular language despite it's closed-source nature, exactly like Visual Basic before it. Go ahead and look at modern statistics and you'll see C# constantly going up and down with C++, C# is far from "dying", in fact it's growing in popularity, go ask GitHub and StackOverflow.

You really shouldn't think everyone thinks exactly the same way you do. You may be surprised to hear this, but, believe it or not, most developers do not, and, especially in the past, did not care about open source or open platforms, they just wanted whatever had the most support and libraries.

Again, please stop assuming a corporation or software platform is "unviable" because of your deluded political opinions, they make no sense and actively clash with reality.

And don't even joke about the JVM being a good runtime. Yes, it performs great, and at the same level of the CLR, but I constantly hear people say it's insecure and not worth installing anymore. Scala and Clojure are popular because of Android, along with the entire JVM. I remember when I started Java way back in 2011 because of Minecraft giving it a bit of a boost in popularity and all of my non-programmer friends were like "get that away from me, I'm not installing that thing, it asks for updates every day". The JVM would be dead today if it wasn't for Google being yet-another-company falling for Oracle's marketing. I just pray they finally finish Fuchsia so they can finally sunset the JVM's parasitic existence on Android (which I'm sure they're all-too-excited to do after Oracle made them yet another target in their "sue anyone who uses our products" campaign).

[bug77]

Why is GraalVM so interesting?

Microsoft have CLR and CIL.

"Java shouldn't exist because now we have C#" has been C#'s mantra since its inception. Fast forward two decades, Java jobs still outnumber C# two or three-fold.

C# is cleaner than Java (having learned from Java's lessons) and is closely tied to Visual Studio. Java, on the other hand, is pretty much everywhere and you can probably find a Java library that will walk your dog. Picking between the two is mostly just a matter of taste.

Imho, despite their popularity, they're both pretty poor choices in 2021. Today's hot topics are the cloud and IoT. Fat, slow runtimes aren't a good fit for either. GraalVM initially promised to enable AoT compilation for Java, spitting out executable code that does away with most of the VMs overhead. But the progress towards that was so slow, GrallVM did an 180 and spun the native image part into it's own project that doesn't even ship with GraalVM by default. These days GraalVM's focus seems to be more about supporting all sorts of languages. Which may very well end up in something nice, but I'm not holding my breath for that.

[uid313]

Never knew that. Are those builds of the vanilla OpenJDK sources, or do they have any unique Microsoft patches included?

I don't know.