[HN Gopher] Greatest Java apps
___________________________________________________________________
Greatest Java apps
Author : miked85
Score : 141 points
Date : 2020-06-29 11:57 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blogs.oracle.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blogs.oracle.com)
| yashap wrote:
| Not really "apps", but Java features prominently in the backends
| of many major tech companies. Off the top of my head, I believe
| it's the main server-side language at Amazon, and one of many
| prominent server-side languages at Google, Netflix, Apple and
| Uber.
| suyash wrote:
| What do you mean by "apps" then? Ofcourse any modern app will
| have mix of technologies, I think it's fair to call it "app" -
| perhaps an Enterprise Java App or Backend Java App to be exact.
| zulu314 wrote:
| I find it a little weird to mix applications and libraries in the
| same list. But if libraries are considered, I would definitely
| nominate Hibernate: the most powerful ORM out there accross all
| languages, and it's been a must grab for any of my projects for
| almost 2 decades.
| Keyframe wrote:
| I haven't been much of an ORM userm but what makes it so
| special? Anything comparable in Javascript or Python land?
| LockAndLol wrote:
| They might not like being associated with it, but JDownloader is
| amazing Java software. It's fast, looks good, integrates with all
| desktop environments I've used and still works impeccably.
|
| I wish Java had a solution for web+platform UIs. Webapps that
| then run in Electron is by far the most annoying thing I've had
| to deal with as a user.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| Also Azureus, featuring legendary laggy java gui.
| lukashrb wrote:
| I like to add clojure it is written in Java, so I guess it
| counts.
|
| But seriously what do you like about Java and why did you choose
| to work with it? What problem does it solve for you? I'm curious!
| (don't comment when you don't like it)
| altcognito wrote:
| Lucene? Android :) Tomcat? Maven?
|
| The Minecraft coding community is amazing. What they get done
| without documentation is stunning.
| fieryscribe wrote:
| AWS too. A large portion of it is written in Java
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| I guess that they wanted to go down the route of "hardly
| controversial and highly popular" applications, that's why they
| didn't include Maven.
|
| Granted, Maven is an essential piece in the Java ecosystem, yet
| it seems that many developers are highly opinionated about it.
| RMPR wrote:
| >Lucene?
|
| It's mentioned in the Wikipedia search section.
| tlarkworthy wrote:
| It's funny how Java is not considered a good language for
| games... yet Java managed to snag one of the most important
| games of the decade in the end
| Orphis wrote:
| It's really not great. Doable, but not great. That's why they
| moved to a classic C++ codebase instead on other platforms.
|
| On a side note, I worked on Jpcsp, a PSP emulator in Java.
| Great for research and doing refactoring in the code quickly,
| not great for performance, even with a JIT. We wrote later
| PPSSPP in C++, performance was there quite easily.
| jjice wrote:
| Great work on PPSSPP. I haven't used it in a few years, but
| even back then the performance was great!
| iamcreasy wrote:
| > It's really not great.
|
| Could you provide some more information on what it was not
| great?
| mumblemumble wrote:
| For games, probably the worst thing about Java,
| especially if you're still on Java 8, is the garbage
| collector. Its pause times can be brutal. This won't be
| noticeable for games that aren't too hard on memory, or
| games where framerate doesn't really matter, but it was
| definitely noticeable (and annoying) in earlier versions
| of Minecraft.
|
| On Java 11 or later, I wouldn't expect it to be nearly
| such a big deal. At least not relative to some other
| issues. For example, it being a reflective language means
| that there's a fair amount of memory overhead that's
| really only there to support features that aren't so
| useful in games development. Also, there's a fair bit of
| overhead, in terms of both CPU and memory churn, to
| making calls into native libraries from Java. Nowadays,
| neither of those is a big deal for a large swathe of
| games, either, so I don't think one can really make a
| blanket statement that Java is not great for games
| development.
| suyash wrote:
| Android stole and abused Java :(
| tyingq wrote:
| I'd have to give Tomcat the #1 spot for killing off the worst
| parts of J2EE.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| OMG. I've set up Confluence servers and Tomcat was the most
| nightmarish part of that experience. The idea that Tomcat was
| an actual _improvement_ on something sends shudders up my
| spine.
| tyingq wrote:
| You would have had to lived through a full blown J2EE app on
| Websphere/Weblogic/JBoss to appreciate it.
| ralphc wrote:
| OMG yes. So many times all you needed was what Tomcat
| delivered, but had to go through the convoluted and slow
| config of WebSphere. WebLogic was better but that's damning
| with faint praise.
| kitd wrote:
| I'd say Spring takes that crown.
| tyingq wrote:
| I still give Tomcat credit for taking Websphere and Weblogic
| out of the way. That opened the door for Spring.
| latchkey wrote:
| JBoss took WS/WL out of the way.
|
| Disclosure: I was one of the main people who got Tomcat
| open sourced.
| cletus wrote:
| So what's funny to me is how Oracle here is bending over
| backwards not to give Google credit for pretty much anything.
| It's actually hilarious.
|
| I laughed at Eclipse Collections. What? No mention of Guava, even
| though it's used way more. It's practically part of Oracle's
| copyrighted Java API.
|
| but of course the most hilarious omission is, of course, Android.
| And you can say "blah blah Dalvik VM blah blah" but... it's Java.
|
| And I have to say a word about IntelliJ (and Jetbrains IDEs more
| generally). They're the standard by which I judge every other
| IDE. To put it another way, they're the reason every other IDE
| makes me sad. Even VS Code.
| misja111 wrote:
| Guava was really popular 10 years ago, after that other
| libraries have caught up, not to mention Java itself.
|
| And IntelliJ was once indeed the standard but is slowly
| becoming the new Eclipse because it's so bloated. I recently
| tried VS Code and I was amazed how fast and lean it was, I am
| definitely switching.
| pjmlp wrote:
| I have used Java on and off since 1998, am yet to ever touch
| Guava.
|
| Android Java is Google's J++, with its half baked Java 8
| compatibility, and deserves the same treatment that J++ once
| had.
| suyash wrote:
| Android Java != Java so no credit needed to be given. Though
| Google does make Java contributions in other libraries and
| projects which is very welcome by the community!
| pjmlp wrote:
| Their wrongdoings with Android to the Java eco-system are
| more harmful than whatever contributions they might have
| done.
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| In praise of Lucene, it's stated that
|
| > _Wikipedia replaced the Lucene engine with Elasticsearch, a
| distributed, REST-enabled search engine also written in Java_
|
| Elasticsearch is still using Lucene as core search engine though,
| so all that was replaced is the custom job control and wrapping
| around Lucene (SOLR?) by the one that Elasticsearch provides I
| guess.
| elric wrote:
| Both Solr and ElasticSearch use Lucene as their search engine.
| Solr and ElasticSearch are basically server components wrapped
| around the Lucene library. With a fair bit of special sauce and
| extra features. Including, well, elasticity.
| [deleted]
| amaccuish wrote:
| I gave up on lucene and solr on my dovecot server because of
| memory usage and use https://github.com/grosjo/fts-xapian
| instead
| nicoburns wrote:
| You may also be interested in https://github.com/tantivy-
| search/tantivy
| latchkey wrote:
| I was the one who first requested that Doug join the ASF with
| Lucene. The rest is history... ;-)
| johnklos wrote:
| So not impressed. Still waiting for, "write once, run anywhere"
| to actually work.
| codr7 wrote:
| It did, once you finished debugging everywhere.
|
| That aside; these days, it actually more or less works.
|
| I avoid it as far as I can after having built a couple of
| systems in the language. For all its faults, Go is still a much
| more pleasant language to solve the same kinds of problems in.
|
| But my latest project needed multi-platform printing, so I
| cobbled together a tiny Java program using the print API that I
| run in the background and pipe data to, and it just works.
| suyash wrote:
| all those software already have already proven that.
| dxxvi wrote:
| After reading this, I think I need to learn Eclipse Collection
| and Micronaut.
| jmartrican wrote:
| What are the odds that a language known for its use in boring
| enterprise software is the language used to create the most
| popular video game in history (Minecraft). If C++ was a person it
| would be mad/salty at this fact.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| It's a great reminder that the customer doesn't care about the
| code. What matters is the experience and overall fidelity of
| the product shipped.
|
| The language you pick, the quality of code you write, the
| comments and documentation, are all products (gifts) targeting
| your future self, future peers, and employer when it comes time
| to make changes to the software.
| nonbirithm wrote:
| > the customer doesn't care about the code
|
| I'm not sure this applies as strongly in Minecraft's case
| specifically, because of the critical importance of its
| modding community to its wild success. Normally it wouldn't
| matter what language you pick in terms of how popular the
| game is going to become, except it just so happened that by
| choosing the JVM they gave the ability to the community to
| decompile the game and add the content they want. Maybe this
| wasn't intended and Notch chose Java because it was what he
| happened to know, but it's my belief that if Minecraft had
| been written in C++ instead then Mojang would not have the
| brand recognition it does today. Anecdotally one of my
| friends tried the RTX version of the game which was rewritten
| in C++, and his reaction amounted to "it's fine, but there's
| no mods, so it's irrelevant." And that's in spite of the fact
| that modded Minecraft is a minefield of incompatibilities
| between years old versions and can easily consume 10
| gigabytes of RAM and millions of extraneous CPU cycles.
| Nobody cares, because at the end of the day modded Minecraft
| is the only way they can get the specific experience they
| want out of a video game, and the only reason this is
| possible at all, even if it will never be performant, is the
| JVM.
|
| But that's only because Minecraft is one of the most popular
| video games in history, and not the kind of thing that a
| developers for a game nowhere near as successful would worry
| about before gaining a sizeable audience. What good is a
| modding system if not many people want to use it? And
| depending on the game a mod system might not be as warranted,
| so in those cases the choice of language doesn't matter as
| much.
| [deleted]
| haecceity wrote:
| C++ minecraft should have an SDK for mods
| nineteen999 wrote:
| > it just so happened that by choosing the JVM they gave
| the ability to the community to decompile the game and add
| the content they want
|
| That wasn't their intention; Minecraft code was originally
| obfuscated specifically in order to combat reverse
| engineering and modification.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/mpslv/why_are_m
| i...
|
| https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Obfuscation_map
| nineteen999 wrote:
| > If C++ was a person it would be mad/salty at this fact.
|
| Are you serious? Wake us up when somebody implements something
| as complex and performant as UE4 in Java. Or even UE3 for that
| matter.
| the_af wrote:
| And yet people here on HN have told me in recent threads, when
| discussing Java, that:
|
| - Java is not suitable for enterprise software (yes! Some
| people here actually believe that).
|
| - Java is not a good general purpose language (but Minecraft
| was written in Java. Or even better, the list of very varied
| apps from this article shows it's indeed a good general purpose
| language).
|
| What these people actually mean is "I don't like Java". Because
| Java hasn't been "hip" for years, this makes people claim all
| sorts of absurd things about it. Things that directly
| contradict known history.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| I work in Java every day, and I agree it's been a huge
| success. But I also don't think it's a good general purpose
| language. It's absolutely full of warts and gotchas and
| ergonomic problems and questionable design decisions that
| even the people who made them have come to regret.
|
| But known history tells us that there is very little
| correlation between a language's success and how well-
| designed it is. Outside of software, too - I think the
| archetype for this phenomenon is probably VHS and Betamax.
| the_af wrote:
| > _It 's absolutely full of warts and gotchas and ergonomic
| problems and questionable design decisions that even the
| people who made them have come to regret._
|
| And which general purpose language isn't?
| apta wrote:
| > questionable design decisions that even the people who
| made them have come to regret.
|
| Such as?
| gschrader wrote:
| Serialization is one of them http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~
| briangoetz/amber/serialization.h...
| mumblemumble wrote:
| I think the most interesting one to me was an interview
| with Joshua Bloch in the book _Coders at Work_. It was to
| do with generics, of course, but distinct from the usual
| surface-level debate over type erasure. He felt that
| generics were rushed, and that they could have done a
| better job of sorting out the details of how things were
| going to work at the language level if they had given
| themselves more time.
| chopin wrote:
| Wild mixes of consumer and provider API's for example in
| Swing. The later designs have been much better in that
| regard.
|
| The built-in http client library is borderline horrible.
| csharptwdec19 wrote:
| As someone who's not a big fan of Java, I don't get those
| arguments.
|
| If anything my argument for Java would be that it tries to be
| good at -everything-, and because that attempt started from
| day one (versus, say, C# starting primarily on desktop, then
| Web, and worrying about smaller targets and big servers
| later).
|
| And I think it's pretty good at all of that from a
| 'capability' standpoint.
|
| But because it tries to be all things for all people, it's
| pretty easy to wind up down rabbit holes of large frameworks.
| And that leads to the warts Java has from a usability
| standpoint.
| bzb3 wrote:
| The performance of the Java version of Minecraft is so
| terrible that the entire game had to be rewritten to be
| played on consoles.
|
| Minecraft was not popular because of Java, Minecraft was
| popular despite Java.
| pjmlp wrote:
| The game had to be rewritten because Microsoft is a C++
| shop and game consoles SDKs don't support Java, and it was
| definitely easier to port the game to C++ than to create
| Java AOT compilers for game consoles.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| I strongly disagree. A big part of minecraft's popularity
| is due to it's mods scene, and it's mod scene is so
| successful because modders could decompile minecraft's
| classes and build a deep understanding of how minecraft
| works under the hood.
| the_af wrote:
| That's highly debatable, not a point of fact.
|
| And the rest of the apps from the article? Are they also
| successful "despite Java"? At which point are you willing
| to admit that maybe Java was suitable for general purpose
| programming? Which amount of evidence would convince you?
| bzb3 wrote:
| What's debatable, that the Java version of Minecraft had
| terrible performance or that the console ports are not
| written in Java?
|
| About your other question: I only mentioned Minecraft.
| jrsj wrote:
| I would say its suitable, but I wouldn't say it's a good
| general purpose language for a variety of reasons. The first
| being that "good" is totally subjective. It feels like it has
| lagged behind its competitors both in terms of language
| features and API design. Its generally crappy for GUI apps.
| It doesn't really excel at anything in particular unless
| you're already invested in it. Even it's original premise of
| "write once run anywhere" is mostly irrelevant now, and there
| doesnt seem to be a future for client side Java apps outside
| of Android.
|
| Overall I'd prefer to use just about anything else in pretty
| much any domain where Java would be a consideration. It may
| not be an inherent problem with the language itself, but its
| ecosystem in my experience leaves it as one of the worst
| general purpose languages in terms of productivity while not
| offering a sufficient advantage to make up for that.
|
| All that being said, Java is still _good enough_ most of the
| time.
| akhilcacharya wrote:
| Of course, all of the new advancements have come in the
| Microsoft-built C++ version that runs an order of magnitude
| better (including like ray tracing and VR)
| pjmlp wrote:
| Although C++ allows for better code optimizations, it isn't
| as if the team that took over later Java versions was doing
| anything great.
|
| Using classes to represent points and vertices instead of
| arrays, and allocating in hot paths, really?
| [deleted]
| guardian5x wrote:
| Yea probably, I doubt that Minecraft would've been any less
| succesful written in C++ or any other language though.
| akavi wrote:
| I've heard that the relative ease of decompiling Java might
| have contributed significantly, since it made mods much
| easier than they would've been with C/C++.
| hoseja wrote:
| Yeah, the game is almost source-available, thus almost
| infinitely moddable. Games that provide neat modding APIs
| (thinking Factorio, Rimworld) are, while commendable,
| inherently limited. If Minecraft were C++ you'd have to be
| able to recompile it yourself for equivalent moddability.
| 7786655 wrote:
| Minecraft isn't source available, it's just that people
| in the community have put a ton of effort into
| decompiling and deobfuscating it. Granted, this probably
| wouldn't have been possible if it were written in C++.
|
| (At least, this was how it was pre-Microsoft. I haven't
| followed it since then.)
| blackrock wrote:
| Could Minecraft have succeeded if it had a sub-level
| scripting language, like Lisp? The way that AutoCad uses
| it for its sub programming. Or the way Emacs uses Lisp
| for macro programming.
|
| Or did it need the full Java source code to re-mod the
| program?
| Eldt wrote:
| I'm confident the community driven modding contributed to
| Minecraft's success in a massive way.
| the_af wrote:
| Depends. Success measured how? For the end user -- the
| players, that is -- it would likely make little difference.
| For the developer, it's very different. A game that doesn't
| get made at all is infinitely less successful than one that
| exists.
| nyc640 wrote:
| > most popular video game in history
|
| * citation needed
|
| The most popular game by player count is CrossFire [1]. All I
| see is that Minecraft has the highest unit sales for a video
| game across all platforms, but Minecraft for consoles and
| mobile (which make up a majority of sales [2]) are written in
| C++.
|
| I would argue that Java would have been a limiting factor for
| Minecraft reaching its current levels of success given the fact
| that the PC gaming market is relatively small compared to the
| console and mobile gaming markets, and it would've been nearly
| impossible to port the Java edition to so many different
| platforms.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-
| played_video_game...
|
| [2] https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Bedrock_Edition#Sales
| pjmlp wrote:
| And to this day people keep complaining about the modding
| capabilities of Bedrock.
| pjmlp wrote:
| The proven example that instead of spending endless hours
| discussing what languages are good for creating games, one
| should focus in creating them in first place.
|
| Incidentally C++ also had to fight against Assembly, C and
| Pascal for adoption among game developers, and the Playstation
| SDK was one of the contributors to change this.
| rH61W3epxeHMjg4 wrote:
| The concurrently developed Minecraft Bedrock edition is written
| in c++. That is code base for Widnows 10 Edition, Pocket
| Edition, and current console versions of the game.
| geodel wrote:
| Well that assumes lot of boring enterprise software is not
| written in C++.
| suyash wrote:
| TensorFlow is written on top of C++, how boring is that, I
| think it's one of the coolest tech.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the most popular video game in history was
| implemented in TTL.
|
| (Though Java versions certainly exist, too.)
|
| It's also worth noting that Minecraft was _originally_
| implemented in Java, but, in order to get it running on
| consoles and mobile, they had to port it to C++. Which doesn 't
| discount how much Java contributed to its early success. (Most
| importantly, I'm guessing, by making it even feasible in the
| first place for a single person to implement it in so little
| time.) But still, the big picture version of the Minecraft
| story does more to support than challenge the main reason why
| C++ is considered the language of choice for games development.
| Because, yes, Java got it off the ground, but it was only a
| couple years later that they had to port it to C++ in order to
| access a mass market.
| andonisus wrote:
| The Java version is still very popular due to its support for
| mods.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| It absolutely is, and it's my preferred version. But I
| think I remember seeing somewhere that the vast majority of
| unit sales were of versions that were written in C++. My
| guess is that, if it had stayed Java only, it would have
| still been extremely popular, especially by indie game
| standards, but would not have become quite such a global
| phenomenon.
| itronitron wrote:
| The C++ versions may drive new sales on additional
| consoles but measured by hours played I would expect that
| the Java version of Minecraft still dominates.
| blackrock wrote:
| What graphical library did he use to implement Minecraft? Or
| did he roll his own?
| ertucetin wrote:
| He used lwjgl library
| fulafel wrote:
| What's the game implemented in TTL?
| mumblemumble wrote:
| Pong
| rayalez wrote:
| I'm planning to get a Masters degree in CS, and it bothers me
| that the program I chose uses Java as the primary language. They
| have an awesome theoretical curriculum, but it looks like I'll
| have to use Java to complete all the practical tasks.
|
| I'm a Node/React web developer, I want to build a SaaS startup,
| and I'm not really interested in writing Java apps, I doubt I'll
| ever want to use it for something.
|
| Do you guys know if Java would be really painful to learn? It's
| hard to get motivated about learning a thing I'll probably never
| use in practice.
| nayuki wrote:
| Java will at least help you understand stuff like static typing
| in TypeScript and classes in ECMAScript 6. In any case, skills
| are readily transferable across programming languages.
| djbeadle wrote:
| I graduated undergrad two years ago, the majority of my CS
| classes were taught in Java. I now work in full stack web dev
| (Python, Django, React) and tinker with embedded electronics on
| the side.
|
| Java was picked because (for the most part) it just works on
| everybody's machines, it comes by default with a large set of
| libraries, and it can build standalone executables (great for
| grading purposes). You don't have to explain why MacOS comes
| with Python, but you shouldn't use that version of Python. Java
| of course has its peculiarities, but so does every other
| language.
|
| And as you say, you won't just be learning Java, you will be
| learning how to develop software. Over time and with exposure
| to multiple languages you will find switching between them is
| possible. You may (will) have preferences but with a solid
| foundation you can say "I recognize that this is a loop over an
| array, I don't remember the exact syntax in this language, but
| I know how to look it up".
|
| I'm not sure what your situation is for a masters, but for the
| best odds of job searching post-undergrad the best advice I
| could give is have several projects which you can talk about
| the implementation specifics (why did you choose this pattern)
| and the big picture (why did you choose this architecture). For
| an entry level positions the exact language didn't matter when
| job searching as long as it was in the ball park.
|
| TL;DR You're going to school to learn computer science and to
| illustrate those concepts they're going to use Java. That
| knowledge WILL be transferable to other languages. For maximum
| value explore and tinker with other languages on the side.
|
| And as a bonus, a lot more of the world runs on Java than you
| think so it will be valuable to have on your resume.
| abledon wrote:
| grind some leetocde questions in Java. after a while it made me
| appreciate the explicit Type declarations and interfaces. Like,
| you begin to wonder, do you want to use a HashMap<> or
| TreeMap<> as your map implementation. Or a LinkedList or
| ArrayList as your implementation of List etc... I find
| languages that are more dynamic like js/python dont make the
| user think as much about this (which is great in some cases,
| but if your doing academic CS stuff... kind of helps in some
| sense)
| jswny wrote:
| It's not likely that any university is going to teach masters
| classes in JavaScript, that's for sure. So you'd have to use a
| different language than JS anyway. Advanced topics you would
| learn like ML, computer vision, distributed systems, big data
| stuff all already have their languages that you have to use
| anyway and not many (if any) are JS.
|
| Also, if you are going to be a React web developer, the
| theoretical/advanced stuff they teach you in an MS program is
| likely not going to be relevant at all to your actual career.
|
| Source: current MS CS student.
| tashoecraft wrote:
| Java is used everywhere, why do you think you'll never use it?
| mywittyname wrote:
| I hate Java for lots of reason, but it does do a few things
| really well, one of which is that it is easy to learn. Most of
| the core libraries are very consistently designed, so you don't
| need to hunt around documentation to find something. Instead
| you type import java.util. and look at the autocomplete list
| for the collection you want. Most of the standard libraries
| implement the same interface, so using them is almost always
| the same.
|
| I haven't used Java in years, but I'm very certain I could pick
| it up again immediately with nothing more than an IDE. Contrast
| that with python, which I use almost every day and I still need
| to visit stack overflow to perform rudimentary tasks because
| libraries for it are a mess.
| nwsm wrote:
| Java is a common university language, and an even more common
| industry language. I think gaining knowledge of the Java
| ecosystem and Java architectural patterns will only be
| beneficial to you in your professional career. Hopefully you'll
| find places you see advantages in Java, and places you see
| advantages with Node. This will help you make better decisions
| when building production apps.
| patorjk wrote:
| I do contracting work and mostly focus on Node/React, yet I
| still encounter Java all of the time. Especially Java with the
| Spring framework. With how entrenched Java seems to be, it's
| probably something you will come across from time to time
| (especially in the web development world - at least from my
| experience). Also, I find that JavaScript devs have an easier
| time learning Java than Java devs have learning JavaScript.
| rando231 wrote:
| You will probably learn many languages in your career. Most of
| the understanding you'll gain will apply across languages, so I
| wouldn't worry about it being a waste of time.
|
| Learning Java should force you to understand object oriented
| design, as it is hard to do anything well in Java without it
| (though some try). While there are signs that OO's domination
| is nearing an end, there are reams of code out there that
| require a good understanding of it.
| jordache wrote:
| No mention of Android? lol butt hurt
| granshaw wrote:
| Ummm, its an Oracle site :)
| capableweb wrote:
| I guess it's because Android is not mainly consisting of Java
| code, unlike for example Minecraft. Correct me if I'm wrong,
| but isn't Android made with mostly C and C++?
| jcfrei wrote:
| Kernel (Linux) and android runtime (previously dalvik vm)
| plus some native libraries are C(++). The rest of the stack
| running in the user space is Java though (with support for
| native code).
| zamalek wrote:
| They are slowly moving to Dart, but the lions share is
| still Java. My guess is that they are trying to get away
| from the reach of Oracle lawyers.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Tell that to the Android team busy replicating Flutter in
| Kotlin.
| zamalek wrote:
| Pardon my faux pax. The point was that the move is away
| from Java, whether Dart or Kotlin.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Waiting for them to rewrite Android Studio in Kotlin and
| the complete Android infrastructure that depends on
| OpenJDK for the emulator and AOSP builds.
| randompwd wrote:
| https://www.jetbrains.org/intellij/sdk/docs/intro/intelli
| j_p...
|
| > The IntelliJ Platform is a JVM application, written
| mostly in Java and Kotlin
|
| Pretty sure Kotlin was birthed to address issues they ran
| into while developing IntelliJ
|
| Android Studio is built on Intellij.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Still depends on JVM and Java, if Kotlin is so good they
| can certainly reboot their eco-system using
| Kotlin/Native.
| ce4 wrote:
| The list generates some mixed feelings - #16 for example, where
| the inventor/maintainer got driven away by Oracle's acquisition
| of Sun and forked Jenkins from Hudson.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| It's obviously and understandably a bit biased. There are a few
| omissions:
|
| No mention of anything mobile even though there are a few
| billion phones out there running Android with a huge app
| ecosystem of Java and Kotlin based stuff. Of course, that's a
| non Oracle flavor of Java as Sun sort of lost the plot on the
| J2ME front (another omission). J2ME was of course more
| successful than applets ever were until Android happened.
|
| Listing Eclipse and Netbeans (1 bullet) before Intellij
| (arguably more popular than those two combined) is also a bit
| weird. In any case, Intellij has largely switched to Kotlin,
| which is of course a language Jetbrains, the creator of that
| IDE helped create to replace Java. So nice that they still get
| a mention. But really, that whole ecosystem is now powered by
| Kotlin more than Java.
|
| Spring/Spring-boot is another painful one for Oracle because it
| largely sidelined J2EE related products and standardization.
| Tomcat and Jetty sort of survive as low level components you
| can optionally use to run that. The Spring ecosystem is
| shifting to Kotlin rapidly as well. As is Android, of course.
|
| So, it's understandable why Oracle prefers to not talk about
| those because these are all examples of where Java was
| successful but Oracle/Sun wasn't.
| Yhippa wrote:
| > Spring/Spring-boot is another painful one for Oracle
| because it largely sidelined J2EE related products and
| standardization.
|
| I'm thankful for J2EE and things like EJB 2. It's complexity
| gave rise to Spring and it's amazing ecosystem of frameworks
| and tooling that we have today.
| pjmlp wrote:
| I look forward to JetBrains replacing the JVM and its
| standard library, and GraalVM in the process, given that
| Kotlin is so good.
| donmcronald wrote:
| I gave up on Java when Oracle prematurely rolled JavaFX into
| the JDK and got rid of the dedicated bug tracker. I was using
| JavaFX a lot and frequently ran into bugs. I didn't mind the
| bugs because I thought the tech had a ton of potential, the
| JavaFX developers were really good, and it was easy to get
| things fixed.
|
| However, as soon as they rolled JavaFX into the JDK I knew it
| would be a nightmare for me. Without author status in JBS
| you're relegated to being a second class citizen who has to
| submit bugs though the poor door (bugs.java.com) and JavaFX
| fixes couldn't be pushed out as quickly because of being tied
| to the JDK.
|
| That was after years of broken promises about mobile which
| didn't help. They were also claiming to make massive
| investments in JavaFX, but if you HG churned the repo there
| were only a few developers doing all the work.
|
| It's too bad because I really liked JavaFX. It was nice to
| develop with and I'm convinced that Oracle's mismanagement is
| the primary reason it wasn't more successful.
| gschrader wrote:
| Do you now realize that it's been split out of the JDK again?
| https://github.com/openjdk/jfx
| maltelandwehr wrote:
| Today I learned that almost every IDE I have ever used is written
| in Java.
| fnord77 wrote:
| Jenkins is a cancer.
| captn3m0 wrote:
| >Some credit Minecraft's early success to the fact that players
| could play in a web browser via Java applets rather than having
| to download and install the game.
|
| I never knew this was possible
| tangent128 wrote:
| It was possible with the early, finite-world-creative-only
| "Minecraft Classic", but as long as I remember (I started
| playing mid-Alpha, a few months before the Nether was added)
| the game was played through the launcher.
| renw0rp wrote:
| Wasn't Google docs written using GWT?
| cromwellian wrote:
| Originally no, but it was written with Closure Compiler which
| is a Java app.
|
| These days Google Docs, Gmail, Spreadsheets, Hangouts, etc are
| hybrid apps that contain a core written in Java and was
| transpiled with GWT but now use J2CL.
| cageface wrote:
| I'd nominate Bitwig for this. The UI is written in Java and is
| one of the nicest DAW interfaces around. The stuff they've been
| doing in the modular grid lately is particularly impressive. The
| fact that it's in Java means it works great on Linux too.
|
| https://www.bitwig.com/en/home.html
| specialist wrote:
| Nice.
|
| I nominate Spline, best in class skeletal 2D animator.
|
| http://esotericsoftware.com
| pjmlp wrote:
| Definitely, thanks for sharing.
| jmartrican wrote:
| Does it use JavaFx for its UI? If not do you know what
| library/framework they use?
| callmeal wrote:
| I could be wrong, but at first glance, it looks like
| Eclipse's SWT.
| JonathonW wrote:
| Looks like JavaFX or Swing to me-- SWT doesn't really do
| themed widgets (everything looks like the platform's native
| controls).
| suyash wrote:
| wow, didn't know that, looks like awesome use of JavaFX!
| throwaway889900 wrote:
| No mention of Runescape, Classic, 2, and OSRS? I suppose
| "applets" covers it but I think it needs its own mention.
| shpongled wrote:
| That is exactly what comes to mind for me when I think of "Java
| games". Absolute classics
| flybyair2048 wrote:
| It's great to see our team's tool, Deep Space Trajectory
| Explorer, come in at #2! DSTE is a custom software tool that's
| being used by NASA Johnson Space Center to design/visualize
| complex orbits for upcoming missions to send astronauts to the
| Moon in 2024+!
| the_arun wrote:
| To this list we could also add Cassandra, ANTLR, Spring
| Framework, JUnit, Jetty, Tomcat, Android etc. The list continues.
| The beauty of Java is not Java/Programming language - but JVM. It
| inspired people to make other languages such as Scala or Kotlin.
| ertucetin wrote:
| And Clojure
| rando231 wrote:
| Sort of mystifying that ByteBuddy (a library) is included while
| Spring framework is not. I realize that some people point to the
| edges of the Spring ecosystem as proof that it is low-quality,
| but it's hard to argue against the framework itself being great.
|
| Edit: To clarify, I also don't agree with 'proof' of Spring being
| 'low quality'. In my experience most who criticize Spring don't
| understand that it is a loosely coupled collection of things
| implemented on top of IoC/AOP, and are frustrated when they are
| forced to diagnose things that go wrong. From the beginning,
| Spring moved fast because it wasn't bogged down in committee, and
| it covers huge portions of software development. Quality does
| vary between the value add sub-projects, but it's amazing what
| the Spring community has done with IoC/AOP.
| javajosh wrote:
| Yes, Spring is good, and in general there's been a lot of
| innovation started in Java and spread elsewhere. The whole
| "Dependency Injection" idea started in Java, and a lot more
| stuff started there too, or at least was popularized AFAIK. For
| example, pattern languages themselves. But some great libraries
| like JodaTime came from there, as did Doug Lea's very nice
| rendering of better concurrency primitives - and both of these
| ultimately got into the core library itself.
| noema wrote:
| Wasn't the "Gang of Four" book written entirely in C++?
| diroussel wrote:
| I suspect the greatest java apps are the ones that can't be
| written about. The ones that run in a data center, that are a
| tremenous advantage in the market to the companies that run them.
| These are so important to the app owners, that they don't want
| others to know about them.
| cerberusss wrote:
| I'm not surprised that Vuze (or its clone/successor BiglyBT) is
| not there. But it's one of the oldest desktop torrent clients,
| and is still being developed.
| listenallyall wrote:
| H2 database is pretty awesome. Such a pleasure to use vs SQLite
| and even vs some large-scale RDBMSs.
| codr7 wrote:
| Second that, I used H2 as the basis for a time
| reporting/invoicing system that has been runnin without issues
| for 7 years now.
|
| As far as SQL databases go, definitely my best experience, it
| just works.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| For reference, this is what that page shows when opened with
| uBlock Origin + uMatrix: https://imgur.com/a/yd9OAPB
|
| This might be confirmation bias, but I actually think it conveys
| pretty much what it should. :)
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