Kevin Farnham on foojay.io - Friends of OpenJDK

Interview on Machine Learning and Disruptive Data Science

Fri, 26 Mar 2021 13:15:29 +0000

I attended sessions and spoke with Java Champion Fabiane Bizinella Nardon at many JavaOne conferences over the past years. I remember, in our conversations in the hallways, discussing various entrepreneurial ventures she was working on. One of the ideas was Tail Target . Fast forward almost a decade, and Tail Target has truly come to fruition.

Fabiane Bizinella Nardon has an MSc in Computer Science and a PhD in Electronic Engineering. She is an expert in Data Engineering and Machine Language Engineering. She is the program committee leader for the Machine Learning Engineering track of QCon São Paulo, a frequent speaker on the subject, and author of several articles.

A Compendium of 2021 Java & OpenJDK Predictions

Fri, 22 Jan 2021 08:03:25 +0000

Now that 2021 is well underway, many prominent Java developers have taken the time to predict what 2021 may bring to the Java universe.

In December, here on Foojay.io, several articles were published on this theme, such as Java Predictions for 2021 , Java Predictions for 2021: Jakarta EE , and Java Predictions for 2021: Raspberry Pi . In early January, Simon Ritter published Staring Into My Java Snow Globe 2021 . Separately, I conversed with another six developers about their visions for the coming year.

Seven Ways to Contribute to the OpenJDK

Wed, 18 Nov 2020 08:49:32 +0000

A great many developers today are employed working with OpenJDK. If OpenJDK is the background source for your livelihood, you might want to contribute to future development of the OpenJDK.

There are many ways you can do this. In this article I outline 7 possibilities, ranging from minimal work (because you’re too busy to do much, but you’d like to do something) to intensive work (participating on OpenJDK development is everything you want to do, it’s more than a hobby, you want to contribute to the maximum extent possible).

Peter Lawrey Talks about Low-Latency, High-Performance Java

Thu, 22 Oct 2020 04:28:38 +0000

About 7 years ago, I attended a session given by Java Champion Peter Lawrey, leader of Chronical Software , at a JavaOne conference. Since most of my prior development work in the realm of low-latency high-performance was C/C++ software, I was very interested in hearing what Peter might say about how Java addresses this problem.

I have to admit, being a long-time C/C++ developer, but also with quite a lot of experience with Java, I was a bit skeptical as to how Java might match up to C/C++ in terms of multithread performance.

What do you think was the reason that Java was invented?

Mon, 05 Oct 2020 06:14:16 +0000

In my last post I described the timing differences between executing javac to create Java bytecode and running the actual bytecode. Some readers noticed that, obviously, the javac operation will automatically take more time than the execution of the byte code will take, and wondered why I took the time to write the post. Why would we even have javac if it didn’t improve runtime performance? In fact, why would Java have even been invented if we couldn’t use javac to create fast-running bytecode?

Timing Compiling .java Code Files and Executing .class Bytecode

Mon, 28 Sep 2020 04:37:39 +0000

Java developers are familiar with the notion that the foundation of Java is “write once, run anywhere.” That is, the same Java code will run on all the primary operating systems and hardware platforms. As I noted in my earlier post Why Java, C, and Python Are Today’s Most Utilized Programming Languages , Python comes somewhat close to this (though in my experience what works on Linux may not work out-of-the-box on Windows or Mac), and of course C/C++ require immense adaptation of the software in order for it to work on different operating systems and hardware platforms.

What is JVM Bytecode?

Wed, 16 Sep 2020 03:55:43 +0000

Everyone who programs in Java, or any of the other languages built on top of the Java Virtual Machine (Scala, Closure, Kotlin, Groovy, Nashorn, Jython, JRuby, et al.) is familiar with the term “bytecode.” But how many of us understand what JDK bytecode actually is?

I became more curious about this after I wrote my last foojay.io post, Why the JVM Is a Brilliant Platform for New Programming Languages . What exactly is bytecode?

Why the JVM Is a Brilliant Platform for New Programming Languages

Wed, 09 Sep 2020 05:07:34 +0000

In my previous post , I speculated that Java, Python, and C are likely to be the most prominent programming languages going pretty far into the future.

Another point in my speculation was that utilizing the Java Virtual Machine facilitates the invention of new programming languages created for special purposes that could not be easily created by other means. The JVM takes care of all of the low-level infrastructure problems that are involved in the creation of any software that you’d like to be runnable on any device or operating system.

Java, C, and Python: Today's Most Used Program Languages?

Fri, 21 Aug 2020 04:41:57 +0000

Looking at the latest TIOBE Programming Community Index , we see that Java has recently surpassed C in the TIOBE ratings index, while Python is holding steady in the third position:

Back in 2014, I wrote an analysis of the TIOBE data at that time period, claiming that: TIOBE Is (Unintentionally) Misleading; in Truth, Interest in Java Is Surging .

My point back then was that, since the TIOBE index is compiled at least in part based on internet searches that include that language’s name, it might be misleading to assume that simply because searches involving the word “Java” were somewhat declining, that would indicate that the usage of Java was actually in decline. My logic then was that newer languages would likely receive more search engine searches than older languages simply because they were newer languages; therefore less documentation was readily available, hence more searches, hence a higher TIOBE rating.

Is Java Still an 'Emerging Technology' Today?

Mon, 10 Aug 2020 11:33:00 +0000

Eleven years ago, I wrote an article asking Is Java Becoming an ‘Emerging Technology’? Ask O’Reilly" . Think about that: in 2011, how could one have sensibly argued that Java was an ’emerging technology’? The language already had a long history, deep integration across all spectra of business and scientific software development. How, at that point, could Java possibly represent ’emerging technology’?

O’Reilly Media at that time was featuring several articles describing why Java was suddenly newly relevant (for this, we can thank the core Java developers who never stopped developing new features). O’Reilly had recently published: