Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 30th Apr 2008 13:04 UTC, submitted by someone
Back in 2007 when Apple released Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, a much-heard criticism was the lack of support for Java 6. Leopard shipped with an older version of Java, 1.5, even though 1.6 had been released by Sun almost a year prior. Sun had already released Java 1.6 for Linux and Windows, but did not do so for Mac OS X, since Apple insists on developing their own version of Java, according to Sun. Now, 6 months later, Mac Java programmers can rejoice.
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Member since:2005-07-15
sun have a jvm for a lot of embedded system
also it's not the sun's job to create a jvm for all cpu...
sun provide an implementation... people can create a jvm if they want...
a lot of embdedded system use java to program... like muvium (www.muvium.com)... this system cpu is under 50Mhz...
don't forget java is a language...
if you find the jvm implementation you use, try to use another one... or try compagny who take the java code and convert it directly in c or asm...
you can try gcj... but for the majority of the test i done, it's slower than sun jvm
Member since:2006-05-14
I think it was Apple's choice not to have Java 1.6. Not Sun. Sun doesnt make a Java VM for Apple (or many other platforms). I think they support Linux/Windows and Solaris. From what i understand its up to Apple to develop and deploy Java on the Mac OS X platform.
Also, I am not sure what embedded system you are working with, but the J2ME works on lots of devices with as little as 5MB of RAM (some i suspect even less). If you are having to deal with JNI, it sounds like you are probably dealing with hardware that has no java library support. Thats not Java's Fault either (its like blaming language X for not having libraries for hardware Y, so you have to use an external interface to libraries written in language Z).
Java does not equal C. If you want C portability, use C. If you want Java's features, use Java. Or if you want the best of both worlds and your platform supports GNU GCC use Their GCJ compiler, and compile to native code and link to C/C++ libraries as needed. There are also more efficient VMs such as Kaffe.
BTW- i suggest if you are having problems with eclipse, use NetBeans. I have started using it for ruby development and its very nice.
Member since:2008-04-30
Member since:2006-01-23
I think the worse evil is the fact that we don't get this for Tiger... 
Java 6 GM has been available for Tiger since late 2007, hasn't it?
They even mention it in this support note: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=307177
I'm not even sure that Apple have updated Java 5 for Leopard with the latest fixes but it's been a long time since I loaded Java 6 onto my Ubuntu and Windows machines.
For a company that said that Mac OS X was the best platform ever for Java, it's time for them to eat their words.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 22:43 UTC
The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 21:50 UTC
PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.More News »
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Member since:
2007-04-17
I'm currently working on a Java project on an embedded system. A bit annoyed by all the legacy code I have to work with, I'll start a small rant against Java to fight my boredom.
The news kinda reveals my biggest gripe against Java. For me it is not portable at all; at least, no more than other languages.
Most platforms feature at least a free decent C compiler. From there either you directly have a modern C++ compiler or you can compile a C++ compiler (i.e. GCC). Even on the embedded systems, it is quite rare not to be able to get a decent C++ compiler (although a lot of programmers in the embedded market tend to dismiss it, 'cause someone told them embedded programming had to be done in C).
Now, with Java, you're at the mercy of having a decent JVM for the relevant platforms. Of course, major platforms have access to a decent Java 6 VM, but it's far from being the case on more exotic platforms. Mind the news above: MacOS X had to wait a year to have access to Java 6, and it's only covering the latest 64 bits Intel CPUs! Personally, I don't think that MacOS X is such an exotic platform.
A lot of "exotic" platforms do have a JVM, but usually it's a decent Java 1.2 VM at best, or a quite slow and incomplete Java 1.1 VM at worst. Some programmers are happy with that, I'm not.
In the project I'm working on, they use JNI to interface the Java part with a C++ library doing the core work. While it makes sense from a technical point (the core part needs to be as fast and efficient, the target being an embedded system), it makes things even worse.
Not even talking about the 64 MB eaten up by the JVM (WTF?! 64 MB on an embedded device, just for a GUI ?!). The addition of a C++ library, combining Java and C++ portability shortcomings together, makes the portability of the whole project a nightmare.
I could also go on about all these Java development tools that, as if they were the only relevant Java application, install development tools or libraries that are incompatible with the rest of the system (Eclipse anyone ?)
A bored and annoyed developper.
PS. Yesterday, Eclipse (lastest stable version) crashed about 10 times the Sun JVM (also latest stable version) with some nice segfault. Although I recall someone telling me that segfaults were impossible in Java, I most certainly encountered way more Sun JVM crashes than I found critical bugs in C++ compilers (GCC and VS).