This article discusses incremental compaction, a new feature in the memory management component of IBM JDK 1.4.0. Incremental compaction is a way of spreading compaction work across different garbage collection cycles, thereby reducing pause times. Elsewhere, industry leaders discuss Java status Quo. Also, Eclipse SDK 2.1 leverages Java’s strengths, but beware of too much expansion, InfoWorld says.
Better Java Garbage Collection with IBM’s JDK 1.4.0; More Java News
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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All the Java news, was sponsered by Microsoft.
Sun (and the rest of the Java camp) need to put some money in advertising.
The latest Sun VM locks my machine and every week or so will blow out my Windows XP box, bypassing even the blue screen of death, going for a total system reboot or lock.
Yeah, that new Sun Java really is great. I really need it to view some dumb button animations on the web. Maybe with the new version of Swing those buttons will really fly, right? Uh huh.
So I uninstalled all the Java on my system and find it is faster and more stable. I guess that’s the same thing the Solaris engineers at Sun found out themselves.
>> So I uninstalled all the Java on my system and find it >> is faster and more stable.
Um…there is something wrong with your machine and/or XP. I *might* go for the JVM locking your PC up but affecting overall performance? Not bloody likely.
the .net framework also uses an incremental gc mechanism, but organizes objects into ‘generations’, checking long-lived objects less frequently. there’s a good article at:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/1200/GCI2/default.aspx
Michael: BS, There is no BSOD in WinXP.
Is IBM’s JDK an alternative to the Sun j2re ? I didn’t know there were seperate efforts to create essentially the same thing… (if that is true)
Garbage collection is a very well-known area of computer science…
Why do I get the sense that whenever Java (or C# for that matter) incorporates “hot new improvements”, it’s usually something old described using new terms and described in a very dumbed down manner?
Considering the background of some people developing Java features or extensions (people like Guy L. Steele and Philip Wadler), I can’t help but come to the same conclusion as Paul Graham – Java is intentionally not designed for smart people.
Of course IBM has their own JDK, what did you think they do? use SUNs? LOL! good one. Do you really think they’d wait for SUN to port Java to AIX?
>> Java is intentionally not designed for smart people.
Can you back up your claims? What’s your background? As far as I know you could be a VB/Delphi troll (for which the expression above really fits well).
I agree, to some extent with your comment, if you mean that “not so smart” people can use the language. However, i think often Java as a rapid prototyping language which means i could use it to test concepts that in other languages like C++ are a pain to implement.
I’m more productive with Java than with C/C++ (in the end that’s all that matters).
I’ve don’t think you even bother to try Java. You’re only trolling… And your comment is strongly biased towards .NET/C#.
<quote>Michael: BS, There is no BSOD in WinXP.</quote>
I beg to differ. I have triggered several of these on Windows XP machines. XP is 90% Windows 2000 and it does inherit the Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD).
I have *NEVER* seen the JRE/JDK cause one though. And certainly not the 1.4 series.
I would like to see these ideas taken by the programmers of the gcj team. Anything involving the improvement of garvage colection is worth looking at. I really like the idea behind libgcj, it means automatically VM sharing (including GC) from the ground up, I would like this project to absorb as many would ideas as possible.
It’s kind of a shame that Sun didn’t start right out with Java 1.2, it would have a much better reputation today if it had. Virtually everyone that trolls against Java complains about the slow performance of Java 1.0/1.1 and the absolutely horrible experience that was programming AWT.
However, Swing is a joy to work with, and JRE 1.4 runs things more than fast enough for me.
The real beauty of Java is the productivity of it. I can write considerably better code faster in it than I could with C or C++.
A program makes your Windows XP blue screen? Have you ever considered it could be because its a crappy OS? I doubt its the JVM’s fault if the whole machine locks up.
Windows XP is a kick ass OS. Now about JVM im very surprised that it locks up your machine maybe you have problems on your machine. Finally there is a blue screen of death in XP but its usually if you have hardware problems that it arrises.
I’ve had Java (1.2) kill an NT box once, well I had Java use a graphics feature, which a badly writen g/c driver did not do very well kill an NT box.
>Have you ever considered it could be because its a crappy OS
XP sucks – no doubt about that. I had win2000 running for a long time without having it lock the machine. Then I bought a new PC that had winXP preinstalled. After that the machined kept locking over and over again. The performance is slow and annoying. So, IMHO people who say:
“Windows XP is a kick ass OS” really cant know what they are talking about! You cannot judge a product without knowing its counterparts, and I am pretty sure that is the case when someone says that XP rocks!!
In case you’re still monitoring this thread…
Definitely not trolling. You shouldn’t read my original comment as “my language is better than yours”, more like “I know tens of languages, including Java, and Java seems very weak”.
I also consider the current mainstream obsession with object orientation as the only design methodology a big mistake. I became disillusioned with single-paradigm OOP years ago (not that I don’t still apply OO methods frequently, when they fit well with what I’m doing).
As a concrete example – representing ASTs using a class hierarchy vs. variant types…the latter is far more natural and less error-prone.