Oracle to open source Arm jdk 9

[netcat]

When Java first came out 21 years ago "platform independence" was the main selling point, at least for me. Back it was either Mac or windows, and actually windows 95 was all the rage. (Running *nix at home was well out of reach of a college freshman, technically and financially). I much preferred Mac's, but windows had way more dev tools, it just seemed more serious. Anyway, with Java I was optimistic that programs would not be bound to a particular OS, and I could be a "proper" coder on a mac.

Then POSIX came along.

 

[WizardStan]

Then POSIX came along.

hmm? Can you elaborate on that? I was a DOS/Windows dev until 2000, and then Java for some projects: didn't touch a posix system until 2004 so I probably skipped over whatever you're talking about.

 

[netcat]

Supposedly if you code to posix api's it will be easy to port your program to other posix compliant os's. Isn't that the case?

 

[WizardStan]

Supposedly if you code to posix api's it will be easy to port your program to other posix compliant os's. Isn't that the case?

Oh, yes, that's exactly the point. Doesn't help with a lot of the stuff Java was making easy though. There's no no posix gui packages, or audio packages, for example. And completely ignores the fact that until fairly recently Windows wasn't POSIX at all, so it's not like "write once, compile everywhere" would work, to say nothing of "write once, run everywhere".
Java still has a leg up in a lot of situations.

 

[Letalis Sonus]

Most systems are not fully POSIX compliant. While Mac OS X is POSIX certified, Linux/LSB isn't and "only" covers a large part of the standard, Torvalds was very clear that they will do stuff differently if it makes sense - it seems to be somewhat similar with the free BSDs.

And completely ignores the fact that until fairly recently Windows wasn't POSIX at all

Are you referring to the new Linux subsystem? Last I checked Windows still didn't support POSIX threads natively and network sockets can't be accessed by functions for file descriptors.

 

[WizardStan]

Well there you go, it's still not POSIX compliant, so Java is still relevant in the "write once, run/compile anywhere".