Non-programming question about Java...

ScottM1

Well then pass 2 Doubles, why create a struct for that? I just did this test on .Net 4 x64 where I made 10 million calls on 2 different methods, one that accepts a struct and one that accepts 2 Doubles. The one that accepts Doubles ran in 336 ms and the one that accepts a struct ran in 325 ms. It was consistently between 5 and 20 ms difference, hardly something to be concerned about.

Lost User

It depends on the point of view. When Java was introduced, it brought to production a lot of great ideas (including garbage collection). But, after 6 years of almost no evolution and the horrible handling of the Sun acquisition by Oracle, it's been left behind. The fact that there are a lot of legacy libraries not ready to use later language developments and the object-oriented dogmatism of the java community just add insult to injury. At a language (not platform) level, there is almost nothing java can do that c# cannot do, while there are plenty of things C# can do with much less code than java (think of dynamic types, lambdas and other functional programming consrtucts, implicit strong typing and all things that make for example ASP.NET MVC so wonderfull concise). In the end, most Java programs I've seen are very verbose. Some of the best professionals know when to use other languages based on the JVM (like groovy) to make coding more concise, but it's not a widespread practice. Java's slowly becoming the new COBOL.

wout de zeeuw

Here's a test I just did:

    static void Main(string\[\] args) {
        int n = 10000000;
        for (int i = 0; i < 5; ++i) {
            TestStructPerformance(n);
            TestPrimitivePerformance(n);
        }
    }

    private static void TestStructPerformance(int n) {
        TestStruct s = new TestStruct();
        s.X = 1d;
        s.Y = 2d;
        s.Z = 3d;
        double x = 0d;
        DateTime start = DateTime.Now;
        for (int i = 0; i < n; ++i) {
            x += GetX(s);
        }
        DateTime end = DateTime.Now;
        Console.WriteLine("Struct elapsed time: " + (end - start).TotalMilliseconds);
        Console.WriteLine("(" + x + ")");
    }

    private static void TestPrimitivePerformance(int n) {
        double x = 1d;
        double y = 2d;
        double z = 3d;
        double t = 0d;
        DateTime start = DateTime.Now;
        for (int i = 0; i < n; ++i) {
            t += GetX(x, y, z);
        }
        DateTime end = DateTime.Now;
        Console.WriteLine("Primitive elapsed time: " + (end - start).TotalMilliseconds);
        Console.WriteLine("(" + t + ")");
    }

    public struct TestStruct {
        public double X, Y, Z;
    }

    public static double GetX(TestStruct s) {
        return s.X;
    }

    public static double GetX(double x, double y, double z) {
        return x;
    }

Results on Intel CORE i5, x64, Win 7, .NET 4.0 (careful to run in release mode!): Struct elapsed time: 48,0061 (10000000) Primitive elapsed time: 32,5042 (10000000) Struct elapsed time: 52,5067 (10000000) Primitive elapsed time: 35,5045 (10000000) Struct elapsed time: 57,5073 (10000000) Primitive elapsed time: 32,004 (10000000) Struct elapsed time: 48,0061 (10000000) Primitive elapsed time: 32,0041 (10000000) Struct elapsed time: 44,5057 (10000000) Primitive elapsed time: 29,0037 (10000000) Our software often works with 2D, 3D and 4D vectors/points, and just passing the doubles as separate parameters would not be workable on the scale that we use it. In some performance critical bits we can do that, but the best thing if MS would fix these performance issues as it would be relatively minor effort for them to do so. EDIT: made minor screw up in the console output, just fixed that bit.

Wout

onemorechance

I started with a plain old text editor and command line. With that experience, I now appreciate a mature IDE (almost ... the text editor never hung & crashed). I have used NetBeans in the past, and am now using Eclipse, but those choices are mainly based on the client environment. Either one is a pretty solid improvement over a plain text editor ...

Sander Rossel

Yikes, that sounds bad... :~

It's an OO world.

public class Naerling : Lazy<Person>{
public void DoWork(){ throw new NotImplementedException(); }
}

ScottM1

I ran your code with the System.Timers.Stopwatch and I got the following on x64: Struct elapsed time: 84 (10000000) Primitive elapsed time: 66 (10000000) Struct elapsed time: 70 (10000000) Primitive elapsed time: 58 (10000000) Struct elapsed time: 69 (10000000) Primitive elapsed time: 59 (10000000) Struct elapsed time: 69 (10000000) Primitive elapsed time: 61 (10000000) Struct elapsed time: 70 (10000000) Primitive elapsed time: 58 (10000000) Interestingly, the differences are actually similar when run under x86 which is not supposed to have this problem.

Bruce Patin

As a language, Java is not much different than any other OO language. My main problem with it is the way the classes have been designed to make it much harder to do things that would be more efficient to do in some other languages. The Java classes appear overtly designed for scalability and extensibility of complex structures. Most often, the work need not be so complex, but the Java classes give me no choice. The next problem is all of the pieces that must be put together in the system to get it to work. And lastly, some programs I had working in earlier releases of Java don't work anymore, and I have to go back and re-code them.

jschell

Naerling wrote:

I've heard some colleagues and friends say that Java is absolutely terrible, so I wasn't to happy about having to use Java.

Certainly if there was no context with those comments then I would dismiss them as at best ignorant and and worse it might indicate that the commenter isn't very smart.

Naerling wrote:

and the Namespace Imports (using),

Huh? Java has import. And in terms of syntax I haven't seen any difference between those two.

Naerling wrote:

Am I missing something or is Java just not the horrible language I was told it is?

Without a context it doesn't mean anything. Various preferences that I can note. - I like the power of C++ templates, memory management and pointers (emphasizing the power here.) - C# app domains are a poor substitute for Java's class loaders. I have yet to see any way in which they are better and quite a few ways in which they are worse. - I like C# properties. - I dislike the ease of C# Linq especially since it can lead to connection leaks (which I have seen.) - I dislike the C# exception handling versus Java. With C# one MUST capture exceptions in every thread or it will take down the application. And there is no equivalent global catch unlike Java. - I like C#/Java null reference exception, array boundary checks and various other exceptions that originate from programming bugs and which C++ merely fails. - In general I prefer the app to handle memory for me in C#/Java (even despite liking the control in C++.) - I like how fast I can put together a simple tool, especially parser/interpreters in Perl. The same thing would take longer and with more code in C#, Java and C++.

jschell

Naerling wrote:

Yeah sure, although the definition of a bad language may be that it does not fit any task

Or no real task. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitespace_%28programming_language%29[^]

chaluta04

I agree and although it's taught with the first two computer science classes and data structure classes at Lamar University, VB was my first language. But I prefer Java.

jschell

Shelby Robertson wrote:

I don't think the language is terrible, but I think the run time is a steaming pile.

Meaning what exactly? That it is buggy? That you have a problem with performance? I haven't seen the former. And the latter is meaningless in standard business programming because in the vast majority of cases language choice will have not impact on that.

jschell

Roger Wright wrote:

There's nothing particularly horrible about Java at all. I don't like the syntax, but I never liked C/C++ either; that's just a personal preference.

Versus what language? C#? The overall structure of C# is similar to C++ and Java. Versus Perl? Cobol? Fortran? Those are different from C#, C++ and Java.

jschell

BobJanova wrote:

But it is just a bit worse than C# in pretty much every way (I really can't think of a single advantage now that Mono/Moonlight clears up most of the 'cross platform' thing that Java used to have over everyone else):

AppDomains are absolutely miserable compared to class loaders.

jschell

tecgoblin wrote:

C# can do with much less code than java (think of dynamic types, lambdas and other functional programming consrtucts, implicit strong typing and all things that make for example ASP.NET MVC so wonderfull concise).

You must work in a different world than I do. Those sort of things have a very minimal place in code. Thus by themselves they certainly cannot have anything to do with "less code". Not to mention of course that "less code" has almost zero impact on the cost of developing software.

tecgoblin wrote:

Some of the best professionals know when to use other languages based on the JVM (like groovy) to make coding more concise, but it's not a widespread practice

Which of course completely ignores the cost of maintaining code. If you yourself maintain all the code you have every written then it isn't a problem. But if you write code for a company and decide that it is fun to wander down every single technology path that comes along then those that follow must also learn every one of those. And that costs money.

wout de zeeuw

Closer timings than on my machine, do you think it's due to the StopWatch? Can't image. The matter is definitely quite obscure, so I wouldn't dare to speculate about why it's still slower on x86.

Wout

BobJanova

Hm, that's probably fair point, although overstated (AppDomains aren't that bad, and I say that with some fairly significant experience of building plugin based applications in .Net).

BobJanova

Lambdas and Linq queries certainly don't have 'a very minimal place in code' in any vaguely up to date .Net development. You are correct about not taking on every cool piece of technology but those language features have made it to the mainstream.

Not to mention of course that "less code" has almost zero impact on the cost of developing software.

I really disagree with that. More code means more time to maintain it, more familiarisation time when bringing new people onto the project, more difficulty in understanding the whole system and more difficulty tracking down the right place to change something when modifying a program. That's why we use high level languages and frameworks in the first place!

Shelby Robertson

Given that my experience with it is limited to screwing around with it on my own time to see if it was worth learning, I found the runtime slow, buggy, and general pain to deal with (different runtime versions not playing well etc)

CPallini wrote:

You cannot argue with agile people so just take the extreme approach and shoot him. :Smile:

jschell

Shelby Robertson wrote:

buggy

You were doing limited use with a recent Oracle VM and found a bug in the VM itself? Or a bug in the API?

Shelby Robertson wrote:

runtime slow

The context that you suggested does not lend itself to that conclusion. There can be some very limited problem domains where that could be relevant and perhaps you were experimenting in those domains.

Shelby Robertson wrote:

and general pain to deal with (different runtime versions not playing well etc)

I am not sure what that means. But different versions of the VM do not run together at all.

Sander Rossel

jschell wrote:

Huh?

Java has import. And in terms of syntax I haven't seen any difference between those two.

As far as I understood the difference would be the following: C#:

// Only one using statement for the entire namespace.
using System.Collections.Generic;

public class SomeClass
{
List<String> someList;
Dictionary<String, String> someDict;
IEnumerable<Object> ienum;
}

And now C#, but using the 'Java mindset'.

// Every class needs another using statement.
using System.Collections.Generic.List<T>;
using System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary<TKey, TValue>;
using System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable<T>;

public class SomeClass
{
List<String> someList;
Dictionary<String, String> someDict;
IEnumerable<Object> ienum;
}

It tends to make the list of using statements quite long :)

jschell wrote:

Various preferences that I can note. etc...

Nice! I'm not very familiar with C++ (but I do want to learn it someday). I don't know Perl at all (just by name). Is it worth the trouble to learn?

It's an OO world.

public class Naerling : Lazy<Person>{
public void DoWork(){ throw new NotImplementedException(); }
}