The O’Reilly Programming Podcast: Thoughts on performance, modularity, and what’s next for Java.
In this episode of the O’Reilly Programming Podcast, I talk with Ben Evans, co-founder and technology fellow at JClarity, and co-author of the forthcoming O’Reilly book Optimizing Java: Practical Techniques for Improved Performance Tuning. We discuss the upcoming release of Java 9, Java performance issues, and Evans’ experience as an organizer for the London Java Community.
Discussion points:
- While praising the engineering work that’s been done for Java 9, Evans says he sees “nothing desperately compelling” to encourage developers to upgrade. “It’s a fairly bare cupboard for developers who want new productivity features,” he says.
- That said, Evans sees Java 9 as a stepping stone that will possibly enable radical new features to be delivered in Java 10 and 11. “It would not surprise me to see a world where very few people make the jump from 8 to 9, and a lot of people go straight from 8 to 10,” he says.
- We discuss the controversy surrounding the Java Platform Module System, Project Jigsaw, which has led to the delay of the release of Java 9.
- On the topic of measuring Java performance numbers, Evans cautions against microbenchmarking. “Over optimizing for microbenchmarks is actually harmful,” he says, noting Google’s recent decision to retire the Octane benchmark.
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