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Comment by djmips

3 months ago

I agree with you except for the JVM bit - but everyone's application varies

My point is that there are situations where C++ (or Rust) is required because the JVM wouldn't work, but those are niche.

In my experience, most people who don't want a JVM language "because it is slow" tend to take this as a principle, and when you ask why their first answer is "because it's interpreted". I would say they are stuck in the 90s, but probably they just don't know and repeat something they have heard.

Similar to someone who would say "I use Gentoo because Ubuntu sucks: it is super slow". I have many reasons to like Gentoo better than Ubuntu as my main distro, but speed isn't one in almost all cases.

  • The JVM is excellent for throughput, once the program has warmed up, but it always has much more jitter than a more systemsy language like C++ or Rust. There are definitely use cases where you need to consistently react fast, where Java is not a good choice.

    It also struggles with numeric work involving large matrices, because there isn't good support for that built into the language or standard library, and there isn't a well-developed library like NumPy to reach for.

    • Yet it made Notch rich, because he had the right idea for a game, and compeling gameplay.

You think the JVM is slow?