Ben Evans on Java 9 - a podcast by OReilly Media

The O’Reilly Programming Podcast: Thoughts on performance, modularity, and what’s next for Java.

In this episode of theO’Reilly Programming Podcast, I talk with Ben Evans, co-founder and technology fellow atJClarity, and co-author of the forthcoming O’Reilly bookOptimizing 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 theLondon 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 discussthe 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, notingGoogle’s recent decision to retire the Octane benchmark.

Other links:

• The video courseIntroduction to Java 8, presented by Ben Evans and Martjin Verburg
• The video coursePractical Scala for Java Developers, presented by Julian Templeman and Ben Evans
• The Learning PathBeginning Java Second Edition
• Evans’ recent InfoQ article “Under the Hood with the JVM’s Automatic Resource Management”

Further episodes of O

Further podcasts by O'Reilly Media

Website of O'Reilly Media