Java at 30: Interview with James Gosling

I admire Java as a success story, but I still have a deeply ingrained aversion to it for many reasons. I will admit that many of the reasons are due to Java's legacy as the language of bloated corporations, and its creation of overly verbose, magic fueled frameworks and poorly written code. Java as a language goes hand in hand with the idea that code is coal to be shoveled into the furnace, and we should all throw our aspirations away and embrace mediocrity.

My other issues with the JVM is how much of a black box it is from a platform perspective, which makes debugging a PITA with standard ops tools like strace, gdb, etc. The JVM's over allocation of memory robs the kernel of real insight as to how the workload is actually performing. When you use the JVM, you are completely locked in and god help you if there isn't a JVM expert to debug your thing and unravel how it translates to a platform implementation.

Then of course there's the weird licensing, it's association with Oracle, managing JDK versions, it's lack of it factor in 2025, and a huge boatload of legacy holding it back (which is not unique to Java).

I have successfully navigated my career with minimal exposure to Java, and nowadays there's a glut of highly performant languages with GC that support minimal runtimes, static compilation, and just look like regular binaries such that the problems solved by something like the Java or Python VMs just aren't as relevant anymore - they just add operational complexity.

To reiterate, I admire JG just like any tech person should. Java's success is clear and apparent, but I'm glad I don't have to use it.

>My other issues with the JVM is how much of a black box it is from a platform perspective, which makes debugging a PITA

Java has one the greatest debugging capabilities ever. dynamic breakpoints, conditional breakpoints, hell you can ever restart a stack frame after hot deploying code without a restart. You can overwrite any variable in memory, set uncaught exception breakpoints, and even have the JVM wait for a debugger to connect before starting. There is no equivalent in any other language that does _all_ of these things. And to top this off, there is 0 equivalent to Idea or Eclipse for any other language.

For runtime dynamics, JMX/JConsole is good enough for daily use, Java Flight Recorder gives you deep insight, or in a system you don't have direct access to. Hell even running jstack on a JVM is a good debug tool. If those don't do the trick, there's plain old HPROF (similar to other languages) and Eclipse Memory Analyzer.

>Then of course there's the weird licensing,

The JVM is open source. There are no licensing issues. OpenJDK can be freely downloaded and run in production without restrictions on any use. If you really want to buy a JVM from Oracle... well thats your prerogative.

> it's lack of it factor in 2025,

sdkman

> a huge boatload of legacy holding it back

what legacy code?