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Java Hello World, LLVM Edition

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200 points ingve | 6 comments | 07 Dec 25 11:51 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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troymc ◴[07 Dec 25 14:01 UTC] No.46181738[source]▶
I made a poster showing how one might write a Hello World program in 39 different programming languages, and even different versions of some common languages like Java:

https://troymcconaghy.blog/2025/01/13/39-hello-world-program...

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pmdr ◴[07 Dec 25 16:00 UTC] No.46182649[source]▶
Objective C is by far the weirdest on that list.
replies(2): >>46184102 #>>46188470 #
saagarjha ◴[08 Dec 25 04:47 UTC] No.46188470[source]▶
Objective-C is basically Java so I wouldn’t call it that weird.
replies(1): >>46188475 #
gnabgib ◴[08 Dec 25 04:48 UTC] No.46188475[source]▶
Objective-C is significantly (11 years) older than Java.

1984: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objective-C

1995: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_(programming_language)

replies(1): >>46188529 #
saagarjha ◴[08 Dec 25 04:57 UTC] No.46188529[source]▶
Correct, Java was designed with a strongly influence from Objective-C.
replies(1): >>46188549 #
gnabgib ◴[08 Dec 25 05:00 UTC] No.46188549[source]▶
One might even say Java is basically Objective-C
replies(2): >>46189835 #>>46189853 #
saagarjha ◴[08 Dec 25 08:35 UTC] No.46189835[source]▶
No, Java never took anything good from the language.
replies(1): >>46189860 #
pjmlp ◴[08 Dec 25 08:37 UTC] No.46189860[source]▶
Sun folks disagree,

https://cs.gmu.edu/~sean/stuff/java-objc.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_Objects_Everywhere

Sure, they could have taken a bit more, like proper AOT instead of it being a feature only available in third party commercial JDKs, or some low level niceties like C#.

replies(1): >>46190156 #
saagarjha ◴[08 Dec 25 09:20 UTC] No.46190156[source]▶
I was talking about good parts of the language
replies(1): >>46190182 #
pjmlp ◴[08 Dec 25 09:22 UTC] No.46190182[source]▶
Like [] and @ all over the place, C lack of safety, and manual memory management?

Because I don't see what else good Java has left out, besides AOT in the box and unsigned types.

replies(1): >>46190627 #
1. saagarjha ◴[08 Dec 25 10:20 UTC] No.46190627[source]▶
Uh, the entire runtime?
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2. pjmlp ◴[08 Dec 25 12:14 UTC] No.46191360[source]▶
I beg to differ, given the engineering effort that went into JVM across various Java vendors, versus Apple and NeXT have done.

Proven by the fact that Swift had to be invented, as there was nothing left to fix Objective-C in a proper way.

replies(1): >>46191937 #
3. saagarjha ◴[08 Dec 25 13:23 UTC] No.46191937[source]▶
Swift has that runtime, by the way.
replies(1): >>46193584 #
4. pjmlp ◴[08 Dec 25 15:43 UTC] No.46193584{3}[source]▶
Nope, Swift interops with Objective-C runtime to ease code migration from legacy Objective-C code, and existing Apple frameworks predating Swift.

A runtime that isn't part of the cross-platform Swift project, with missing functionality being rewriten into Swift.

replies(1): >>46215989 #
5. jeberle ◴[08 Dec 25 18:32 UTC] No.46195890[source]▶
I would look to the UCSD p-System as a precedent to the JVM. Both are byte-code interpreted VMs. Gosling used the p-system earlier in his career, prior to joining Sun.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gosling#Career_and_contr...

The Objective-C runtime is very small: just enough to do late-bound fn calls to a tree of class defs. All on top of C.

6. saagarjha ◴[10 Dec 25 10:01 UTC] No.46215989{4}[source]▶
Yes, and those platforms are worse off for it.