Geek Talk and Sun Sets

Here's a fun and occasionally humorous geek talk conversation I had today. Publishing this gives me a vehicle to post my thoughts about the impending death of Sun Microsystems, a vendor I've always had a great deal of affection for (as much as one can have for "vendorz" I suppose) due to their engineering-centric products and "the network is the computer" foresight. Not to mention the Java software development environment I've been associated with for almost ten years now.

The true identities of the participants have been elided for workplace and personal liability reasons. Plus I get to expose you to the way-fun LOLCODE website (thanks Ian!).

Verbatim-ish email transcript below - read from bottom (thanks and a hat tip to Bob Frankston for this semi-effective but easy-to-blog narrative device):

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Firstly apologies in advance to Dan.

No humorous lolcode links here either, so don't worry. I'm nothing if not humorless. I even changed the Subject: line to help steer into seriousness a bit.

But I think this *serious response* (to what might be a frivolous troll-like point admittedly) is or at least ought to be of interest to nearly everyone on _Global_Architecture_Ext mail list and as such constitutes (part of) my job responsibility. So I'm sending this forth without guilt. You may of course choose to ignore, that's your prerogative.

---

What I recommend is *not* "killing" or "switching" languages at all. The idea of killing or switching would seem to imply that we should use one and only one language.

Imagine we have a JVM (and we do for a goodly fraction of all our running and planned software). Doesn't matter *whose* JVM as long as it runs standard bytecodes (which rules out the Android "JVM" BTW).

Then imagine a world where some of our source is written in:
1. Java the Language. This is important for all our existing Java source as well as for new development where some of our devs only know Java the Language.
2. Groovy (and boy do I hate the name but love the language in nearly equal measure) as a high-signal/low-noise language where clearly readable intent in the source is a paramount virtue.
3. Scala where a workload in the object domain both permits and demands leveraging lots of cheap commodity threads and cores to achieve an acceptable throughput and cost of scalability.

Yes I could mention JVM-hosted languages like JRuby and Jython and Clojure (and I'm not opposed to any of those) but they aren't as deeply integrated into the existing Java object model (i.e. all classes implicitly descending from Object) and having access to all of the familiar and effective Object and Class goodness is very powerful from a Java developer standpoint, while still obtaining the benefits of JVM-hosted code that allows existing development and deployment tools and platforms to be leveraged *without change*.

And to those of you who are .NET devs, the concept I'm promoting: developers with a ***multiple language toolkit*** running on a common VM and runtime should also be familiar and relevant to you.

-Pauly


-----Original Message-----
From: Dan
Sent: Fri 4/3/2009 3:22 PM
To: Ian; Boris; Paulytron; Lee; AnotherFellowPaul; AlexY; GregH; _Global_Architecture;
Subject: RE: Oracle and HP together again.

I am sorry, but can either someone please remove me from that global
arch ext mailing list or start to post only mails on that list that
are _really_ relevant to _all_ recipients on that list...

Thank you!
Dan


-----Original Message-----
From: Ian
Sent: Friday, April 03, 2009 2:48 PM
To: Boris; Paulytron; Lee; AnotherFellowPaul; AlexY; GregH; _Global_Architecture;
Subject: RE: Oracle and HP together again.

I forgot to mention the other (very obvious) alternative, Boris:
http://lolcode.com/


-----Original Message-----
From: Ian
Sent: Friday, April 03, 2009 2:48 PM
To: Boris; Paulytron; Lee; AnotherFellowPaul; AlexY; GregH; _Global_Architecture;
Subject: RE: Oracle and HP together again.

Of course not. We should kill it in favor of Erlang...duh. But if you must have a JVM, Scala and Clojure (yay, Lisp!) will do.


-----Original Message-----
From: Boris
Sent: Fri 4/3/2009 2:45 PM
To: Ian; Paulytron; Lee; AnotherFellowPaul; AlexY; GregH; _Global_Architecture;
Subject: RE: Oracle and HP together again.

While, we are on the roll,
Should we kill java as well in favor of say ... Scala?


-----Original Message-----
From: Paulytron
Sent: Friday, April 03, 2009 2:43 PM
To: Ian; Boris; Lee; AnotherFellowPaul; AlexY; GregH; _Global_Architecture;
Subject: RE: Oracle and HP together again.

No need to apologize Ian. Solaris now is (at best, IBM may just kill it) the next AIX, which is to say marginal++.

If Sun had lived to thrive, it might have been different, what with hardcore Linux guys like Jason Perlow extolling the advantages of Solaris innovations like DTrace, Containers and ZFS. And with efforts to bring the OpenSolaris userland in line with the Linux userland so Linux-trained devs and admins can actually be productive. Yeah I sound like a Sun shill but I don't care. I think it's good stuff is all. Sad to waste it.

But as I said that's all moot now. I'll just counter with the *only* significant enterprise I know that runs BSD or OS X is Yahoo (BSD). Otherwise those two are just as marginal server side IMHO.

So Linux it is (even IBM recognizes this). Right Boris: long live Linux.

Which makes me think of something: if IBM releases the IP for stuff like ZFS (only semi-opened by Sun) into open source (not unlikely) Linux becomes stronger. Apple purportedly has a port of ZFS running on OS X as well FWIW (not that this is relevant server side at this point in time).

-Pauly


-----Original Message-----
From: Ian
Sent: Friday, April 03, 2009 2:40 PM
To: Boris; Paulytron; Lee; AnotherFellowPaul; AlexY; GregH; _Global_Architecture;
Subject: RE: Oracle and HP together again.

I think you're forgetting the BSDs, notably FreeBSD and OS X (with the later playing a larger role in the Java picture, but the former on the server-side)...

...and I've always seen Solaris as a slowly sinking ship. Sorry Pauly. HP-UX, Irix or AIX, anyone?


-----Original Message-----
From: Boris
Sent: Fri 4/3/2009 2:38 PM
To: Paulytron; Lee; AnotherFellowPaul; AlexY; GregH; _Global_Architecture;
Subject: RE: Oracle and HP together again.

Well,

Despite of all IBM is the largest java and java tools shop today. As for Solaris, I think it is gone. Long live Linux and windows


___________________________

From: Paulytron
Sent: Friday, April 03, 2009 2:35 PM
To: Lee; AnotherFellowPaul; AlexY; GregH; _Global_Architecture;
Subject: RE: Oracle and HP together again.

"If this happens, it would be a tectonic change in the computing landscape."

I agree. Java and Solaris are (still) key enterprise platforms now. The JVM (but which one!) will remain so going forward under IBM. Solaris? Unclear.

-Pauly

________________________________

From: Lee
Sent: Friday, April 03, 2009 2:27 PM
To: AnotherFellowPaul; AlexY; Paulytron; GregH; _Global_Architecture;
Subject: RE: Oracle and HP together again.

Usually, the buyer doesn't want the news to leak because it jacks up the price in the marketplace. (i.e. IBM would have to pay more to acquire them) From a shareholder perspective, if anyone would want it leaked, it would be Sun.

If this happens, it would be a tectonic change in the computing landscape.

Regards,
/lee

_________________________

From: AnotherFellowPaul
Sent: Friday, April 03, 2009 2:23 PM
To: AlexY; Paulytron; GregH; _Global_Architecture;
Subject: RE: Oracle and HP together again.

Just talked with a relative who has a non-engineering job at Sun. He's planning on not having a job in 6 months. So that's one perspective from which the IBM-Sun deal is far from dead or stuck. My sense from him is that the initial news was an early leak (perhaps intentional by IBM).


___________________________

From: AlexY
Sent: Friday, April 03, 2009 12:02 PM
To: Paulytron; GregH; _Global_Architecture;
Subject: RE: Oracle and HP together again.

Does not it looks like IBM - Sun deal stuck? Or dead? No new announcements often hints on that possibility. Or am I missing something here?

Well, good for people who understand hardware. I don't value Sun for hardware, and I see the infamous Schwartz with his unbearable attachment to hardware only as a complete idiot and coward and liar. Natural liquidator. But Sun's software innovations and achievements - that's a pity to lose.


------------------------
From: Paulytron
Sent: Friday, April 03, 2009 11:49 AM
To: GregH; _Global_Architecture;
Subject: RE: Oracle and HP together again.

The Sun set at Oracle as soon as the market for Sparc CPU set, about 5 years ago.

As soon as x64/x86 became ascendant for RDBMS workloads, Linux (specifically RHEL) became their #1 target. To the point that Oracle forked RHEL to make their own Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL). Interestingly, because the installed customer base of unforked RHEL from Red Hat exceeds that of OEL, Oracle still releases and patches first on RHEL I'm led to believe.

Returning to Sun, it's all a little unfortunate since Solaris on (any) x64/x86 box has some true performance and enterprise management advantages compared to any Linux. And Sun's own x64/x86 boxen also have some superior engineering features compared to Dell or HP or anyone else you can name. But Sun shot themselves in the foot when they publicly announced they were killing Solaris-on-Intel I guess it was 4 years or so ago. When they changed their mind a few months later when Schwartz came in it was too late: the perception of Sun as Sparc only was cemented in the marketplace (and even here at REDACTED: ask people's - even technical personnel - perceptions of Sun and you will invariably hear about slow and expensive Sparc CPUs boxes).

But that's all pretty much mooted by the reality of Oracle-on-Linux. And probably permanently mooted by IBM purchasing Sun, depending on whether IBM kills Solaris or AIX. And since IBM pushes DB2, it probably doesn't matter in any case.

Getting back to this HP announcement, the boxen are now commodities. The box in question is running OEL and has eight Intel x64 cores. HP as far as I can tell adds little differentiable value. It could be anyone's 8 x64 core box with redundant power supplies and dual InfiniBand, no?

To conclude: yes everyone knows I'm a Sun fanboy. Can't help it, I have a bias to good engineering despite their often clueless and questionable business practices, whose day of reckoning is now. And I've always balanced this by saying I own no Sun stock. I used to add "fortunately" to that statement, but right now I wish I had bought some at $4 and change a few months ago (or less right after the dotcom bust): IBM is paying more than twice that.

-Pauly


________________________________

From: GregH
Sent: Friday, April 03, 2009 10:53 AM
To: _Global_Architecture
Subject: Oracle and HP together again.

Here's a new Oracle/HP offering, and the rumors are looking like they maybe true. Has the Sun set at Oracle?

This product looks very interesting for the Data Warehouse option. I can see potential for this at REDACTED. The cost would be the next obvious question.

http://www.oracle.com/database/exadata.html

Regards,
GregH