Part of Panama is the Vector API, currently in "incubation". Kotlin Notebooks are a great dataframe alternative to pandas or polars in Python (and dplyr in R), and work fine for relatively small data sets, but are indeed slower when dealing with calculations on large data. Vectors should reduce that gap significantly.
"We are improving and enriching the connections between the Java virtual machine and well-defined but “foreign” (non-Java) APIs, including many interfaces commonly used by C programmers."
They are doing something new in the language -> innovating.
JNI was always the wrong way to do FFI. FFI should require no changes or wrappers in the native code; anything short of that is unnecessary and inefficient. Yet, somehow, in Java land, this is still the norm in 2026?
I'd really want to love Java, but man, it has a long laundry list of warts and a near-zero pace of innovation.
If you include a word like innovating in quotes it typically implies that you're quoting it from the link. It can also signify irony, but in a context like HN where we're discussing a published article, it's often ambiguous.
As for Java, I'd agree that its pace of advance was pretty glacial during the Sun era, but from what I've seen has picked up considerably since the Oracle acquisition and Brian Goetz became architect.
And however bad Java is, it's nothing compared to JavaScript. It takes a decade just to add new a library function, and every new syntax proposal is DOA.
> Yet, somehow, in Java land, this is still the norm in 2026?
FFM (what this article refers to) was released some releases ago. So what is the issue? If you mean what 3rd party libraries use - is that a concern to you? That's like saying there exists legacy code.
> it has a long laundry list of warts
It's such a surprise because you haven't even mentioned 1.
Part of Panama is the Vector API, currently in "incubation". Kotlin Notebooks are a great dataframe alternative to pandas or polars in Python (and dplyr in R), and work fine for relatively small data sets, but are indeed slower when dealing with calculations on large data. Vectors should reduce that gap significantly.
Check out the Clojure tech.ml.dataset libraries - they are very very fast
Really cool, thanks.
I love it how Java is "innovating" by catching up to things that other programming languages have had for three decades.
What other language does it better?
"We are improving and enriching the connections between the Java virtual machine and well-defined but “foreign” (non-Java) APIs, including many interfaces commonly used by C programmers."
Where does it say "innovating"?
They are doing something new in the language -> innovating.
JNI was always the wrong way to do FFI. FFI should require no changes or wrappers in the native code; anything short of that is unnecessary and inefficient. Yet, somehow, in Java land, this is still the norm in 2026?
I'd really want to love Java, but man, it has a long laundry list of warts and a near-zero pace of innovation.
If you include a word like innovating in quotes it typically implies that you're quoting it from the link. It can also signify irony, but in a context like HN where we're discussing a published article, it's often ambiguous.
As for Java, I'd agree that its pace of advance was pretty glacial during the Sun era, but from what I've seen has picked up considerably since the Oracle acquisition and Brian Goetz became architect.
And however bad Java is, it's nothing compared to JavaScript. It takes a decade just to add new a library function, and every new syntax proposal is DOA.
> Yet, somehow, in Java land, this is still the norm in 2026?
FFM (what this article refers to) was released some releases ago. So what is the issue? If you mean what 3rd party libraries use - is that a concern to you? That's like saying there exists legacy code.
> it has a long laundry list of warts
It's such a surprise because you haven't even mentioned 1.
> and a near-zero pace of innovation
Garbage collection? ZGC?
This isn't new or innovating. This is "improving and enriching".
You're unfairly trying to hold making improvements against them.
Well, yeah. It's the explicit design philosphy of the language to wait and see what works as other languages do the experimenting.