Will Java go native?

[Chris]

@Paulo

>Sorry to say this, but this was only because people had to pay 
>for it.
>I have been part of the Java land since the beginning.
>Given that Sun made the SDK available for free, and much 
>projects in Java land are FOSS, there is this culture of free 
>(as in beer).

This is true, and I think this is the only reason why the byte 
code religion could persist. I started with Java in 2004/5 I 
think and although I liked the idea of "write once run 
everywhere" performance would always leave much to be desired.

@Russel

Fair enough, but if developers / users had to wait until Java 8 
(since 1995!) for acceptable performance, you actually prove my 
point. I've seen loads of benchmarks but reality would always 
tell a different story, sorry. Maybe if you benchmark one 
specific function you can get a C++ like performance, but if you 
use it in real life, Java doesn't (or didn't) quite get there. 
Mind you, I'm saying this as someone who liked Java, it always 
galled me that I had to say "no" to Java because of performance 
issues _and_ because it would not be easy to deploy Java apps, 
because of the JVM.

Example needed? Ok. We wanted to deliver a desktop GUI app that 
could interact with our server. It was meant for visually 
impaired students (pupils). Their assistant teachers and mothers 
had no clue about JVM/JREs and didn't know if they were on 32 or 
64 bit machines. Loads of emails and phone calls. Then the screen 
reading software would make a complete bullocks of the GUI 
(although Java Access Bridge was included and supposed to be 
working!). What users ask for is "can't I just download your app 
/ plug in?" Well, with D, yes. And please don't tell me about 
"Java web based installation" etc etc. One application, one 
executable, one click (or double-click ;-). Full stop.

Then of course there is the whole mess with Swing and JavaFX, 
Matisse (discontinued) blah blah blah. It reads like a manual 
"Who to put developers off". It galled me that I had to bin the 
whole Java thing, but there you go. I am not a Java hater, far 
from it, and a AOT compiler would make me consider it an option 
again, at least as far as performance and deployability (if 
that's a word) are concerned.