Java would Run inside Javascript runtime Environment (besides JVM)

VP of Java development at Oracle has hinted that the Java 7 is taking shape and could get its public stable release within coming months. There were couple of other announcements (which can be heard on this Podcast, transcript here), but the interest has risen towards the Future of Java, “We have a strategy to run Java inside a Javascript environment” said Adam Messinger.

Roger: One last question here. What’s Oracle going to do to make Java successful on the desktop?

Adam: … JavaFX bla bla … another way is this strategy we have around running Java inside of a JavaScript environment. So there the programming language is Java, but the platform is not a JVM platform.

This is a little bit of a scary thing, honestly, for Oracle, because while the language is something we know and love, a lot of the value we have comes from the stack underneath the JVM, the library, and so on and so forth.

But we think it’s something that we need to do for the community so we can make Java available more places from tablet devices like the iPad where there is not an easy way to get Java there today, to desktops where, while there are applets, some people choose not to use applets, and we want a solution that works there.

Clearly, Oracle is working on a way to use Javascript as a runtime environment for Java byte code. To be more precise, they are moving along the lines of Orto (a ptorotype of implementation of the JVM in Javascript) which would allow one to cross-compile existing Java libraries to Javascript – a far more interesting prospect as it would make Java truly portable, going beyond restrictions of the platform. However, its much harder to get around access to hardware, OS features via javascript in brwosers like Chrome, Firefox.

However, this could become an interesting topic altogether as world moves towards hardware accelerated (and faster) browsers like Chrome. I can foresee how Chrome OS (& chrome browsers) could take speed advantage using Native compilation (NaCl) to run Java byte code, as fast as the native JVM code, right inside the javascript embedded in web pages.

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