Java is not a systems programming language.

Apparently it is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JNode

Then there's the history thing about Java being designed from the start to run devices: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/overview/javah...

> Apparently it is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JNode

I am fully aware of JNode.

It uses language extensions for the dirty tricks system programming languages need to do.

> Then there's the history thing about Java being designed from the start to run devices:

The devices are expected to have a ROM installed VM able to process the bytecodes. Which is the case of many devices that have Java VM available.

no true scotsman...

I would argue that java application servers fulfill the same role as that of an Operating System (especially a virtualized one) and exist almost entirely to side-step the sysadmin priests.

If they were fully written in Java/Assembly and are running directly on hardware then yes.

Until sun.misc.Unsafe or similar is not officially part of Java's public API, the language does not offer standard mechanisms for systems programming.

There are language extensions that allow such uses, but the language itself, according to the JLS does not support systems programming.

You need:

- value types

- control when a GC might happen, to avoid it ocurring during interrup handling

- means to tell the GC not to touch memory currenly involved in DMA operations

- all the nice operations sun.misc.Unsafe provides

Java was written by an OS vendor as their main high-level language.

But Java is not used in any meaningful way in their core OS.

Java is also not a systems programming language, and I was mentioning systems programming language, in regard to OS vendors support.

I don't follow Java at all (I wish I had time to take a few months to see what's happening), so I might be talking out of my ass. I think Java got a big boost when it became a de facto standard for communications platforms, especially considering the rise of mobile.

Android, however I would say that it was successful before android.

Android isn't written in Java. The userland might be, but the kernel itself is Linux, and that is written in C.

Java is only used for userland code, that is not systems programming.