I'm curious about the future of Project Loom now that virtual threads, scoped values, and structured concurrency are becoming standard. Are there any other initiatives planned under the Loom umbrella, or will it complete its mission once these features are fully available?
5 Answers
I've been thinking a lot about how scoped values could really change the game. For instance, imagine being able to override things like `System.exit` when calling third-party libraries without messing with global variables. It'd be like controlling your environment tighter, which is fantastic for unit testing and managing input/output more effectively.
Once virtual threads, structured concurrency, and scoped values are in full swing, it seems Loom will have achieved its requirements. But I wouldn't be surprised if it inspires further developments in the OpenJDK community.
I’m with you on hoping for tail call optimization. That could seriously boost performance and make async programming feel more seamless!
There are definitely more ideas in the pipeline! Initially, they mentioned features like tail call optimization, lightweight continuations, and public APIs for continuations. There's also talk about refining the structured concurrency APIs and adding more monitoring tools for virtual threads. So, even after structured concurrency is live, Loom might expand with enhancements and new capabilities.
Totally get your skepticism! Those benchmarks have raised some eyebrows, especially about stack performance.
I've seen some benchmarks too, and it looks like there's still room for performance improvements. It'll be interesting to see how they finalize things from that perspective.
Sounds great, but I’ve noticed that some project documents are quite outdated, still referring to virtual threads as 'Fibers.' That makes me wonder how reliable the resources are for understanding Loom's direction.