Java 19 brought a preview of virtual threads and an API for structural concurrency. Java 20 extends this with ScopedValues, a much-improved version of ThreadLocal s. When writing concurrent code in Java, the first option is to work directly with threads (virtual or not). However, this is usually not the…

In the previous installments of the “Trying out Unison” series, we’ve first explored its core feature, content-addressed code, thanks to which a function’s identity is determined by what it does, not by its name (names are just labels). Then, we’ve examined how this impacts how you might organize your code…

While uncertainty surrounds Twitter, people are looking into alternative microblogging platforms. One such application is gaining a lot of popularity, Mastodon. The concept is similar to Twitter: we can post toots (short messages), which are visible to our followers; we can boost (retweet) posts or favorite (like) them. However, there…

Java 19 contains a preview of the core component of Project Loom: virtual threads. We can now create threads at will, as we’re no longer (or at least, much less) constrained by their costs in terms of memory and context switch time. Where there are threads, there’s concurrency. So what…

In the previous articles on Unison, we’ve introduced Unison’s “big idea”: content-addressed code and explored how this impacts code organisation and dependency management. But that’s not everything that Unison has to offer. Its effect system is equally interesting and worth exploring in detail. Effect systems aim to add some structure…

Dependency hell, package managers, publishing, supply chain attacks-these are just a few of the problems that might be solved by Unison! Let’s see how. In the first part of the series surrounding Unison, we’ve covered the “big idea” behind it: content-address code. …

The moment Java and JVM developers have long been waiting for came last week: Java 19 has been released. Among other changes (also significant!), the release includes a preview of VirtualThreads, which are part of project Loom. We’ve been discussing Loom on this blog a couple ⧉ of ⧉ times…

In the light of the recent announcement by Lightbend that the entire Akka stack is going to be relicensed from an open-source licence to a source-available one, I’m sure many development teams are assessing their options and considering next steps. Akka was used in a number of situations, ranging from…

Unison is an upcoming language & distributed runtime. It’s functional, statically typed, and introduces some really interesting ideas, which make Unison different from “mainstream” languages. If you’re into Scala, you might have heard of Paul Chiusano and Rúnar Bjarnason, the co-founders of Unison Computing (a public benefit organisation). …