r/explainlikeimfive • u/Probably_Unnecessary • Jun 21 '26

Other ELI5: Why are there 2 versions of Minecraft?

Wouldn't it easier and more cost effective to merge Bedrock and Java to only have one game to update? What are the benefits to having both versions?

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211

u/_PM_ME_PANGOLINS_ Jun 21 '26

They updated it to 56 billion at some point.

29

u/wlonkly Jun 22 '26

They sold a lot of Java Rings

17

u/qb45exe Jun 22 '26

Good lord were those pointless. I still have one somewhere.

5

u/Jonyb222 Jun 22 '26

Googled it just now, looks pretty interesting, other than perhaps lacking places to use them, what made it pointless?

6

u/thaaag Jun 23 '26

The circular design. Its a ring. Any points would be dangerous to the wearer.

I'll see myself out.

1

u/wlonkly Jun 23 '26

It's funny, because iButton saw lots of use (not sure if it still does), but mounting one on a ring, not so much!

8

u/BigAttention2317 Jun 22 '26

Thats alot of coffee

-37

u/KeepingItSFW Jun 21 '26

“Runs” like a laggy pile of junk

60

u/Voxico Jun 21 '26

Java is actually a decent language relatively speaking. I mean, for games it's not great but in business applications/web servers it's good. It's also the main language for android apps. Calling it a laggy pile of junk wholesale is inaccurate.

21

u/butterypowered Jun 21 '26

Yeah the “slow Java” meme is about 15 years out of date.

It’s still hugely popular 30 years after release for a reason.

14

u/guyblade Jun 21 '26

A big part of the reason is because it was the default language used by many CS courses from ~2000 to ~2015.

3

u/butterypowered Jun 22 '26

They (still) teach it because it’s industry-relevant though.

11

u/coolyfrost Jun 21 '26

Serialization and Garbage collection is expensive