More Java guidelines questions

Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com
Tue Apr 29 13:13:07 UTC 2008


Callum Lerwick wrote:
>>>  Thus in an open source environment, Java bytecode has
>>> little reason to exist.
>> Errr, what about applet downloads and RMI, neither of which requires 
>> similar architecture or compiling capability at the other end?  Are you 
>> sure you are talking about something that even resembles java?
> 
> You distribute source code, and "JIT" compile it direct from source
> code, yes. Just like Python or Perl or PHP or Javascript...
> 
> And yes, Java wasn't designed for this from the start, so the existing
> compiler is too slow and heavyweight for this. This may even be
> impossible. But the interpreted language space is pretty well covered
> already anyway.

Please let me know when you've installed this mythical applet source 
compiler on all the computers and phones in the world and then we can 
continue the conversation about equivalent capabilities.

> I guess what my point is here, is Java, in Sun's implementation, has
> chosen to stand half-way between a native-compiled language and an
> interpreted language.

And with very good reasons, applets and RMI being fairly obvious along 
with things like cached jsp pages.

> Which has resulted in it being mediocre at either
> and ultimately just serves to inherit the disadvantages of AOT
> compilation with none of the advantage (speed).

The main speed issue is loading the JVM which might happen once in 
several months in a server environment and should be handled by the disk 
cache and shared text in environments where it is reloaded often enough 
to matter.

 > If it continues on its
> current path, it's just going to be eclipsed (heh) by Python on the
> interpreted side of things and by C# (and continued use of C++ and C) in
> native compilation.

Except those don't have the same capabilities for remote execution.

 > In the open source world, that is. The closed source
> world will gladly continue cranking out Java code as it is the COBOL of
> the 90+'s...

I think you are missing a fairly vast library of available open source 
java code.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com




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