Re: [Protux-devel] Possible Migration to Java

[Remon Sijrier]

Hi,

I read the links you gave, did some testing (benchmarks, just for fun) found 
in some of the articles.
The benchmark was rather simple, not taking the OO into account, but only 
simple operations on int, long, double and trig functions (sin, cos, etc)
They performed equally well, which is no surprise, but the sin, cos, etc 
functions performed an order (~ 10) of magnitude slower in Java, weird....

About the JIT, and JVM, what I understood is that for long running programs 
(which also create a lot of objects with short livetime) they can do a better 
job then statically compiled programs (due the better heap management), and 
so Java would be a better choice for server programs then C++
Please, correct me if I misunderstood...

> > If Luciano decides to switch over to Java, I'm not sure yet if I'll
> > continue
> > to work on Protux. It depends a lot on how things will evolve if he
> > decides
> > to do so.
>
> That was very unpolite. link your participation with my decision. Be sure
> that I will take decisions based on the project, not on personal
> expectations.

Sorry, I don't understand. If you decide to switch over to Java, it means the 
project has to be rewritten, and after thats finished, new things can be 
implemented.
That effectively means that I too have to write Java code, no?
And I'm not a Java coder, sure, I'm not a C++ coder too but at least in that 
area I'm gaining a little experience.
So, for me the question then arises, do I have time, energy and the spirit to 
start over again, and jump into Java stuff.
It's not about linking my participation to your decision, but to the _effects_ 
of that decision.

About the "personal expectations". 

OSS frequentlly suffers from the phenomena "project creation, big boost into 
development, developer time or interest becomes less, project dies"
It's not a secret you don't have much time last years, and you said yourself 
you still do have little to no free time.
I have seen the birth of this project, and I was really excited about it. I 
looked very frequently on the website, but after 2 years almost nothing had 
happened. Then I tried to help by improving some code. 
That's 2 years ago IIRC.
The project is 5 years old now, and the last 4 years showed little improvement 
in what can be done with the program. (I'm not talking about the state of the 
code base, but what I as user can do with Protux)
I'm not doubting your capabilities and experience, but even with a great dev 
platform as eclipse, it will take a rather long time to port, if there is 
almost no time to develop......(?)

Sure, time isn't an issue in OSS development. No deadlines etc. But at some 
point it would be rather nice to have something working at hand.
I'm still happy to dedicate time and energy to the project. But I have to wait 
until you will finish what you've on your todo list (porting protux), before 
a new task can be "assigned" to me.

"How things will evolve".
It's just that I'm not able to tell if I still have interest/time/eneryg/etc 
to code on the project after porting is finished.
I'm not writing code for "my users". I'm doing this to make a program I can 
use. To have fun.

I do have a little problem expressing myself in the English language, but I 
hope you understand what I tried to make clear.


Remon