Re: Portability

[Nelson Minar]

Two final comments on Java for Swarm: it's too late, and Java isn't
mature enough.

"It's too late" might sound silly, but it's really true. Two and a
half years of full-time effort has gone into developing the current
Objective C based Swarm. That's a major commitment you can't just
throw away. Now maybe if I were starting Swarm now, I'd think about
using Java. In particular, a language with decent OO support and
threading embedded in its design is an intriguing thing.

But Java isn't mature enough for a project like Swarm. Portable
languages aren't anything new: most serious languages make much better
guarantees than C, and I think Java is about up there with things like
Scheme or Ada. But *delivering* a portable language that people will
use is something new, and it hasn't really been done yet. Java is
trying, but it isn't there yet. And the tools for Java are still
pretty bad (you think gdb for ObjC is tough? Try debugging Java).
JIT compilers aren't up to snuff for most platforms (kaffe, for
instance, is still too buggy to be useful). Java might yet get there,
but it's going to take more time.

The one sense of satisfaction I have is looking back on Swarm and
realizing that yes, ObjC was the right choice over C++. C++ is
starting to die under it's own weight.