Re: objective c and the death of java?

[Miles Parker]

OK, I tried, but I couldn't stop myself from replying...

Miles T. Parker
Software Engineer
The Brookings Institution  1775 Mass. Ave. NW  Washington, DC  20036
http://www.brook.edu/es/dynamics/models/ascape
mailto:address@hidden  voice 202.797.6136  fax 202.797.6319

>>> Jonathan Greenberg <address@hidden> 12/07/99 06:00PM >>>
A friend of mine has been working fairly closely with SUN (he is the 
co-head of the LinuxPPC project) and, in his opinion, JAVA will 

Yea, well there's some kind of weird enmity/paranoia against Java w/ some hard 
core Linux developers...maybe they just don't like having another overhyped 
environment around [grin]...its a joke to think Java will disappear. Even if 
you don't like it, you have to recognize the tremendous momenutum behind it in 
certain application spaces. Just look at COBOL and BASIC, two ugly and slow 
solutions that have been floating around for thirty+ years. Java is actually 
quite elegant in its own fashoin, and performs well, but even if you don't 
agree with that, its far too embedded as a solution to loose much mindshare 
now. People just have far too much invested in it.

>>other architectures...  )  The sim I recently wrote takes 8 HOURS to 
run on my PowerMac 7500/100 written in Obj C, with a JAVA JIT 
Compiler I'd have to come back a month later to get my results...

Have you actually coded your own pure Java solution? I have, and as I said I 
get roughly comparable or better results.

Tha siad, if you were running under the Java implementations available under 
LinuxPPC on that older machine, with the current Java-swarm layers, you prob. 
would face a significant handicap. OTOH, pure Java on a G3 under MacOS (AFAIK 
there are no really good JIT available for LinuxPPC, but CMIIW), should give as 
good or better performance then ObjC under LinuxPPC on the same machine. So, 
I'm not suggesting that you abandon a solution that is working for you, but you 
seem to have prejudged Java with scant evidence.

best,

Miles



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