12 May 2002 chalst   » (Master)

raph: I found Bertrand Meyer's article to be biased against Java: generics have been planned for Java since the first release (rumor has it that the first release of the Java SDK was almost cacelled because it didn't support them), and has been `backported' to all the old releases: one of the reasons for the delay was getting it right... The JVM is really not a bad target for most languages: the absence of longjumps (ie. continuations) in the JVM is a showstopper for scheme but otherwise the architecture doesn't fare too badly. The platform comparison you cite by John Gough talks about the overhead Java introduces by its need to box and unbox representations: that isn't the whole story, since a good JVM->native code compiler can eliminate most of this cost (I was not so impressed by this article: it didn't even mention the longjump issue).

My prediction is that there will be a big growth in domain specific languages for the .NET platform, and these will be popular with developers. I guess that the C++.NET language will be a failure for the reasons Joel Spolsky gives. I'll be interested to see if FORTRAN.NET takes off for scientific computing.

Lastly, maybe you will find Java/CNI interesting (the `Cygnus Native Interface' for Java compiled to UNIX/C using gcj).

Just certified Perrin to Journeyer for his work on Freeciv.

Postscript: Just upgraded my certification of tk to Journeyer based on his/her wide involvement in free software projects and interesting diary entries.

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