[Gllug] OT(ish): Advice

[rich at annexia.org]

On Wed, Dec 11, 2002 at 03:29:44PM +0000, Tethys wrote:
> The argument used by Sun is that Java provides a great development
> environment, complete with ready made utility classes which speeds
> development times. As I've said in another post, from personal
> experience, I'd say this is just marketing hype without a grain of
> truth to it.
> 
> I would say, though, that in some respects Java makes more sense on
> the server than on the client because long running server processes
> give the HotSpot optimzer time to do its job properly, and in theory,
> long running Java processes should be as fast, or potentially faster
> than the equivalent code written in C/C++. Although my experinces with
> tomcat don't seem to bear that out, it is in theory still true.

Tet:

I must first say that I completely agree with you. Java is a poor
choice for a development language - although it's highly buzzword
compliant, so it's an excellent choice for one's CV :-)

However the point about Hotspot / JITs in general, while correct,
misses two important issues:

(1) When I'm in the debug/compile/deploy cycle - arguably the most
expensive part of any piece of software - the JIT doesn't help
me at all. My experience says that it's probably slowing me down,
at least given how bloody slow Java and Java compilers are.

(2) http://www.arstechnica.com/reviews/1q00/dynamo/dynamo-1.html
which is "JIT for assembly" if you like, can make the same difference
for my C/C++ programs.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Red Hat Inc. (London, UK) http://www.redhat.com/software/ccm
http://www.annexia.org/ Freshmeat projects: http://freshmeat.net/users/rwmj

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