[Gllug] One more time...

[Nix]

On Tue, 10 Jun 2003, Pete Ryland mused:
> On Tue, Jun 10, 2003 at 08:21:55AM +0100, Nix wrote:
>> On Mon, 09 Jun 2003, Tethys moaned:
>> > Actually, most of my complaints with Java are about the implementation[1]
>> > rather than the language itself -- although I agree it's in dire need
>> > of a macro system. I doubt it's likely to get one, though -- they're
>> > touting its absence as a selling point...
>> 
>> `This language can't adapt to new abstractions well! Use it now!'
>> 
>> `Java: write once, crash the VM everywhere.'
> 
> How about: 'Many to Many .java to .class Mapping!  Pay now by credit card
> and as an added bonus also receive Late Binding!

It's worse than that; it's `cope with myriads of tiny .java files so
that each class is in its own file, but then drag in inner classes to
ensure that there is *still* a many to many .java to .class mapping!'

All the disadvantages of both approaches :(

>                                                   Say goodbye to Makefiles
> forever!

This is actually useful, in theory. A compiler with interunit
optimization can benefit from being shown *all* the sources...

... of course, Sun's javac coesn't have significant interunit
optimization. But this is good preparation for the days when it will
have.

>           And say hello to recompiling everything every time, and not being
> able to compile to native machine code!'

Well, again, the latter is a failing of javac, not of the
language. Distinguishing between Java-the-language (impoverished, like
most Algolic languages), the JVM (a rather nice, if rather
Java-specific, virtual machine), the toolchain (in Sun's case
gratuitously different from C compilers and not terribly good at
optimization) and the Java libraries (a fucking mess) is important, I
think.

(GCJ can, of course, compile to either native code or .class files.)

-- 
`It is an unfortunate coincidence that the date locarchive.h was
 written (in hex) matches Ritchie's birthday (in octal).'
               -- Roland McGrath on the libc-alpha list

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