[1517] in java-interest
Re: Systems Programming Oriented Java
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John D. Mitchell)
Wed Sep 6 19:11:30 1995
Date: Wed, 6 Sep 1995 13:24:37 -0700
From: "John D. Mitchell" <johnm@emf2-003.emf.net>
To: "John D. Ramsdell" <ramsdell@linus.mitre.org>
Cc: "John D. Mitchell" <johnm@emf2-003.emf.net>, java-interest@java.sun.com
In-Reply-To: <199509061312.JAA00451@goblin.mitre.org>
John D. Ramsdell writes:
[...]
> > Why not just write ISO/ANSI/POSIX/etc. conformant C code which are
> > (trivially?) wrapped in Java classes.
>
> The idea is to write a SPOJ program fragment which is translated into
> ISO/ANSI/POSIX/etc. conformant C code. If you would like to integrate
> a fragment into a Java VM, it could be wrapped in Java classes. One
> could also execute it as a stand alone program, or link it in as a
> loadable device driver.
What's wrong with just plain Java? You can do everything but device
drivers right now with the wrappers. No new language, no confusion, no
lack of GC, MT, etc. Okay, so it's not yet available on all the myriad
platforms. It is still in alpha... If Sun's implementation gets ported to
NT/Win95/MacOS/SunOS/Solaris/Linux then it runs on 90+% of all the machines
in the world. The ports to the other systems will come in time.
> Do you want to write and debug C code or write Java-like code which is
> debugged in a Java environment? Many Lisp implementors use Lisp for
> their garbage collector. This is not a new idea. Many Lisp
> implementors choose C for their garbage collector. It may be that, in
> practice, people would rather use C than SPOJ, however, it would greatly
> bother me if the Java language turned out to be too weak to have a
> systems programming relative.
But, IMHO, there's no need for yet another language (which is, of course an
argument against Java itself too). Especially when you can do what you're
seemly wanting already.
If Sun's implementation doesn't support enough of the features needed to
create standalone applications (and even device drivers eventually) then
I'm sure other implementations will.
Take care,
John
-
Note to Sun employees: this is an EXTERNAL mailing list!
Info: send 'help' to java-interest-request@java.sun.com
