[4700] in java-interest
ADA 95 for Java
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John Griffin)
Thu Jan 11 10:24:48 1996
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 08:25:36 -0500
From: jgriffin@bank-banque-canada.ca (John Griffin)
To: java-interest@java.sun.com
Cc: grif_1@bank-banque-canada.ca
Seems like the Java team did a good job with the Java VM. It looks as
though the Java language may have a companion.
----- Begin Included Message -----
>From @mailgate.bank-banque-canada.ca:otug-owner@Rational.COM Tue Jan 9 19:41:00 1996
Resent-From: "Wai K. Wong" <wwong@Rational.COM>
Resent-Message-Id: <9601091608.ZM5223@rational.com>
Resent-Date: Tue, 9 Jan 1996 19:08:53 -0500
Resent-To: otug@Rational.COM
Date: Tue, 9 Jan 1996 18:12:35 -0500
From: stt@dsd.camb.inmet.com (Tucker Taft)
To: otug@Rational.COM
Subject: Java and Ada 95
Cc: chrise@vsl.com.au, truejaws@nuri.net
> From: Han <truejaws@nuri.net>
> Subject: Relation between JAVA and OT
> To: otug@Rational.COM
> Date: Tue, 9 Jan 1996 23:28:53 +0900 (KST)
Although I am not on this mailing list, Chris Eldridge of
Visual Systems Ltd asked me to respond to this message.
> JAVA is a programming language and Netscape 2.0 suppors it.
> JAVA is OOPL ?
> Who can explain JAVA from the viewpoint of OOD & OOA ?
> Is it better than Ada95 ?
> What is JAVA's future ?
Java is an object-oriented programming language developed
by Sun Microsystems. It has a C++-like surface syntax,
but an underlying semantics that is closer to Ada 95 or
Modula-3.
Java is also the term used to refer to the
technology used to distribute small applications (called "applets")
written in Java over the World Wide Web. This is accomplished
by compiling the Java source code into a platform-independent
byte code, which can then be sent over the Web and executed
by a Java-byte-code interpreter bundled into a Web browser, like Netscape.
The third important aspect of Java is the standard "API"
(application programming interface) for doing Graphic and other
Web-oriented programming in a platform-independent way.
This API consists of a set of standard Java "classes" (i.e.,
it is a "class library") which provide platform-independent
interfaces for creating a graphical user interface (GUI),
for doing multi-threading, and for doing Internet communication.
It turns out that the second and third aspects of Java are
actually somewhat independent of the surface syntax used
in the source code. Hence, it turned out to be quite feasible
to compile Ada 95 to the same byte-code representation as that
used by Sun's Java compiler. Intermetrics, Inc., will be
marketing such an Ada 95 => Java byte-code compiler for
a modest price (~US$100) in the near future. This product,
currently dubbed "AdaMagic(tm) for Java", allows Ada 95 programmers
to write platform-independent Applets in Ada 95, which nevertheless
use essentially the same platform-independent API, can call and
be called by Java code, and can be executed in any Java-enabled browser,
such as Netscape.
So to summarize, in one sense, Java is just another OO programming language,
but what makes it particularly exciting is its clever integration with
the World-Wide Web. Ada 95 programmers can take advantage
of the Java phenomenon while still writing in Ada 95, by
using a compiler that compiles Ada 95 into Java byte-code.
So Ada 95 and Java can be used together. There is no need
to give up Ada's advantages in readability, separation of
interface and implementation, parameter modes, true generic templates,
enumeration types, etc. to write Web applets. And you can
mix and match, as you choose.
-Tucker Taft stt@inmet.com
Intermetrics, Inc.
P.S. If you have Sun's "HotJava" browser, you can see some
Ada 95 Web applets in action, at "http://www.inmet.com/java.html".
Even if you don't have their browser, you can still browse
there to see a description of our forthcoming Ada 95 => Java-byte-code
compiler, and to see the source code for the Ada 95 applets. -T
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