[4904] in java-interest
Re: class String HAS BEEN COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY BROKEN IN BETA2
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jonathan Payne)
Thu Jan 18 20:33:12 1996
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 1996 15:22:31 -0800
From: jpayne@starwave.com (Jonathan Payne)
To: flar@bendenweyr.Eng.Sun.COM
Cc: java-interest@java.Eng.Sun.COM
In-Reply-To: <9601182214.AA16132@bendenweyr.Eng.Sun.COM> (flar@bendenweyr.Eng.Sun.COM)
> > I will have a VERY hard time working around this mistake.
>
> It is very unfortunate that you took advantage of a bug in Beta1.
>
> > As far as the security issue is concerned, I believe it has something to
> > do with an important piece of code not being able to trust a String it's
> > handed, because if somebody else is holding onto the char [] that
> > created that String, then that owner can play some tricky games with it.
>
> It is not just security, but also using Strings as keys in hashtables.
> If their values can change after creation, then their location in the
> hash table will change as well. This is unacceptable.
I understand where you are coming from, Jim. The basic trade-off is
about how much hand-holding the language does for you. Pointers are
out, and that's good. So is explicit alloc/free, multiple
inheritance, unsafe casts. Now so is efficient String creation,
because I can't be trusted not to make a mistake.
Where do you draw the line? With all the interfaces that except
Strings out there, how can I turn regions of my edit text buffer into
Strings to take advantage of all those interfaces? I mean, I did all
the editing and modification of my buffer already, and now I want to
pick pieces out of it, some bug and some small. The answer now is,
"Sorry, we don't trust you not to make a mistake that will cause you
to have bugs in your program."
I may be completely off base here, but I don't think so. Java is
already a compromise between safety and performance. You can go too
far and make it incredibly safe, so awesomely, impossibly safe that
... I don't want to use it anymore.
--
Jonathan Payne Programmer
Starwave Corporation mailto:jpayne@starwave.com
http://www.starwave.com/ http://www.starwave.com/people/jpayne/
I believe the Java hype.
-
This message was sent to the java-interest mailing list
Info: send 'help' to java-interest-request@java.sun.com
