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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!howland.erols.net!news.mathworks.com!fu-berlin.de!news-ber1.dfn.de!news-ham1.dfn.de!news.dkrz.de!news.uni-hamburg.de!news.Hanse.DE!wavehh.hanse.de!cracauer From: cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de (Martin Cracauer) Subject: Re: Apple/NeXTStep/Mach and free Unixes (Re: Pentium Pro and FreeBSD) Message-ID: <1997Jan4.183049.25646@wavehh.hanse.de> Reply-To: cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de Organization: '(a (cons structive organization)) References: <32C063E4.69BE@ibm.net> <5a9gnt$82j@fridge-nf0.shore.net> <tporczyk.851992328@shellx> <5a9osm$f9t@fridge-nf0.shore.net> <5a9tn8$6on@flea.best.net> <tporczyk.852002722@shellx> Date: Sat, 4 Jan 97 18:30:49 GMT Lines: 52 Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:33621 tporczyk@best.com (Tony Porczyk) writes: >dillon@flea.best.net (Matt Dillon) writes: >> This whole java thing reminds me of lisp all those years ago, >> especially with SUNs javachip stuff. It almost makes me want >> to cry, but I'm to busy laughing at the moment. Somebody >> thinks up of a cute-sounding language, and suddenly it's the >> savior of the world... HA! >Yeah, I know, yet, the idea of decoupling apps from the Microsoft's >death grip is a noble thing in itself. The question is, does it have a >chance to succeed. I went through the same hoopla (kindof) years ago >at Novell when they were pronouncing to the world how AppFoundation was >going to make the world platform independent. Well, we all know what a >spectacular failure that was... I actually think there is a place for >Java, as a way to run small pieces of software like configuration >utilities (instead of telnetting to devices and using vt100) on >whatever platform is available. I do have a hard time seeing how JIT >compilers are going to keep up with monstrous apps of today, though... >And how companies are going to all follow the same standard withouth >"featuring" it to death. Oh, well, a bit of dreaming before New Year >strikes. Well, for me Java is attractive mainly from a component-building view. Imagine a newsreader where the user can use his/her own implementation of a killfile mechanism by providing a .class file. The Java-based HTTP servers do similar things. On the other hand, I'm as concernd as you that JITs are overrated (reading the JVM specification educates quite a bit regarding maximum speed of Java). Companies are obviously willing to give up some native platform look, performance and functionality to get universal, easy-to-use, low-maintainaince applications to the casual users. On the other hand, Java might be crushed between pure HTML (maybe with Javascript extensions) for easy tasks and ActiveX-Components for company-based solutions. FreeBSD relevance: Keep on approaching the best possible code for a given task (which is what C does). Personal relevance: When free in choice, use the language that gives the best abstraction capabilities (Lisp does for me). Martin -- %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Martin_Cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de http://cracauer.cons.org Fax.: +4940 5228536 "As far as I'm concerned, if something is so complicated that you can't ex- plain it in 10 seconds, then it's probably not worth knowing anyway"- Calvin