[rescue] damn you bill, now i'm a lowbrow fan too

[Joshua D Boyd]

> > >   Yeah, that blows.  Java *rocks*...but java and web browsers are a
> > Eek.  How could you say such a thing?
> 
> It's elegant and simple OOP with a runtime library that (when combined
> with all the free add-ons at java.sun.com) approaches dwarfing PERL in
> out-of-the-box utility.  Yeah, it runs slow as molasses, but, in a few
> circumstances, the fact that it runs without a problem on four of the
> biggest platforms out there (Win32, MacOS, Solaris, IRIX), and runs
> reasonably well on Linux and FreeBSD[1], can overcome the fact that it's
> so damned slow.

Elegant I suppose is a function of ones biology.  But in my view, Java is
not elegent.  Java is certainly not simple.  The syntax approaches C++ for
complexity, it has wierd abstraction layers everywhere, etc.

And there are other things that run on the listed platforms just fine. Python,
for one, works nicely.  Other people swear by ruby.
 
> I wouldn't want to use an office suite or Mathematica-workalike written in
> Java, but competent Java programmers can write really nice applications in
> it that are smaller in scale and don't suffer (as much) from the overhead
> of interpretation.  But, from the other side, a really big app written in
> TCL/TK, or Scheme or any other directly-interpreted language (I think PERL
> is just- in-time compiled these days, so it doesn't qualify) would be
> approximately as slow.

Note, scheme in theory is typically compiled.  I say in theory, because the
largest use of scheme that I know of is that odd ball Guile scheme which
doesn't compile.  The same goes for Common Lisp.  

And I think that office suites or mathematic type programs should be the 
perfect place to use languages other than C++.  After all, they shouldn't
require that much CPU power.  Lisp is the traditional language for 
Mathematica style math software.
 
> Have you actually used Java?  I mean, if you have, and it's not your bag,
> that's fine, just like PERL isn't mine (even though I have to kick it
> around every now and again because there's so -much- stuff written in it).
> If you haven't, and are only put off by the execution speed, take a look
> at the documentation for all the functionality, and you might reconsider
> your position.  Java's a fine language with an elegant (if wordy) syntax.

I dislike both perl and java.  I think they are inferiour programming languages
that hurt computer science as a whole.  Java's execution speed is the least
of my complaints.  The speed of AWT and swing is a larger complaint for one.

> Oh, and that crap about every public class having to be in its own source
> file gets under my skin for tiny projects, but it's ultimately enforcing a
> Good Thing.

Whether it is a good thing or a bad thing, I won't argue.  I believe that
some compilers don't enforce it though.  
 
> I don't -personally- like OOP all that much, but I find it easier to write
> GUIs in that paradigm.  As a result, about 90% of the Java I've written
> consists of lightweight graphical frontends to a big, bad C process
> running elsewhere on the network.

OOP is fine.  So if FP.  Best to combine the two and only use procedural for
low level work IMEAO[1]

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd


[1] In My Extremely Arrogant Opinion