Re: Oracle and Java. Does Oracle know something some of us don't?

Hello,
"Tim X" <timx_at_spamto.devnul.com> wrote:

TX> "Jim Kennedy" <kennedy-down_with_spammers_at_attbi.com> writes:
TX> | ...snip...|
TX> Many of those who don't like Java point to its speed and large
TX> memory footprint as reasons why it is no good. However, I cannot
TX> think of a single language which is as portable as Java...

Just for the curious, take a look at Common Lisp. It is really vendor independent and cross-platform nowadays. Common Lisp was the first OO language standardized by ANSI in 1994. Java can only dream of the power and expressiveness of Lisp. Modern implementations, both commercial and opensourced, compile in native code and several times overperform Java and VB. Many conceptual "problems" Java is bumped into, were solved for CL more than a decade ago.

TX> ... - while it
TX> may not be as portable in all areas to the extent the Sun marketers
TX> whould like us to believe, it is still more portable than any
TX> other language I can think of.

Ditto about "most portable".

TX>  ... I think the other point to keep in
TX> mind is the fact memory is dropping in price and machines are
TX> increasing in speed at a very rapid rate. Back in the late 80s
TX> nobody considered basic to be a real language because it was
TX> interpreted and therefore considered to slow - now look at it. Even
TX> OO was criticised at first because of its additional overhead.
TX> However, as memory becomes cheaper and systems become faster,
TX> issues of speed and memory usage become less important and overcome
TX> by issues of maintenance, speed of development and safety.

This sad analogy could be applied to Common Lisp too. Back in 80s it was considered to big and slow. The reality is that Lisp keeps itself the same size,
but its speed has improved greatly with the advance of modern hardware. You can easily imagine how CL performs in comparison to today's monsters like M$ and Java.

---
Sincerely,
Dmitri Ivanov
www.aha.ru/~divanov