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Subject: RE: Java is for kiddies
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From: harley@argote.ch (Robert Harley)
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Date: Mon,  2 Sep 2002 11:54:55 +0200 (CEST)

Reza B'Far wrote:
>This thread kind of surprises me... I started coding with C, then C++, and
>moved on to Java... And, I think that:

Looks like a case of "MY experience is comprehensive, YOUR'S is
anecdotal, THEY don't know what they're talking about".


>1.  The people who pay the wages don't give a flyin' heck what programming
>language you write things in... they just want it to work.

In my experience, they do care.  It has to work certainly, and in
particular it has to work with what they've already got, and it has to
work on client's systems.

My limited experience of Java started a few years ago when support on
Linux was so terrible that I ran away screaming and haven't come back yet.

Microsoft has announced that they plan to remove Java from Windows.
They took it out of XP already and it has to be installed with a
service pack.  Somehow, I can't imagine them removing the ability to
run C programs.


>2.  C and C++ forces the developer to solve problems such as memory
>management over and over again.

Can't say I spend any noticeable amount of time on memory management
issues, apart from the fact that I frequently need > 4 GB.


>It's about design patterns, architecture, high level stuff...

If your problem just requires application of a "design pattern" to solve,
then it's trivial anyway irrespective of language.


>I am amazed by the amount of time wasted by people talking about low
>level problems that have been solved 10 million times over and over
>and over again...

You appear to be gratuitously asserting that C programmers waste time
on irrelevant low-level problems and Java programmers don't.  Depends
entirely on the programmer, not the language.


>3.  Java is not just a programming language! It's also a platform...

Buzzword.


>a monolithic set of API's or a crap load of different API's slicing
>and dicing the same problems 50 different ways?

Unsupported assertion.


>4.  If you have a program of any type of high complexity written in C, you
>can't possibly think that you could port it to different platforms within
>the same magnitude of cost as Java....

Dunno.  E.g., I ported a wee 15000-line C program to Darwin on PowerPC
in a few minutes yesterday.  Sure if it was badly designed it would be
10 times the size and harder to port.  If it depended on unavailable
libraries it would be much harder.  Portable code is easy to port.
At least that is the case when then language you used is available on
the target platform: I also run on ARM systems with no proper Java.


>5.  Makes no sense for a scientific or a business project to depend on a
>person... Java, IMHO, reduces the dependence of these entities on the
>individual developer as it is much easier to reverse engineer Java as it is
>to reverse engineer C (large applications).

You can pay a good programmer to solve your problem now, or else get
some kids to hack spaghetti Fortran in any language and then pay for
maintenance headaches ad infinitum.

 
>6.  Hardware is getting so fast that I'm not sure if the performance
>difference between Java and C/C++ are relevant any more.

Whoah!!!  Performance matters to me every day.  (Right now I'm taking
time out to write email while waiting for a job to run).  Sure I could
wait 5 years until everyone's PC is fast enough to generate random EC's
in no time, when any twit will be able to program inefficient code
that is fast enough and the market will be overrun by competitors,
or I can do it now when very few people can.

 
>The end goal is the scientific or business problem to be solved.

Yes.


>And for those problems, languages such as Java, SmallTalk, and others
>allow you to think more high level than low level.  Thinking of bits
>and bytes takes too much gray matter away from the real important
>problems....

It's true!  I admit everything!  Mea maxima culpa!  Working in C makes
me spend all day thinking base, rank thoughts about hard-core bitography!
Not.

Actually I spend most of my time thinking in high-level mathematics.


>Why do most computer scientists insist on solving the same problems
>over and over again [...]

Dunno, and frankly I don't see the relevance to the issue at hand.


I'm sure Java is fine for some stuff, as is C or whatever.  Horses for
courses.


Bye,
  Rob.
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