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From: "Reza B'Far (eBuilt)" <rbfar@ebuilt.com>
To: "Robert Harley" <harley@argote.ch>, <fork@spamassassin.taint.org>
Subject: RE: Java is for kiddies
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Date: Mon, 2 Sep 2002 11:48:36 -0700



-----Original Message-----
From: fork-admin@xent.com [mailto:fork-admin@xent.com]On Behalf Of
Robert Harley
Sent: Monday, September 02, 2002 2:55 AM
To: fork@spamassassin.taint.org
Subject: RE: Java is for kiddies


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

Well, I sure don't claim that... I think most people on Fork probably have
more programming knowledge than I do... There's lots of experience out
here...

Reza B'Far wrote:
>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.
Robert Harley wrote:
>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.

Well, I think until recently, support for most things on Linux was kind of
shady... Things have got much better... You're right in that the JDK used to
suck on Linux... But then, IMHO, Linux is still maturing.... or at least
development tools for Linux are maturing... I've been developing a few
server side apps that run on Linux recently with JDK 1.3.x and they've had
no problems with great performance.

Robert Harley worte:
>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.

Hmmm... Do you really think that MS is pulling out Java because it's a "Bad"
programming language or application platform?  You don't think this has
anything to do with .NET being a competitor to Java do you?  Or that MS has
basically copied Java (with some additional features) and called it C#?
Isn't that alone an indication that they actually DO think that a VM is the
right way to go for most high level applications?

Reza B'Far wrote:
>2.  C and C++ forces the developer to solve problems such as memory
>management over and over again.
Robert Harley wrote:
>Can't say I spend any noticeable amount of time on memory management
>issues, apart from the fact that I frequently need > 4 GB.

Hmmm again.... You're telling me that you've never had a nasty bug that took
you a couple of days to track down that had to do with a memory leak?  I am
not the best C/C++ programmer... not even close... But I've known really
good ones... and even they have nasty bugs that have to do with memory
management, however occasional they may be.

>It's about design patterns, architecture, high level stuff...
Robert Harley wrote:
>If your problem just requires application of a "design pattern" to solve,
>then it's trivial anyway irrespective of language.

Wow!  So you're telling me that unless the application involves
bit-counting, it's trivial?  What about the application itself?  What about
high level problems such as task distribution, work-flow, etc.?  Aren't most
high level problems solved with high level solutions like design patterns?
Or do you solve high level problems by writing optimal C/C++ code?  For
example, do you think that most people working on collaboration frameworks
(there are lots of them on this list), are working on writing an operating
system with assembly that provides for a collaborative environment?

>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...
Robert Harley wrote:
>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.

I can see how you could infer this. However, what I believe to really be the
case is that Java is one of the best languages for writing large
applications with many components that involves the collaboration of more
than three programmers.  In those cases, it's always very hard to get the
programmers to agree on API's, memory management techniques, etc.  With
Java, the JCP takes care of the discussions so that you don't sit around in
a long meeting trying to decide what API to use to hook up to a database
(JDBC) or a messaging bus (JMS).


>3.  Java is not just a programming language! It's also a platform...
Robert Harley wrote:
>Buzzword.

YIKES!  Have you written db code with C/C++ for different databases (just an
example)?  Tried porting a persistence layer from Windows to Unix?  Say you
have Informix running on Solaris and you want to port to Windows with MS SQL
(bad idea...but for the sake of the example), would you rather deal with
JDBC port or C/C++ port that uses Informix drivers and now you have to use
ODBC?


>a monolithic set of API's or a crap load of different API's slicing
>and dicing the same problems 50 different ways?
Robert Harley wrote:
>Unsupported assertion.

So, are you saying that there is a standard set of API's for C/C++ for
everything? (aside to the minimal ANSI stuff).  Is there a standard way of
dealing with C/C++ applications for various domain problems (messaging,
database persistence, etc.) that rivals Java?  I'd like to know if there is
one accepted by everyone who writes C/C++... In that case, I claim
ignorance...

Not suggesting that Java is the golden hammer.... Just that C/C++ is
overkill for most things... I even coded in VB... But VB is a true disgrace
to programming... It's just lame... Java is Object Oriented... (no
flame-mail from the anti-OO people please... that is a religious
discussion...) and relatively clean... And I don't think that every "Kid"
can write a well designed Java program.  Kids typically don't understand
various design patterns and principles... To my experience, they actually
tend to think more of the low level problems, wanting to rewrite and
reinvent the world... a tendency that is much more possible, IMHO, in C/C++
than in Java due to existence of standard API's.


