On Apr 7, 4:25 pm, Sean Hodges <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Only a pedant would say 'Android is not Java', not that that even
> > makes sense - Android is the OS not the VM/language.
>
> Sorry, did I do something to you to deserve the name calling? Thanks
> for pointing out the terminology slip, I did not mean to insinuate
> that.

Not you in particular, it's just that whenever someone mentions Java
and dalvik there's a fair chance someone will complain that dalvik
executes *dalvik* bytecode not Java bytecode. It is a pedantic
distinction and something the original poster was never concerned
with. Currently one can only write android apps in Java. Until that
changes, dalvik is effectively a Java VM.

> we are talking about
> significant responsiveness issues on the UI, not evaluating a
> controlled Fibonacci test between the 2 platforms.

Totally agree, unfortunately that's much hard to test! However I'd
wager Java performs worse in 'normal' applications compared to
algorithmic benchmarks because normal programs probably do more
function calling, string manipulation, object creation and so on than
a Fibonacci test. Not sure how you'd test this though, other than
pitting real Java programs against C/C++ ones. E.g. the only java apps
I use: Eclipse, Netbeans and Vuze are all very unresponsive, though
perhaps that is to do with swing...

> > Either way, Dalvik doesn't have a JIT compiler so it is *much* slower
> > than native code. Additionally it uses a 'stop the world' garbage
> > collector which periodically freezes the UI for around 0.1-0.2
> > seconds. That causes little hiccups.
>
> The "stop the world" garbage collection is an interesting point to
> make. I've heard it before, and at the time I saw a response from
> Dianne Hackborn that stated that the GC of one app does not affect the
> functioning of another in normal handset operation.

Yes that's true. Each app runs in its own process with its own GC, so
only 'your own' GC can stop your app, but... well, it does. And you
have no control over when it does either. Pretty inconvenient for
games!

Still waiting for the day when scrolling in android is as smooth as
the iPhone. I fear it may be a while!

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