> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Behalf Of The Fool
... > > Java is also the most widely used programming language in the world. > What > > the heck is so evil about it? > > I don't think so. Not by a wide margin. And you are basing this on what? See http://www.fawcette.com/online_eprods/jfawcette2002_01_09/ If you measure relative popularity by the number of people discussing developer issues on-line (as I do), Java clearly is in the running, with more momentum. It's difficult for anyone to come up with definitive absolute numbers, but the momentum *clearly* is in Java's favor and has been over the last few years. Every market research company agrees that the trends favor Java. I'm curious how you view this. Mass foolishness? As for Java being slow as molasses, that's often a red herring. For one thing, it's quite clear that it is fast enough for many, many purposes. Anybody working on real-world problems knows this. It's just like the stuff I'm working on these days. I know that everything I'm creating would run faster if I did it in C, but it's not worth the extra time required; almost everything I have runs fast enough in Python. The only real exception is in the area of text analysis, where I'm using a very well-written external application that seems to be able to consistently gobble up about 12 million words per minute, building indexes, concordances, co-occurring word lists, etc. And I turn to tools like SPSS, etc., when there isn't already a Python module to do the job. But when I figure out what kind analysis works for a particular task, I usually re-create it in Python so that it is nicely integrated, even though sometimes it ends up slower. And that kind of integration is what makes Java appealing; despite various irritating quirks, it's usually fairly easy to integrate Java applications into a larger system, whereas most C/C++ isn't. It could be, but there isn't any kind of consensus about APIs, etc., to make that happen. The Java Community Process is far from perfect, but I'd argue that it's the best thing of its kind. Nick _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
