I was just under the impression that because java is compiled into byte code and interpreted by the VM at runtime, that it was noticeably slower than a comparable program, say in C++, that is compiled directly into machine language. If there is a noticeable difference, it seems like it would be (relatively) trivial to turn the VM into a genuine compiler. Please correct me if my concerns are ill-conceived. I am considering writing a mud in java, which would be a quite large program with a huge database, and am wondering if it would be grossly inefficient. But I have never benchmarked it, I don't even have java installed.
Thanks Steve
