On 26/08/2014 09:46, Chris wrote:
The problem was that Java didn't behave as expected on Windows. Things that worked fine on Linux and OS X didn't work on Windows (even simple things like deleting files). User reported all sorts of problems, one of them being that the Java Access Bridge didn't work. Why, nobody knows. The lack of a proper sound API / library. Then there was the versioning hell with JRE/JVM and having to tell users what version they had to download (the non tech savvy crowd). I know that MS doesn't make it easy for Java either. Well, I could have sorted the problems out with Java web start, SWT and all that kind of stuff. Instead, I learned D which I can compile and run on each platform without a problem.
The promise of "Write once run everywhere" is still pretty much accurate if you stick to core Java code and libraries. Of course once you start using OS/implementation specific code you will have to code more carefully, and are more likely to encounter cross-platform problems. That's just the nature of things, you can't say it's a failure of Java. It's like coding in D using lots of malloc/free in your code, and then when your program breaks, you complain that "the D GC doesn't work!". Of course the GC only is only guaranteed to work if you stick to GC-managed memory.
To be honest I smell a load of Java-biased *BS* here, especially because of this sentence: "Instead, I learned D which I can compile and run on each platform without a problem."
Actually virtually all other languages, including D, are just as bad as Java (if not worse) in the aspects mentioned above. For example, if you write code which heavily interacts with the filesystem, you are bound to encounter platform/OS-specific problems no matter what language. I'd bet money those "even simple things like deleting files", you'd have in D as well. At least in Java the APIs they are usually careful to specify which aspects of behavior are implementation-specific.
In other cases, such as the sound library or accessibility library, most other cross-platform language don't even have those!, so how can you be saying that D runs better on each platform that Java?.. (Does a non-existent library run perfectly on every conceivable platform? one could say yes...)
-- Bruno Medeiros https://twitter.com/brunodomedeiros
