In the earlier days of the Java craze, we did some system development
in Java. We now use a mix of C++, Visual Basic, Javascript, VBscript,
and Perl - but no Java.
Why not?
Well, Java is argued to have two types of benefits: cross platform
portability and improved syntax/semantics (usability?). We're developing
for only one platform, so that cross platform aspect was not interesting.
The syntax/semantics improvements would be the only benefit. Again these
benefits must be traded the costs of dealing with a newer implementation
of the compiler, environment, etc. Our experience was that Java wasn't
quite ready yet - there were still too many bugs in the compiler and
the running code was still too slow. We also had to do a lot of work
to get around the way the Java implementation wanted to interact with
the ORB. These issues more than overwhelmed the bug reduction from the
improved syntax/semantics.
In a few years, we definitely need to look at Java again. Since the
primarily integration mechanism is at the ORB level, re-writing our
components in Java can be done incrementally.
Ruven Brooks
Rockwell Software
