Santiago Gala wrote:
El jue, 23-02-2006 a las 20:44 -0500, Stefano Mazzocchi escribió:
(...)
A good friend of mine used to have "cat juggler" as his title and I was
thinking about using "software plumber" as mine at one point.
Fair enough, I used to have "problem solver" or "I solve your problems
for a fee" as mine.
I tend to prefer somebody who admits to be a religiously attached to
something than those who pretend to be objective about it and deep
inside they are not.
Not sure this is the case, but that's how I read it.
OK, I just got surprised. I'm giving a talk on "Software and Artistic
Expression" in two weeks, so I kind of understand code as speech. From
there to code as scripture there is just some sliding slope.
I can grok evangelist as a metaphor, but being a Theologian would in my
view mean that src.zip is some sort of holy scripture, thing that I'm
far from believing. Oh, and heresy outside of the JCP church. :-P
What is more, such a title helps building on the tradition of java as a
"mono(theistic)culture", together with the .NET. one
Just yesterday I got squeak/smalltalk communities criticized (and I
agree) for being too closed in themselves, and it rang bells about java
being sort of the same. Having been part of both communities, I can't
but sympathise with Ben Hyde's "Small Gods" post:
http://enthusiasm.cozy.org/archives/2003/06/small-gods
Getting closer to topic, I wonder if someone can post here a subjective
summary of the ideas on support for dynamic languages in future java.
I'm concerned about the stagnation of jython (barely commits since
2.2a1) and I would also like to know how far is support for dynamic
languages going to be.
In particular, things like smalltalk's primitive "anObject become:
anotherObject", which will turn all references to an object to
references to a different one seem difficult to mix with the static
typing nature of java, and I would like to know more about the approach
they are going to take for such kind of problems.
I agree with you (and Ben) about the fact that monoculture brings
stagnation, but I don't think this is a good place for talking about
"java innovations".
<hat type="project mentor">
This project is about implement a JVM as specified by the JCP, of which
the ASF is part of.
Changing and influencing that JVM spec is out of scope it if brings
incompatibilities that will preclude passing the certification stage.
</hat>
This said, it is not impossible for Harmony to be instrumental in
showing that additions to the JVM might be beneficial for the outside
world and therefore submit them for review to the JCP.
There is *nothing* that prevents us from implementing harmony-specific
features, if this doesn't stop us from passing the TCK.
--
Stefano.
