Steve Byrne writes:
> <soapbox>
> [lots of stuff]
> </soapbox>
> There. I feel better.
I don't. Nothing personal, Steve, but if Java were in
perfect health, no FUD would be worth public venting.
Unfortunately, Java is not, especially not on Linux.
Some months ago there was an interview with Linus
on a Sun page, IIRC - where he stated "Java is dead".
I don't know him personally, but I always had the
impression that he is a tongue-in-cheek kind of guy.
However, he choose to work for a company now that tries
a different path to "virtual machines", and he might
have been partly serious.
I give you a data point: the lack of portability with
respect to the Invocation API (Linux among others),
contributed to the decision id Software made recently:
abandon Java in favor of an LCC-based ANSI C interpreter
for the 1999 title "Quake3: Arena". Monolith seems to
use a similar approach with the LithEngine: interpreted
C that can also be compiled.
Think whatever you want about games, but a mass market,
resource-demanding game built on Java technology and
ported to Linux, Solaris, and any other
OpenGL/Internet platform with a JNI-capable JVM or
native compiler would make a point gamelets will never
make. id had been committed to this, and had to bail out.
RebelBoatRocker will ship such a game in 1999 (PraxWar),
but they are focused on Win32, and haven't tried to port.
Whether it's Transmeta's "virtual i386" or interpreted
ANSI - once the world embraced the idea of pseudocode
again, it's not like Java will be the only possibility.
How about 64bit VM's? It's not that they have to be
JVM's, and they don't have to be specified by SMI.
I agree that Java is not dead, not by far (just look
at C++ to see how long these language developments take).
It's not outright well either, and not because of MS FUD,
but because Sun was more committed to describe the entire
world with an API inflation in their little Solaris/Win32
empire, instead of focussing on getting the WORA promise
fulfilled for a small, solid core. They bloated their
precious little gem until it resembled a balloon filled
with hot air, a balloon that might well loose all momentum
in the presence of even the slightest friction.
b.
P.S.: Sun "supports" JDK on Linux, but I can't find anything
on JDC about a Linux release candidate or ETA. I can get
JDK 1.2rc2 for Win32 just fine. There. I don't feel better.
P.P.S.: my apologies for the lengthy off topic diatribe.
