Given that people have been wanting Java to start up faster for over 10 years, and have been wanting to see stronger support in desktop Java (applets, applications - sound/multimedia cross-platform support, for example) for a similar amount of time, and haven't seen meaningful progress*, they've moved on to asking for tail call recursion. No point in beating a dead horse.
Furthermore, tail call recursion is something that should be able to be done completely in the software layer, and doesn't have to deal with things like different CPU architectures (OK, maybe it does?) and graphics layers and such. I'm not saying TCR is necessarily *easy*, but there should be fewer external barrier which prevent it from happening. I'm all for the modularity thing, and would love to see desktop Java apps take off as a viable commercial platform. I'd love to see Sun take over the writing and distribution of Java to all major platforms on their own (instead of Apple having their hand in the way for OSX, etc.) I just don't realistically think many of these will happen any time soon. TCR *seems* like it should be comparatively straightforward. * note - I'm not saying no progress has been made. Java today is faster than Java of 10 and even 5 years ago. For desktop stuff, it doesn't feel like it relative to the strides other platforms have made in the same time period. On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 8:53 PM, Paul King <[email protected]>wrote: > > If you want to apply a functional style to your programming, even > relatively simple algorithmswhich intuitively shouldn't require many > resources bomb out early without tail call optimizations. > It isn't the end of the world but you have to choose less > expressive/declarative solutions to > your problems which as well as being less elegant are much harder to > understand/maintain. > > Cheers, Paul. > > On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 8:20 AM, Joshua Marinacci <[email protected]>wrote: > >> Okay.. seriously dudes! I've been hearing this request over and over. Of >> all of the things missing from the Java platform (and they are many, believe >> me), why is *tail recursion* the make or break feature for the future of the >> Java platform? Seriously?! Tail Recursion?! Not fixing applets or >> modularity or starting up 18 times faster, but tail recursion!? WTH! >> > > > > > > > -- Michael Kimsal http://jsmag.com - for javascript developers http://groovymag.com - for groovy developers 919.827.4724 --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
