Funny really, in OS design the small core, big libs approach has long been preferred.
The windows NT MicroKernel dates back to 1993 The original Unix Kernel, 1973 In programming languages, it's not so clear-cut. LISP dates back to 1958, and even then you could define your own control constructs within the language - the actual spec is VERY small. C++ and derivatives (including Java, C#) broke from this, with higher-level constructs such as `for`, `switch` and `while` being deeply embedded at the library level and in the VM. Clojure, Scala and F# are once again pulling the pendulum back again to the small kernel, big libs idea (working with the VM as necessary), and LLVM is doing the same sort of thing at a lower level. For example, tail-call optimisation against the JVM is currently achieved through a technique known as "trampolining" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tail_recursion#Implementation_methods) So perhaps with the shifting trends in languages, a lighter weight VM really is the right way to go, especially if VMKit & co. can be used to allow us to get at all those juicy open-source libs... On 31 August 2010 13:25, Miroslav Pokorny <[email protected]>wrote: > The reason Java became the most popular platform on the planet is because > of all the oss libraries. Nothing out there beats or even comes close in > comparison. Good luck with such a richness of choice and quality in dotnet > land. Maybe java is not quite as fancy as c# but in the end we are all most > of the time just the guy who adds glue between one library and something > else. Maybe Java is a bit more verbose or not as elegant...but in the end > that does not matter, because what we lose in elegance and language features > is more than offseted by magnitudes with oss. > > -- > 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]<javaposse%[email protected]> > . > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en. > -- Kevin Wright mail/google talk: [email protected] wave: [email protected] skype: kev.lee.wright twitter: @thecoda -- 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.
