Primitives are good... if you're a CPU. I have absolutely no objection to the performance benefits of primitives in bytecode (in the earlier pre-JIT interpreters at least, the benefit is less clear in a post-JIT world).
But what's in bytecode for the benefit of the compiler needn't be what's in the language for the benefit of programmers. A translation in javac would allow Java to have pure objects whilst maintaining primitives in bytecode; just as javac allows us to create inner classes, even though the underlying platform has no idea of the concept. We *can* have our cake and eat it too. As for why it's right for everything to be objects? It's a far cleaner, more elegant, and a more internally consistent model for programmers to reason about. The very existence of this thread illustrates why that's important! To quote: "premature optimisation is the root of all evil", and you can't get much more premature than in the design of a language... On 11 March 2012 19:38, Fabrizio Giudici <[email protected]>wrote: > On Sun, 11 Mar 2012 18:23:45 +0100, Cédric Beust ♔ <[email protected]> > wrote: > > On Sun, Mar 11, 2012 at 10:09 AM, Kevin Wright <[email protected]> >> **wrote: >> >> I'd say smalltalk (a 70's language) had it right, make *everything* an >>> object. >>> >> >> >> Define "right". I used a lot of Smalltalk during my PhD in the early 90's >> and while the environment was revolutionary on many fronts, it was also >> very, very slow (both the IDE and the programs it created). I'd argue that >> one of the many reasons for this was because everything was an object. >> > > In fact SmallTalk, from the industrial point of view, is a failure. > Fortunately Java has got non-object primitives and it allows to do number > crunching. All this discussion originates from a typical programmer's error > blaming the language, and for controlling that error we've got plenty of > tools, as if it was the only error that programmers do in Java. > > > -- 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.
