On Nov 12, 2007 3:20 AM, Christopher Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Andrew Lentvorski wrote: > > Christopher Smith wrote: > >> Andrew Lentvorski wrote: > >>> It's the C++ folks who should feel the threat. C++ really needs to > >>> die at this point. > >> Yes, they should be really threatened by all the other languages that > >> have been used to implement full featured browsers. Languages like...... > >> Okay, maybe they aren't so worried. ;-) > > > > Yet businesses who are running much larger codebases seem to be all > > Java based. Gee, I wonder why .... > You of course would be referring to business like Google, Adobe, Yahoo, > Microsoft, Symantec,..... ;-)
Google does, in fact, run quite a bit of Java and Python (and C++). I believe Amazon is mostly Java. Yahoo started their mail application in Python for rapid development and, after it matured, reimplemented it in C++ for performance. Sadly, too many languages gravitate towards easy/slow or annoying/fast. > There were lots of programming languages one could aspire to write a > browser in back in that era. Heck, before Java took over the scene > everyone was trying to be the "alternative to C++". Certainly, there > were also quality implementations of Objective-C available for free. You Well, but they *did* write a browser in Objective-C: http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/ It was originally for NeXT and now for Mac. Of course, since it runs only on Macs and is not the default browser there, it will never be popular. But please don't say no one ever wrote a fully professional web browser in anything but C++ or C. That's not true. You might say it's hardly used, but see below for why that doesn't matter. > In fact, browsers were written in many of the languages I mentioned, and > they all tended to suck compared to Netscape or even second tier browers > like Mosaic, IE, and Cello. There was a reason the Netscape folks chose > C++ from all the language choices they had back then. And popularity was one of them. And cross platform was another. With some work, you can get C++ to run on Windows and Unix. Back then that wasn't the case with, for example, Delphi. > In truth, modern browsers are built on codebases that were largely > rewritten from scratch in the late 90's, so there was a chance for a new > language champion to emerge. Furthermore, the codebases of older > browsers were so small that it didn't take much effort to reach feature > parity of them (indeed, there was an old Dilbert comic strip that > jokingly made reference to the notion that typing randomly at your > computer for a few days would produce a functional web browser). That last statement is false. Don't you remember the *huge* gap in time between releases of Netscape Navigator when they rewrote it? There was an article by one of the original developers of the project about how the decision to rewrite was one of the contributors to IE's rise and Navigator's fall. Even back in the 90s a capable browser was a major project. > Java in particular has no real excuse beyond language limitations. The > HotJava browser was written in 1994 and released in 1995 (oh, and Java > was available for free in 1995 too). It was briefly successful due to > its unique support for Applets, but rapidly lost favour once other > browsers obtained the capability. Sun made various attempts to > revitalize the project, and never drew much interest. At the same time > that the Mozilla code base was open source, Netscape open sourced > "Jazilla", their own in-house Java-based browser effort. Yeah well, I'm not really a Java fan. Sun had severe quality issues from the beginning and I ditched Java early on for Python. > While having most modern browsers implemented in C++ doesn't prove much > of anything in terms of its superiority, it does prove much with regards > to arguments about its inferiority. If other languages were so obviously > better than it, surely we wouldn't all be using C++ browsers, e-mail > clients, word processors, spreadsheets, etc. Surely the huge technical > disadvantage you suggest would ensure that developers would come up with > better solutions in other languages, or never think to choose C++ for > their projects to begin with. I don't agree with this either. NeXT was the best operating system back in its heyday, but even when they ported it to the PC it never became popular. Objective-C has been a better language than C++ this whole time, but it's not the most popular. Delphi was better than VB6, but not as popular. McDonald's is more popular than Boston Market and always will be. But which you prefer to eat at? Popularity has never meant a product or service was not inferior. My observation over the years is that by the time a product has risen to the #1 popularity spot, enough time has usually passed for people to come up with something much, much better. At which point the #1 product begins to feel inferior. > > Of course, since C++ doesn't even play well between different > > compilers, it's no surprise that those who use C++ are trapped with it. > I grow tired of this silly statement that you raise again and again. > Heck, most Java implementations are built from the same reference code > base, they have a massive conformance test for branding, and yet you > still run in to problems between the different versions (and the ones > that are from unique codebases are even more problematic). Heck even > Java compilers, despite largely being glorified parsers, run in to > problems (I still recall Sun simply refusing to fix a bug in their VM > back in 2000 on the grounds that the byte code sequence in question > would never be produced by *their* compiler). I've seen first hand the Ah, more evidence that Java does, in fact, suck. I remember when their library methods were stubbed out with no implementation, but the docs wouldn't tell you which ones. -Chuck -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-lpsg
