On 2/13/07, Levi Pearson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Since you didn't reply to the other points I made, I will assume that you now realize that the Java tools, although they are really very nice and possibly the most advanced available tools of their kind, are not revolutionary. Most of the features you listed above existed in Smalltalk systems, some of them going back to the 80s. The HotSpot technology that makes Java so fast was borrowed from Smalltalk-related code, too. The success of Java was due to a marketing coup at a time when the Smalltalk vendors made poor business decisions, not any real technical superiority. It has since developed tools beyond where Smalltalk was, but the language is still not as nice as Smalltalk, at least in my humble opinion. :)
I've haven't used the tools you mentioned, so I can't come back with a snappy response. I'll have to use them, and then deem them to suck in comparison to Eclipse/NetBeans. I'm downloading Squeak right now, and plan on making an objective comparison. If Squeak is not state-of-the-art, you just point me to what is and I'll take a look that.
You say you're not trying to argue that Java is the best, but it certainly looks like you are to me. Go ahead and protest if you like, but no one believes you. As for me, I've never said anything to
NO ONE believes me? Only a Sith thinks in absolutes! I do enjoy espousing the virtues of Java and debating the critics. For me, Java is the best. I'm an aggressive evangelizer. I like representing my point of view. But, intellectually, I know that Java isn't the best thing for all people or all purposes. To each his own.
suggest that I think people want to use Lisp. Clearly, most people don't, whether out of ignorance or preference. Really, that's fine with me, though I'd be happy to talk Lisp with someone who wanted to learn it. And, by the way, Common Lisp runtimes are very fast.
And my blood doesn't boil when you or someone mentions the virtues of Lips. That's sensational.
The JVM, thanks to HotSpot and the other new dynamic optimization and garbage collection technologies, is indeed a very nice platform for statically-typed languages. Hopefully it will evolve into a very nice platform for dynamically-typed languages, too. I've got nothing bad
JSR 292 will make alterations to the Java bytecode format and JVM to make it more dynamic language friendly. http://www.artima.com/lejava/articles/dynamic_languages.html
to say about it, aside from the fact that it's still rather Java-centric. But this, again, is an incremental improvement. I'm happy that the technology is being used, though, instead of just rotting in some old codebase somewhere, and I hope that it grows better support for dynamically-typed languages.
Java 7 will be even better for dynamic langs. -Bryan /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
