-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
On Tuesday 12 February 2002 17:44, you wrote:
> I love the freenet project. I don't like that for some
> reason it's done in java. I happily ran a node
> something like a year ago and it was great. At the
> time
> I was running it on my x86 FreeBSD machine. I later
> put in a sparcstation 5 as my firewall running NetBSD
> 1.5.... And could no longer run a freenet node.
>
> I notice that the java interpreters all have
> proprietary licenses save kaffe, and kaffe is in sad
> shape.
The developers have taken great pains to keep Freenet compatible with the
Java 1.1 API in order to maintain comatability with Kaffe (except in the few
cases where Kaffe does offer Java 2 classes).
Hopefully at some point we will see a GCJ compiled node, which will allow you
to run Java code as a native application. Some recent benchmarks by IBM show
that right now, native-compiled Java using GCJ does not give you a clear
advantage in speed or memory (most likely because the compiler is still
immature), but at least it would solve the VM problem.
> I have a hard time seeing how something like
> the freenet project can say with a straight face that
> it's done in java so that it's cross platform.
Read Ian's orginal paper on the Freenet web site. Java was mostly used
because it makes development easier, not because of being cross platform.
After all, this is a Free Software project. In Free Software, there is no
real gain in having the binaries being cross platform, since the source can
always be recompiled for a new platform.
> java is horrible and I hate it very much. I'm not a developer.
You may not like it as a user, but as a developer, Java is a dream to use
compared to C++ (just don't get Travis up on the benfits of Ocmal, or we'll
never hear the end of it). Keep in mind that Freenet is still highly under
development, so we want to make things easier on the developers NOW and worry
about being easier on users LATER.
> I'm sure I'm one of the less technical people on this
> list. Somehow I feel a lot more comfortable with
> something written in C and not building than I do not
> even having a java interpreter (or whatever it is) for
> my platform. I haven't seen a single sane bit of
> discussion regarding why it's done in java. Maybe I'll
> find a thread regarding that while I dig through
> archives some more but I just check the freenet site
> every couple of months hoping someone involved with
> the project woke up one day and had the realization
> that java is NOT cross platform.
Again, we don't care about cross platform. In any case, most of Java's
problems in being cross platform are due to either because of bugs in the VM
or bad coding practices on the part of the developers (which would apply
equaly to C anyway). For instance:
File f = new File("/etc/services");
This is obviously not going to work outside a *nix system.
- --
Real programmers don't bring brown-bag lunches. If the vending machine
doesn't sell it, they don't eat it. Vending machines don't sell quiche.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.4 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org
iEYEARECAAYFAjxp8hEACgkQqpueKcacfLQoPwCePchYAkUydT2At4MmhqVUatya
nFgAn1ozqYi/IhMpOgB41pJNYzp4tAo5
=cm0f
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
_______________________________________________
freenet-tech mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://lists.freenetproject.org/mailman/listinfo/tech
