 |
AppletTalk.com
Java discussions newsgroups
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
Mike B
Guest
|
 Posted: Sun Apr 25, 2004 11:55 am Post subject: What if...Java hadn't been invented.... |
 |
|
Would anything have popped up in its place, or would we all still be using
C++?
Mike
|
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
Bootstrap Bill
Guest
|
| Posted: Sun Apr 25, 2004 7:50 pm Post subject: Re: What if...Java hadn't been invented.... |
|
|
"Mike B" <someone (AT) invalidaddress2 (DOT) someplace> wrote
| Quote: | Would anything have popped up in its place, or would we all still be using
C++?
|
Flash would have matured much more quickly.
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Roedy Green
Guest
|
| Posted: Sun Apr 25, 2004 7:56 pm Post subject: Re: What if...Java hadn't been invented.... |
|
|
On Sun, 25 Apr 2004 19:55:04 +0800, Mike B
<someone (AT) invalidaddress2 (DOT) someplace> wrote or quoted :
| Quote: | Would anything have popped up in its place, or would we all still be using
C++?
|
Oh heavens yet. Java has a slew of competitors. Politics is even
more important than technical merit in which one prevails.
Java's niche is "safe, rigidly multiplatform language".
Java's other niche is "dynamic loading of code".
In parallel universes we might have seen an evolution of Eiffel,
Dylan, Sather, Ada, Oberon, Scheme, C# ... to take over where Java is
now.
See http://mindprod.com/jgloss/language.html
Java succeeded partly because it originally aimed to be small and fast
enough to run a TV settop box.
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
Coaching, problem solving, economical contract programming.
See http://mindprod.com/jgloss/jgloss.html for The Java Glossary.
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
asj
Guest
|
| Posted: Sun Apr 25, 2004 9:23 pm Post subject: Re: What if...Java hadn't been invented.... |
|
|
Mike B <someone (AT) invalidaddress2 (DOT) someplace> wrote
| Quote: | Would anything have popped up in its place, or would we all still be using
C++?
|
i would be busy creating genetically-engineered monsters late at night
while STILL pursuing a PhD in Molec Bio after 10 years in grad school.
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
William Brogden
Guest
|
| Posted: Mon Apr 26, 2004 12:59 pm Post subject: Re: What if...Java hadn't been invented.... |
|
|
On Sun, 25 Apr 2004 19:56:27 GMT, Roedy Green <see (AT) mindprod (DOT) com.invalid>
wrote:
| Quote: | On Sun, 25 Apr 2004 19:55:04 +0800, Mike B
[email]someone (AT) invalidaddress2 (DOT) some[/email]place> wrote or quoted :
Would anything have popped up in its place, or would we all still be
using
C++?
Oh heavens yet. Java has a slew of competitors. Politics is even
more important than technical merit in which one prevails.
Java's niche is "safe, rigidly multiplatform language".
Java's other niche is "dynamic loading of code".
In parallel universes we might have seen an evolution of Eiffel,
Dylan, Sather, Ada, Oberon, Scheme, C# ... to take over where Java is
now.
See http://mindprod.com/jgloss/language.html
Java succeeded partly because it originally aimed to be small and fast
enough to run a TV settop box.
|
Gee - nobody remembers Magic Cap - they had a scheme for portable
code before Java. Unfortunately they didn't have the huge cash
reserves to release it for free like Sun did so it quietly went
away.
See the post-mortem here:
http://www.pencomputing.com/magic_cap/
Bill
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Bradley E. Rintoul
Guest
|
| Posted: Mon Apr 26, 2004 6:33 pm Post subject: Re: What if...Java hadn't been invented.... |
|
|
William Brogden <wbrogden (AT) bga (DOT) com> wrote
| Quote: | Gee - nobody remembers Magic Cap - they had a scheme for portable
code before Java. Unfortunately they didn't have the huge cash
reserves to release it for free like Sun did so it quietly went
away.
See the post-mortem here:
http://www.pencomputing.com/magic_cap/
|
Funny.
But don't forget - for something to be remembered, it has first to be known.
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Mike B
Guest
|
| Posted: Tue Apr 27, 2004 11:23 am Post subject: Re: What if...Java hadn't been invented.... |
|
|
On Mon, 26 Apr 2004 11:09:45 -0800, "Jörn W. Janneck" <jwjanneck at yahoo dot
com> wrote:
| Quote: | William Brogden wrote:
[snip]
Gee - nobody remembers Magic Cap - they had a scheme for portable
code before Java. Unfortunately they didn't have the huge cash
reserves to release it for free like Sun did so it quietly went
away.
See the post-mortem here:
http://www.pencomputing.com/magic_cap/
virtual machines running portable code have a long tradition---the ucsd
p-system had this, in the late 70s, and i am sure it was not the first
(implementations of lisp, e.g., certainly used vm-like interpreters long
before that).
|
So what made Java "special" compared to the others, and why is Python
suddenly flavor of the month?
Perhaps the Python phenomenon is partly explained by the fact that an average
PC has 100 times the processing power and memory compared to those from the
early 1990's. Essentially the disk I/O bottleneck, which was a major problem
is now, in many cases, the only problem.
Mike
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Roedy Green
Guest
|
| Posted: Tue Apr 27, 2004 7:20 pm Post subject: Re: What if...Java hadn't been invented.... |
|
|
On Tue, 27 Apr 2004 10:30:26 -0800, "Jörn W. Janneck" <jwjanneck at
yahoo dot com> wrote or quoted :
| Quote: | looked a lot like c/c++,
|
I think it was the superficial resemblance to C++. It made people feel
comfortable.
Yet the things I like least about Java are kludgy things inherited
from C, like switch, the () {} forests, the mishmash of prefix/postfix
notation, and the for loop that can do anything but eat if you don't
get every keystroke bang on.
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
Coaching, problem solving, economical contract programming.
See http://mindprod.com/jgloss/jgloss.html for The Java Glossary.
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Dr Chaos
Guest
|
| Posted: Tue Apr 27, 2004 8:45 pm Post subject: Re: What if...Java hadn't been invented.... |
|
|
On Tue, 27 Apr 2004 12:07:12 -0800, Jörn W. Janneck <> wrote:
| Quote: | Roedy Green wrote:
On Tue, 27 Apr 2004 10:30:26 -0800, "Jörn W. Janneck" <jwjanneck at
yahoo dot com> wrote or quoted :
looked a lot like c/c++,
I think it was the superficial resemblance to C++. It made people feel
comfortable.
perhaps, but this still begs the question why so many of the recently
popular languages look so very unlike c/c++. personally, i think that this
issue (i.e. superficial similarity to the currently popular language) is
similarly overrated as the issue of "native" look and feel. of course,
programmers do not want to needlessly learn a new language that does pretty
much the same thing as a language they already know---they do resist
gratuitous differences, and quite rightly so.
but if a new language solves a real problem better than their current tools,
it is my experience that people will happily learn its syntax in order to be
able to use it. afaict, the myth of the conservative programmer is the
result of either (a) frustration on the part of language designers who were
unsuccessful in convincing their target audience of the value of their
proposition, or (b) calcification in management layers who used to be
technical once, but do not want to get involved with the new-fangled stuff
and thus project their own reluctance onto an assumed clientele.
|
No, it is management which assumes that "nice syntax" automatically
means "academic impractical language".
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Roedy Green
Guest
|
| Posted: Tue Apr 27, 2004 8:49 pm Post subject: Re: What if...Java hadn't been invented.... |
|
|
On Tue, 27 Apr 2004 12:07:12 -0800, "Jörn W. Janneck" <jwjanneck at
yahoo dot com> wrote or quoted :
| Quote: | apart from these superficial issues, there is also a whole lot of more
structural nonsense in the java design, otherwise one could just slap a new
parser onto it and have a great language.
|
That was my idea, to create a language almost identical to Java in
functionality but with cleaner syntax and a large dollop of sugar to
make the common idioms terse.
The various ideas I had are at http://mindprod.com/jgloss/bali.html
Some are gradually making their way into mainstream Java.
If JavaC were open source would be probably thousands of such
languages. Programmers who work alone might decide they could finally
have things THEIR way.
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
Coaching, problem solving, economical contract programming.
See http://mindprod.com/jgloss/jgloss.html for The Java Glossary.
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Dr Chaos
Guest
|
| Posted: Tue Apr 27, 2004 9:13 pm Post subject: Re: What if...Java hadn't been invented.... |
|
|
On Tue, 27 Apr 2004 20:49:12 GMT, Roedy Green <see (AT) mindprod (DOT) com.invalid> wrote:
| Quote: | On Tue, 27 Apr 2004 12:07:12 -0800, "Jörn W. Janneck" <jwjanneck at
yahoo dot com> wrote or quoted :
apart from these superficial issues, there is also a whole lot of more
structural nonsense in the java design, otherwise one could just slap a new
parser onto it and have a great language.
That was my idea, to create a language almost identical to Java in
functionality but with cleaner syntax and a large dollop of sugar to
make the common idioms terse.
|
Been there, done that.
Sather or Dylan.
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Dr Chaos
Guest
|
| Posted: Wed Apr 28, 2004 10:39 pm Post subject: Re: What if...Java hadn't been invented.... |
|
|
On Tue, 27 Apr 2004 14:05:21 -0800, Jörn W. Janneck <> wrote:
| Quote: | Dr Chaos wrote:
On Tue, 27 Apr 2004 12:07:12 -0800, Jörn W. Janneck <> wrote:
[snip]
but if a new language solves a real problem better than their current
tools,
it is my experience that people will happily learn its syntax in order to
be
able to use it. afaict, the myth of the conservative programmer is the
result of either (a) frustration on the part of language designers who
were
unsuccessful in convincing their target audience of the value of their
proposition, or (b) calcification in management layers who used to be
technical once, but do not want to get involved with the new-fangled
stuff
and thus project their own reluctance onto an assumed clientele.
No, it is management which assumes that "nice syntax" automatically
means "academic impractical language".
afaict, "nice" does not even enter the equation, unless it is defined as
"similar to c".
|
why is perl OK then commercially?
It's an abominable language with a hideous syntax, which isn't
similar to C.
The readability and understandability of APL, the orthogonality of
cubism, and the sparkling clarity of postmodern French philosophy.
(The arrogance too.  )
| Quote: | management do not care about esthetics (and neither should
they, arguably). their perception is that many people "want" c/c++, for
various (and varying) reasons, mostly associated with some form of legacy,
either as code, or as user qualification or even just user
preference/prejudice.
|
nice syntax shouldn't be nice for the sake of aesthetics, but because it
reduces human error and improves understanding. Lisp is very
aesthetically pure but probably not ergonomic at all. (neurologically
it is known that human language processing does not have a deep stack).
Naturally whatever meager actual empirical evidence is available is
ignored. This is very old research but one thing which was found was
that
if condition then
xxx
else
yyy
zzz
endif
was clearly superior to both Pascal/Algol and C styles.
Of course, this syntax is what modern Fortran and Ada support, (not to
mention many other ergonomically superior features) which of course
are very likely to be rejected as viable languages by most management.
Even now in government and military applications where the pressure to
"go C++" is apparently intense despite resistance from programmers who
know better.
| Quote: | to some extent, that is even true, as people's imagination is influenced by
their past experience (the traditional problem in letting users tell you
what they want). to some extent, their perception comes from talking to
other managers. and the third ingredient is their own prejudice, from either
the time when they did technical work, or when they at least bothered to
scan technical publications.
|
as in "pascal sucked and C ruled in 1984" ????
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Dr Chaos
Guest
|
| Posted: Wed Apr 28, 2004 10:39 pm Post subject: Re: What if...Java hadn't been invented.... |
|
|
On Tue, 27 Apr 2004 14:18:20 -0800, Jörn W. Janneck <> wrote:
| Quote: | why would javac need to be open source for this purpose? a preprocessor
could do whatever you wanted, and produce java, so that it would not even
have to bother with low-level code generation. and, of course, this has been
done numerous times already, for instance in order to realize some form of
"contract" as you suggest.
|
source level debugging sucks.
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Roedy Green
Guest
|
| Posted: Wed Apr 28, 2004 11:41 pm Post subject: Re: What if...Java hadn't been invented.... |
|
|
On Wed, 28 Apr 2004 22:39:02 +0000 (UTC), Dr Chaos
<mbkennelSPAMBEGONE (AT) NOSPAMyahoo (DOT) com> wrote or quoted :
| Quote: | why is perl OK then commercially?
It's an abominable language with a hideous syntax, which isn't
similar to C.
|
I think it has something of the appeal of WWF.
Perhaps slobs like a language that makes them feel at home.
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
Coaching, problem solving, economical contract programming.
See http://mindprod.com/jgloss/jgloss.html for The Java Glossary.
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
altkey
Guest
|
| Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2004 5:29 am Post subject: Re: What if...Java hadn't been invented.... |
|
|
Jörn W. Janneck wrote:
| Quote: | "Dr Chaos" <mbkennelSPAMBEGONE (AT) NOSPAMyahoo (DOT) com> wrote in message
news:slrnc90clk.cao.mbkennelSPAMBEGONE (AT) lyapunov (DOT) ucsd.edu...
On Tue, 27 Apr 2004 14:18:20 -0800, Jörn W. Janneck <> wrote:
why would javac need to be open source for this purpose? a preprocessor
could do whatever you wanted, and produce java, so that it would not
even
have to bother with low-level code generation. and, of course, this has
been
done numerous times already, for instance in order to realize some form
of
"contract" as you suggest.
source level debugging sucks.
right, but fixing this would be no rocket science. of course, this would
require modifying javac, and perhaps that is the substance of roedy's
remark. but i still don't think that this is the main impediment to
compiling other languages to the jvm. imho, java embodies the jvm concepts
pretty much canonically, if using an ugly c syntax. the differential utility
of begin/end vs curly braces is just not big enough to bother.
|
I'm not sure that there's any significant problem with the jvm and
bytecode; there are some minor problems but nothing very significant.
I believe the reason why the JVM hasn't attracted a lot of different
front-ends (languages other than Java) is that Java came out in the mid
1990s and it took a while before it was hugely popular (3 or so years at
least) and during that time Java as a language became the reason to
migrate more than the JVM itself. The idea that you could learn one
language (Java and its APIs) and program for Windows, MacOS, Unix, and
later Linux along with Mac OS X, was attractive.
I came from a Adabas/Natural, COBOL, C, and VB background in 1997 when I
learned Java and part of the attraction for me was that I'd only need to
learn Java and learn about its APIs. The C like syntax was ok - i would
have preferred Pascal like syntax, but that was mainly for theoretical
reasons rather than practical ones - but the fact that there was only
ONE language to work with was appealing. It meant that all the Patterns
and architecture literature could be written for the syntax of a single
language that everybody who did jvm development would be familiar with.
That was a very positive thing for me.
Now we have .NET and C#, VB, ECMA script, J#, Python# etc .... all very
interesting, all very cool for VB, Java, C#, etc programmers (since they
all receive one API and can transfer their IL code between themselves),
but not so cool for the literature about useful things like
architecture, patterns, etc.
AltKey
| Quote: |
you see the same situation (in spite of microsoft's efforts to claim
otherwise) with the clr and c#: c# is the canonical clr-notation, and my
guess is that the clr ecosystem, like the jvm cousin, will essentially
become a language monoculture with a few experimental languages at its
edges. and the reason is that the essential part of a language is not the
syntax, but the abstractions it offers, and having more than one notation
for precisely the same set of abstractions is just a waste of time and
effort.
-- j
|
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
