What is your point? Lots of languages use some form of VM nowadays, and JIT compilers are slowly sprouting all over the place.
My point was, as I cleanly stated in my reply was that _not all_ VM's have JIT or do any byte code to native instruction translation and that you can't take it for granted. Read before you reply.
I don't buy this. Netscape went under -- Navigator did not. I expect something similar to happen, should Sun sink.
As I said in my email. _Only_ because they open sourced it before they got eat by AOL and eventually dismembered. I don't want this to happen to Sun before Java is set free like Navigator was.
Well, you certainly have a point, but what does that have to do with anything?
I was trying to show an example. Put replace the Work Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox with Java and the word IE with .NET/C#.
So open that everyone and their dog has their own version.
However pretty much every compiler can compile ISO C++ or ANSI C. Or should to be worth using.
Yes, because anyone can get involved. Not everyone would be able to get involved with Sun's Officially Blessed Version Of Java.
No everyone can get involved in Python or Perl. There are a key set of developers clustered around those languages that do 90% of the work. Open Source projects are usually meritocracies. Do the work, submit the patch and as long as it is "good enough" to please the core team it might get included. The operative word is /might/. Just because a piece of software is open source doesn't actually mean you have any real control over its development as a user. You have the freedom to modify it to your desires but no own said anything about actually being able to effectively contribute to its development. Take MySQL for example. That has to be one of the more popular "open source" products that has near zero community inclusion in the development process. The whole "open source development methodology" is rather over blown if you ask me. The are many benefits to open source. Few of them center around the the development methodology IMO.
That's not a fork. That's a reimplementation of the VM etc, but it's not a fork of the language.
Well there are rarely forks of languages which was one of my points in the previous email. There are inconsistencies between the Sun and IBM JVMs though that can cause "issues". So I was just throwing it in for effect.
I'm not arguing with you because I particularly like Java -- I feel quite the opposite about it, actually --, but you're not making a very strong point.
Well as a developer of 10+ years experience and as someone who has been in developing in Java for the last 2.5 years I can say that Java is my preferred language at the moment. There are many things about it that aren't perfect but no language ever is. I also very experienced in a few other languages including Perl, C/C++, and PHP. Over the last 10+ years I've used many others as well. In preference I'd probably rank in preferred order the languages I use regularly as Java, Perl, PHP, C++.
My own opinion is that Java should be free ( != open source ) because that would be good for the language. There are many companies with vast investments in the technology, so there are clearly forces with a interest in the language's progress.
Sun needs to let Java go because if it doesn't Java will die with Sun. Sun is a dead company. IMO unless it can re-invent itself as a services company it will be gone in less than 5 years. Their Unix server business will be eaten by Dell and HP selling Linux powered machines. .NET will come and byte its arse in the web services area. There is very little that makes that company interesting except Java. My only hope is that if Sun doesn't see the light when the do finally go down the tubes (they are already loosing money faster than they can make it) that IBM will buy them and open source Java for us.
However, that also means Sun would likely quickly find themselves on the sidelines, and they're not known as a company that can let go. They have a history of keeping a pretty tight grip on their brainchildren, occasionally to the point of suffocation.
They are doomed to be sidelined anyway. It would be nice if they could at least see that. Regards -- Oliver Jones » Director » oliver(a)deeperdesign.com » +64 (21) 41 2238 Deeper Design Limited » +64 (7) 377 3328 » www.deeperdesign.com