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From: Dean Roddey <droddey@taligent.com>
Newsgroups: comp.object,comp.software-eng,comp.lang.java.tech,comp.lang.java.programmer,comp.lang.eiffel
Subject: Re: Why JAVA has all the hype that it deserves?
Date: Mon, 02 Jun 1997 17:59:20 -0700
Organization: Taligent
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Gil Colgate wrote:
> 
> Simple, isn't it? I predict in 15 years we will be programming device
> drivers in Java. I remember when it was unthinkable to write
> a commercial application in C! (Yeah, just try to write C
> code on the Apple IIe. I dare you!)

I'm not sure its that simple per se. Lots of device driver code is
probably still in assembly because the performance and the bit fiddling
is required. Unless Java is expanded (made more complex) so that it can
deal with arbitrary structures and fiddle bits and so on, you won't be
writing many device drivers with it. So the argument you make does not
necessary follow from A to B. Moving from ASM to C did not lose any
ability to *do anything*, it just lost some speed. Moving from C to Java
would lose the ability to do many of the things that device drivers do,
there again unless Java is made more complex in order to deal with those
things.

And, there is the issue of the cost of crossing the 'language X to
assembly' barrier. C interfaces very easily to assembler for the most
part, and the ASM code can directly manipulate any data structures that
the C code uses. Once you move into C++ it gets harder, because the ASM
code cannot easily manipulate objects. Once you move further afield, the
cost becomes greater. At some point, the cost of 'busting open' all of
the objects each time that you have to call some lower level language
(in order to get the speed or hardware manipulation capabilities
required) overrides the benefits of doing so.

Are not the JavaOS efforts using C code at the core in order to
interface to the hardware? If not, then they must be extended versions
of the language if they are to run on anything besides specialized Java
chips.

------------------------------------
Dean Roddey
Sr. Software Engineer
Taligent, Inc
dean_roddey@taligent.com
