[clug] Why isn't Java popular on the Linux Desktop?

[Sam Couter]

Francis James Whittle <fudje at grapevine.net.au> wrote:
> Files and streams being different however - no.  Files are a type of
> stream.

Files are bytes on a disk. They can be streamed, but they aren't a
stream themselves. A network socket is a stream. Many devices such as TV
tuners are streams. They're different from files, even though (on
UNIX-like systems) they have file names.

> Even Java admits this, because a file is an extension of a
> stream.

http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/io/File.html says:

"""
public class File
extends Object
implements Serializable, Comparable<File>

An abstract representation of file and directory pathnames.
"""

There's nothing there about streams. The word "stream" doesn't appear in
the page.

> But also, files are a type of stream that you normally want to read in a
> buffered way, and often you want to know which part of this stream
> you're in.  So it makes sense to either (a) extend the file to have a
> buffered variant, or (b) have flags on the file to determine whether we
> need buffering or not.

(c) have a class that knows how to stream bytes from a file, so files
can be files and don't need to know about streaming.

> It's like it can't decide if it's
> object-orientated or not.

Files dealing with files and streams dealing with streaming isn't OO?
-- 
Sam Couter         |  mailto:sam at couter.id.au
OpenPGP fingerprint:  A46B 9BB5 3148 7BEA 1F05  5BD5 8530 03AE DE89 C75C
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