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

[Daniel Pittman]

Michael Cohen <scudette at gmail.com> writes:
> On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 6:11 PM, Hugh Fisher<hugh.fisher at anu.edu.au> wrote:
>
>> A further annoyance is the Java Native Interface for calling
>> platform native C code, which seemed to be expressly designed
>> to discourage you from doing so. (Microsoft evidently took
>> notes because in C# it's much easier.)
>
> And therein lies the biggest problem IMHO. Lets face it portability is like
> world peace - we can dream it but it just cant happen.

I assume you are restricting your comment to "portability without effort",
because there is plenty of evidence that portable software is possible. ;)

[...]

> It does not make sense to implement complex algorithms in pure java or
> python - I just cant sacrifice the performance.

You are making a big assumption there, which is that it is necessary to
sacrifice performance when using a higher level language like Python or Java.

Present implementations, and perhaps the Java language itself, don't always
deliver the same performance as a C-level language, but that is not a
necessary restriction, just an implementation detail.[1]

Regards,
        Daniel

Footnotes: 
[1]  In some larger cases, a garbage collected language can actually beat out
     the standard C manual-free implementation because it allows batching lock
     activity in the allocator, for example.

-- 
✣ Daniel Pittman            ✉ daniel at rimspace.net            ☎ +61 401 155 707
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