Imagine if a software company makes a killer app in java(or any other platform independent language). Then you can toss your Mac, Windows, whatever out the window the day you want to change hardware/os and continue work without having to buy new software! For big a company this means they can cut a substantial amount of money from their costs whenever they uppgrade/change hardware/os and the biggest advantage would be that they could change os in a blink. Thus breaking the application wall that Microsoft has built up without having to port anything. This would truly iron out the battleground in both the hardware and the software market. BUT, and there is a very big but, if someone alter the java spec to be hard to port or even platform dependant then all the above advantages are non existant, leaving java as a slow competitor to c++ and Visual Basic. Thats what Microsoft has been trying to do and what suns been afraid of. We should really try to support java and every technology thats hardware independant to be able to break free from todays limitations in the PC industry. Development wont be able to really advance until we drop todays (1979, 8008 cpu) limitated hardware. A PC today is really just an 8088 stuffed full with workaruonds to bypass all sorts of old techs.
When it comes faster and faster CPUs and systems i dont think its very smart to start wasting power on bugs and loops. The presumption that it always come faster computers so you dont have to optimize isnt all true, a slow program is never a good program. Easy math also tells us that the more code the more likely will there be bugs. Look at windows, if it was really tweaked i cant even imagine how it could be that slow and buggy. Then again, it depends very much on what compiler and what level of language you use. If you use JAVA or VB its probably a good thing to really check the code a couple of times extra. A cycle is a terrible thing to waste!
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Imagine if a software company makes a killer app in java(or any other platform independent language). Then you can toss your Mac, Windows, whatever out the window the day you want to change hardware/os and continue work without having to buy new software! For big a company this means they can cut a substantial amount of money from their costs whenever they uppgrade/change hardware/os and the biggest advantage would be that they could change os in a blink. Thus breaking the application wall that Microsoft has built up without having to port anything. This would truly iron out the battleground in both the hardware and the software market. BUT, and there is a very big but, if someone alter the java spec to be hard to port or even platform dependant then all the above advantages are non existant, leaving java as a slow competitor to c++ and Visual Basic. Thats what Microsoft has been trying to do and what suns been afraid of. We should really try to support java and every technology thats hardware independant to be able to break free from todays limitations in the PC industry. Development wont be able to really advance until we drop todays (1979, 8008 cpu) limitated hardware. A PC today is really just an 8088 stuffed full with workaruonds to bypass all sorts of old techs.
When it comes faster and faster CPUs and systems i dont think its very smart to start wasting power on bugs and loops. The presumption that it always come faster computers so you dont have to optimize isnt all true, a slow program is never a good program. Easy math also tells us that the more code the more likely will there be bugs. Look at windows, if it was really tweaked i cant even imagine how it could be that slow and buggy. Then again, it depends very much on what compiler and what level of language you use. If you use JAVA or VB its probably a good thing to really check the code a couple of times extra. A cycle is a terrible thing to waste!