And another thing
Hey Tim - about this last line of your post on numerics in Java:
And the “My thought-experiment language solved that in 1976” mantra is boring.
Hmm. So Smalltalk is a "thought experiment" languages, eh? While it don't have the adoption level of Java, there are two things you ought to keep in mind:
- It's used in the real world (and the vendor behind the main one, Cincom Smalltalk, actually turns a profit on it. Unlike some language vendors I might mention).
- Having a type system that is both consistent and actually works isn't a "thought experiment". How Java measures up in that regard is an exercise best left to the reader.
Comments
Java as a "thought experiment"...
[Mel] June 8, 2006 15:07:33.839
...refers to what is required when you wrestle with the compiler. For example: "How can I fool the compiler to make my code compile because I have to deal with silly types and casting up and down?"
:-)
Mel
heheh
[asj] June 11, 2006 10:40:36.320
Sun is not a language vendor, it's a hardware vendor. And I'll bet ya Sun's licensing revenue and indirect revenue from Java is several times larger than Cincom's revenue stream.
And yet...
[ James Robertson] June 11, 2006 10:51:33.384
Comment by James Robertson
And yet they still lose money asj. meanwhile, we may be smaller, but we're profitable. Go figure