scripting language vs. developer community size

Dan Kegel dank@alumni.caltech.edu
Thu, 18 Jan 2001 14:38:44 -0800


We hear and respect your opinion.  Java is definitely too slow still to
be used for most client-side work, it's piggy with RAM, and the JITs are 
still buggy.

Where speed is not the primary concern, Java has a lot going for it,
IMHO.  Turn off the JIT and it's pretty stable these days.

One of GnuCash's competitors, Moneydance, is written in Java.  
I just did a web search and found that people complained about
its speed somewhat; I suspect it's 2x or 3x slower than the GnuCash engine.
Haven't seen any complaints about it being buggy, though.

ObDisclosure: I'm a volunteer member of JSR-51, "bringing poll() and saturated
100baseT cards to a jvm near you".
- Dan

linas@linas.org wrote:
> 
> I'll say this only once, very quietly, since I don't want a flame
> war; but personally I've never been a fan of Java. Its slowww, buggy,
> crashes a lot, and has trouble playing nice with others.
> I've always been intrigued by the fact that the (vast?) majority
> of the open source community have stayed away from java, even
> as large chunks of the rest of the programming world flocked to it.
> 
> --linas
> 
> It's been rumoured that Dan Kegel said:
> > What's the consensus on http://www.gnu.org/software/kawa/ ?
> > According to http://www.gnu.org/software/kawa/kawa_11.html it provides
> > pretty good Scheme - Java integration.
> >
> > It's vaguely tempting (assuming unlimited CPU power) to consider porting
> > the core of GnuCash to Java.  Then high-level development could be done
> > in either Java or Scheme or both; no special demands would be placed
> > on the IQ of the programmer wishing to call Scheme from Java or vice versa.