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"Shannon O'Donnell" <sodonnell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: . . .
I have to ask....WHY?!? Is it so critical that every application be platform agnostic?
. . .Because before Sun introduced Java, Bill Gates and Microsloth were very close to world domination with WinDoze (and with various dirty tricks campaigns connected therewith), in spite of the fact that it's irredeemably wasteful of resources.
If it hadn't been for Java, Microsloth would have had the market leverage to grind MacOS, Linux, Unix, and OS/400 into the dust. All of those platforms would probably be as close to extinction as Digital Research's GEM graphical user interface (which is practically unheard-of today, even though it runs circles around WinDoze in terms of efficiency; I know, because as a Xerox Ventura Publsher die-hard, I still use a runtime version of GEM with some regularity).
The problem is not the use of platform-independent languages. If you believed that, you wouldn't be involved with the AS/400, because the AS/400 is itself a virtual machine that has been implemented on at least two radically different hardware platforms. The problem is in the use of technologies inappropriate to the problem at hand. Consider spreadsheets, databases, and word processing: there's no reason in the world why you need a true GUI for any of these applications. A hardware text screen is fine for such things, so long as attributes and cursor addressing are supported, and will do the job much more efficently. Yet are there any commercial desktop applications still written for a hardware text screen?
Most performance problems that are language-related can be traced to the use of the wrong language for the job, period. And that has nothing to do with whether the language is platform-independent or platform-specific.
-- JHHL
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