[ome-devel] Opinions on Java 5

[Chris Allan]

Bob,

This isn't an Ada discussion, it's a Java discussion. We have no
current interest in Ada.

Ciao.

-Chris

On Thu, Aug 18, 2005 at 09:02:50AM -0700, Robert C. Leif wrote:
>    Although Java has some benefits over C and C++, its major virtue was a
> brilliant sales campaign. Java was introduced without generics or enumerated
> types.  I gather that generics, which are extremely useful, have finally
> been added.  Does Java 5 have enumerated types?  Aonix
> (http://www.aonix.com/) has an add-on for hard real-time that should be
> useful.  C# is a similar effort by Microsoft and ECMA.  C# does not appear
> to be used much, if at all, on other operating systems. 
>    Since some of you might not know that an alternative to both languages,
> Ada, exists, I have added the following to provide an idea of what should be
> expected in a programming language.  Ada has portability including maximum
> operating system independence, ISO standardization, excellent generics,
> safety, readability, superior real-time performance including rate-monotonic
> scheduling, interfaces to C and other languages, and good error messages.
> Obviously, there are advantages for a GNU compiler.  In fact the best
> implementation of Ada is the GNU compiler, GNAT.  I do not know about other
> GNU compilers.  However, the support for a free compiler can be greater than
> the price of a commercial compiler with support.  For instance AdaCore
> (http://www.gnat.com/) prefers to sell support for their Professional
> (commercial edition) for $10,000 for four seats per year.  The free version,
> 3.15, of the compiler is about 3 years old and the free version of the
> environment is over one year old.  Academics can get the Professional
> Edition free.
>    Bob Leif
>    
>    -----Original Message-----
> From: Josh Moore [mailto:josh.moore at gmx.de] 
> Sent: Thursday, August 18, 2005 1:10 AM
> To: ome-devel Development
> Subject: [ome-devel] Opinions on Java 5
>    
>    -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>    Hash: SHA1
>    
>    Seems like I haven't started a good heated discussion in a while so
>    anyone got an opinion:
>    
>    	Does it make sense to use Java 5 on the server side?
>    
>    This ties in to the "Explorations of alternative architectures for
>    remote clients" thread. The code I've written currently has dependency
>    on Java 5 _for the server side_.
>    
>    However, this makes server development on OS X 10.3 impossible and on
>    10.4 apparently difficult. It also complicates installation, at least
>    for most people at the moment. (Java 5 uptake has been relatively slow.)
>    
>    The pros of using it are:	
>     - generics
>     - a few API methods and non-thread safe objects
>       (StringBuilder rather than StringBuffer, etc.)
>     - possible use of annotations (e.g. http://annotations.hibernate.org/)
>     - ...
>    
>    The performance gain doesn't really count because one can use the new
>    JDK but still compile for JRE>=1.4 (or maybe even 1.3)
>    
>    However (again) if we don't do it now, we'll need to do a "port" at
>    sometime in the future.
>    
>    Ho hum.
>    
>    Any thoughts?
>      Josh.
>    -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
>    Version: GnuPG v1.2.5 (GNU/Linux)
>    Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>    
>    iD8DBQFDBEJqIwpkR5bKmAsRAsmqAJ9Pk0rP+sowiy7GBegGmlC03hek3ACeLfmu
>    ymIp+hW3/d2X7Oii2eKs3DM=
>    =TRHx
>    -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>    
> 
> _______________________________________________
> ome-devel mailing list
> ome-devel at lists.openmicroscopy.org.uk
> http://lists.openmicroscopy.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/ome-devel