[MUD-Dev] Languages

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

On Fri, 23 May 1997 22:23:31 PST8PDT, "Jon A. Lambert"
<jlsysinc at ix.netcom.com> wrote:

>Chris Gray wrote:
>> 
>> I've read enough on C++ to know
>> that its unlikely I'll ever use it, and I fail to see any contributions
>> it has made to the state of the art (fight'n words, I know!). I do need
>> to read up on Java, however.
>> 
>I won't spar with you over languages. I've been in consulting long enough
>and mostly on the receiving end of several dozen corporate languages of
>choice to not really care any more what the heck they want me to code.
>I may whine a little, but resistance is futile.
>
>I'd hate to shock you but much of Java was lifted from C++.
>It feels a lot like C++ syntax.  This might cause you some
>nausea. :-)

Stoustrup himself has said that there is a much smaller and better
language inside C++ trying to get out. A lot of people today say that
language is Java; my own thought on the matter is that it USED to look
like that would be the case, but Sun seems to be trying to add all kinds
of neat stuff around Java which is basically not doing much more than
bogging it down. There's a lot of talk about applet signing, and secure
loading over the net, and 100% pure Java, but I think what may end up
getting lost in the shuffle -- to the detriment of the language -- is
that there are many, many times when Java just isn't appropriate! I
don't think Sun could deny that a raytracer just is not an appropriate
use for Java; neither is a compiler, and (regardless of the doomed and
ill-conceived JavaOS) neither is an operating system. 

I find that Java strips out a lot of the most annoying features of C++.
I like the language; I like it very much. But over the past year, it's
changed an awful lot. I'm not sure I like the changes, and I'm regarding
it rather dubiously at the moment. It looks like Sun is going to be
doing the same thing to Java that TSR has done with AD&D: adding so many
supplements, add-ons, and options that the benefit of the language is
lost entirely.

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