4.13 java

In these days it is rather popular to do things in java. siliconBrain completely is implemented in C, bash, perl, makefile, .... I think java has a lot of improvements, but also a lot of back draws. And it is not only the language itself, which I criticize, but also things like jsp, which is in my mind the false way to go.

In the siliconBrain project, I intend to do a lot of things contrary to what is done today. So for example instead of writing html pages, which eventually call programs to get data, I write programs, which handle data and eventually generate html.

The third reason not to use java in siliconBrain is, that it does not fit to grep, sed, pipes, files, make, the features of unix. For example one of my ideas is to use unix processes to implement user sessions, which then automatically inherit the unix access right possibilities as well as the mutual isolation of sessions: one session cannot read nor even modify data of another session.

My java critique is as follows:

I dislike:

• It has no processes as resource leak free, non disturbing user owned threads.
• It does not resist seamlessly in the hosting os. There are no easy ways to access operating system functions, like pipes, memory, processes, files, ....
• The byte compilation instead of a real machine code compilation is not reasonable for server applications.
• The reflection api increases the number of interpreted and type less applications.
• The vm is a new operating system. But with not all features implemented. For example “pipes” and more seriously “processes” are not existing.
• It is not possible to write command line versions of programs.
• It does not implement some of the most powerful concepts of older languages, like the intrinsic support of regular expressions of awk, or the extremely fast automatic storage of c, or the powerful support of “pipes” and “redirection” of bash.
• Performance seems not to be so good, because people always want to tell me things about load balancing, connection pooling, object reusage, ....

I like:

• It is highly portable.
• java brings a rich, standardized api. This is itself extremely portable.
• The language is strictly and elegant designed.