> So maybe Android should have used Java, but compiled it direct to ARM rather than burning users' cycles on an interpreter.
It doesn't have to be an interpreter, the processor itself can be optimized for Java (or whatever bytecode you'd like), a point the article also missed.
The difference between high-end phone makers, like Apple, and the low-end phone makers ... low-end phone makers cared and still care only about price, not about how snappy those Java apps run.
Again ... the article sets up a straw man.
Desktop Java applications are slow and ugly, but show me an open-source IDE that can compete with the breath and depth of Eclipse / IntelliJ IDEA and their plugin ecosystem.
There's some merit to Java in that ... open-source developers would rather spend their time working on the features they want, rather than hunting down memory-leaks or deal with all the shit that cross-platform development brings.
> It doesn't have to be an interpreter, the processor itself can be optimized for Java (or whatever bytecode you'd like), a point the article also missed.
This is slower than compiling it to a more easily implemented ISA.
It doesn't have to be an interpreter, the processor itself can be optimized for Java (or whatever bytecode you'd like), a point the article also missed.
This has been going on since 1996 ... http://bwrc.eecs.berkeley.edu/CIC/announce/1996/java-procs.h... (and the concept itself was first tried with the Lisp machines I think).
The difference between high-end phone makers, like Apple, and the low-end phone makers ... low-end phone makers cared and still care only about price, not about how snappy those Java apps run.
Again ... the article sets up a straw man.
Desktop Java applications are slow and ugly, but show me an open-source IDE that can compete with the breath and depth of Eclipse / IntelliJ IDEA and their plugin ecosystem.
There's some merit to Java in that ... open-source developers would rather spend their time working on the features they want, rather than hunting down memory-leaks or deal with all the shit that cross-platform development brings.