D vs Java

[Walter Bright]

"Dave" <Dave_member at pathlink.com> wrote in message 
news:dvkbvk$2hn5$1 at digitaldaemon.com...
> IIRC, there was some argument a while back that they weren't running the 
> tests
> long-enough to take advantage of Hotspot. Since then they've increased the
> length of the tests to account for that (and startup time is subtracted 
> from
> those results as well, I believe).

I attended a seminar at SDWest which talked about the "myth" of slow Java. 
Turns out, the code is interpreted for a while, then it gets compiled, then 
certain things can *invalidate the compiled code* so it goes back to 
interpreting it, then compiling it again, etc.

Is it invalid to include all these compile times, even if they occur well 
into the execution, as part of the benchmark time? I don't think so. At the 
end of the day, the time the user is sitting their waiting is what matters, 
and that will include all the startup, interpretation, compilation and 
recompilation times.

The presenter confidently predicted that in 10 years, Java will outperform C 
in the general case. Color me skeptical.