Elliotte Rusty Harold's take on Java

[Yigal Chripun]

On 17/09/2009 06:43, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> "Justin Johansson"<procode at adam-dott-com.au>  wrote in message
> news:h8ruu1$1qpn$1 at digitalmars.com...
>> Being somewhat of a fan of Elliotte Rusty Harold, I drop in for a coffee&
>> read at his cafes from time to time.  I think D people will enjoy this
>> December 2008 article with amusement so may I please share it with you.
>> Some of the comments aren't too bad either.
>>
>> http://cafe.elharo.com/programming/java-is-dead-long-live-python/
>>
>> Here an excerpt:
>>
>> "Java by contrast, is dead. It has at least as much brain damage and
>> misdesign as Python 2.x did, probably more; yet Sun has resisted tooth and
>> nail all efforts to fix the known problems. Instead they keep applying
>> ever more lipstick to this pig without ever cleaning off all the filth and
>> mud it’s been rolling in for the last 12 years. They keep applying more
>> perfume when what it really needs is a bath."
>>
>> Enjoy the read!
>>
>
> What he was saying in that article sounded good...right up until he implied
> that all primitives should always endure the bloat of always being full
> objects.
>
> It really bugs me though that it's taken the industry until the last few
> years to *FINALLY* start noticing that Emperor Java is missing it's clothes.
>
>

making primitives full objects is the right design and has nothing to do 
with bloat which just means the implementation sucks.

consider:

struct Integer(int bits, signed = true) {...}
with specializations for 8, 16, 32, 64

Integer!(32) will have the same size as an int since structs don't have 
vtables in D.

of course, for this to be truly useful the compiler needs to understand 
"123.methodName()" kind of code.