Elliotte Rusty Harold's take on Java

[downs]

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. 
> 
> 

The post seems to make the argument that with modern processors we can afford making every primitive an object - and I say to that, as a coder heavily interested in raytracing and fractals, we _still_ need _all_ the speed the CPU can give us, so think twice before you consume in the name of language purity.

(Of course, this doesn't apply to Python)

Besides that, I think all the people here who say, and are going to say, that making primitives full objects would be the right decision (even for D!), need to remember that D at its core is _not_ an object-oriented, but a multiparadigm language, and I think embedding objects this deep into the type model would give the object-oriented features of D _far_ too much weight.

(Just my pre-emptive 2¢)