D vs Java

[Def]

In article <dvpfa8$sq1$1 at digitaldaemon.com>, Walter Bright says...

>But also, really, what is the difference between relying on a JIT compiler 
>for each platform, and a native compiler for each platform? Why should the 
>JIT compiler be more reliable? There's no technical reason it should be. If 
>the language has portable semantics, and the compilers implement those 
>semantics correctly, it should be write once, run everywhere. There's no 
>technical reason a VM is required to make that happen. 

For me the biggest difference is that a VM makes "sort of" cross-compiling
possible. As a user of Win32 & beginning/experimenting with Linux on an x86
machine, I simply can't afford to buy a Mac just to support MacOS. Still, I
can't test a Java app on a Mac - I can only hope that it works reasonably well.
But GDC for Mac won't help me at all unless I give the sources to someone with a
Mac. Of course, this is not D's fault. One could blame Apple for not releasing
their libraries free of charge or at low cost for cross-compiling from non-Mac
machines. It's a pity there's no Mac equivalent to MinGW available.
Anyway, with Intel Mac's I might be able to boot Win/Mac/Linux in the future.
:-)

Def