Java > Scala

[Andrew Wiley]

On Sun, Dec 18, 2011 at 3:14 PM, Paulo Pinto <pjmlp at progtools.org> wrote:
> so Wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 18 Dec 2011 22:08:54 +0200, Paulo Pinto <pjmlp at progtools.org>
>> wrote:
>>
>> > The SunSpot VM is written in Java with a very small subset of C code.
>> > http://www.sunspotworld.com
>> > http://labs.oracle.com/projects/squawk/squawk-rjvm.html
>> >
>> > The Jikes RVM is written mostly in Java.
>> > http://jikesrvm.org/Presentations
>> >
>> > The Maxime VM is written mostly in Java
>> > http://148.87.46.199/projects/maxine/
>> >
>> > The Oracle/Sun HotSpot is written in C++
>> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HotSpot
>> >
>> > And this is just a small list, as there are quite a few JVMs around.
>>
>> Each of these 4 cases you support Walter's point.
>> He didn't say you can't write programs in Java or you can't interoperate
>> with other languages.
>
> quote: "... I find this an odd statement because the Java VM is written in C, so therefore it is on the same or fewer platforms than C. ..."
>
> Means a VM written in 100% C code, which is not the case for the VMs I have listed. Some of them the only C code is to provide direct access to the hardware via JNI, even the JIT and Garbage Collector are written in Java.

That's not the point. The point was that to get any of those VMs
running on a given target platform, you have to start with C at some
level. The end result may not be a pure-C VM depending on how many
bootstrapping steps you go through, but you don't have any hope of
running Java on a platform you can't target with a C compiler.
Whether or not the VM you actually want to use is written in C doesn't
really matter from this perspective. You need C to get a VM at all, so
JVMs will always be available on the same or fewer platforms than C.