KDE should strive for better java support to gain more developers.

[mitch]

Corrected proposal: the KDE project should very well document how to 
access their applications with Java

Lack of pointers and need for garbage collection go hand in hand: in 
C/C++, you clean up after yourself. You don't clean up, you get buried 
under crap. Java (and .Net/Mono C#) get away with garbage collection 
because 1- the virtual machine they run in has a small memory capacity, 
and 2- being virtual machines in nature, if they crash they don't bring 
other applications down with them.
The price of this automatic memory management is incredible slowness and 
difficulty of integration with the rest of the system; Sun tried for a 
Java OS for a long while, without success due to the humongous overhead 
entailed by such a system, and its relative lack of stability.
Please note that GNOME already uses Mono for some apps (Tomboy, Beagle); 
browse the Intarweb for Tomboy and Beagle troubles: CPU hogging, memory 
use, crashes, etc. for the simple reason that while programming apps in 
VMs is easier than doing C on a real machine, programming the VM is 
another bucket of nails all in itself.
Current compilers, automatic checks and CPU extensions like the NX bit 
are able to point out a lot of potential leaks and type corruptions: if 
you program without paying attention to your compiler output, yes, C/C++ 
is trouble; if you program cleanly, it blows Java's socks off.

And, deal breaker, Java isn't fully licensed under the GPL - so it can't 
be distributed with KDE.

End of story.

Mitch

Peter Qusec a écrit :
> Proposal: The kde project could get access to a huge pool of developers by integrating java into kde and allowing java applications to become part of the kde distribution.
>
> According to the TIOBE Programming Community Index (http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html) java has about twice the mindshare as c++.
> One reason for that is that java is in many ways far more sophisticated than c++. Features like garbage collection, avoidance of pointers, automatic refactoring, not having to duplicate class signatures in header files, easier handling of threads and many more, allow java developers to completely avoid a large array of bugs that c++ developers frequently make (or at least that I did). In my experience I would guess that a java developer is at least twice as effective as a c++ developer meaning (s)he can implement at least twice the functionality in the same time as a c++ developer can.
> So far the ugliest part that I've encountered in java is swing, but that should be no problem since it could be replaced by jambi.
> One important obstacle for java so far was that it wasn't open source but sun has changed that during the last year.
> Therefore I would welcome a better support for java in kde because that would allow me to contribute the kde project.
>
> Best regards,
> Peter
>   

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