On 2004-11-03 16:09:12 +0000 Matt Parker matt@mpcontracting.co.uk wrote:
On 3/11/2004, "Brett Parker" iDunno@sommitrealweird.co.uk wrote:
On Wed, Nov 03, 2004 at 03:33:53PM +0000, Matt Parker wrote:
As soon as you mention the word "interpreted" you are showing your ignorance. Java is NOT an interpreted language.
Debating whether it is an interpreted/ compiled/ VM/ RE/ JIT/ PC language is so 1980s.
[...] Java for server-side processing is one of the (if not the most) common languages. All those people can't be wrong.
Yes, they can all be wrong, for whatever reason. I think Microsoft and VHS both show that. I like them being wrong if their failure won't harm me.
[...]
Java's API has all kinds of standard things to make cross language/country code mush easier IMO. Such as pre-defined currency, date, time, character set, time-zone, etc etc conversions that seamlessly interact.
I'm not convinced conversions should be in the core language, though, as you either promote some character sets over others, or require lots of work from all standards-compliant implementations. I think Java dealt with this by producing multiple variants (Mobile Edition), but that pretty much killed Java's oft-hyped cross-platform. Maybe this is another reason for the slow development of competition among Java implementations.
To me, it's even more impressive that the Scheme language standards accommodate unicode. The characters section looks unchanged since the Revised^4 Report on Scheme was published in November 1991. I guess it shouldn't be surprising, because multiple character sets have been around for a long long time and the report authors are wise men, but I can think of some languages which don't like character set work much.
Far-sighted and fun to hack with. I guess Scheme is my preferred "right tool for the job" of most programming.
I don't see why you're getting so angry about this anyway. I only suggested that if MJR is having a problem with Unicode character encoding that he give Java a look. [...]
Posting Java advocacy was fairly off-topic, in my opinion. Java is not a practical solution for connecting a C database library to a Scheme implementation. Your post told me nothing about the usual C data types for UTF-16. You also failed to trim the quoted post.
I had a horrible time trying to work with a system running on top of the Blackdown Java a few years ago. I have the scars. Now, I don't think you knew that, so I don't hold it against you. I'm pretty sure Brett knew, so maybe he was being over-protective of me? I think he has his own Java bad experiences too. He's a nice guy, but he does stomp in with heavy boots sometimes.