Java speed?

[Thor Sigvaldason]

On Tue, 22 Oct 1996, Manor Askenazi wrote:

> 
>             The next question to worry about is speed. 
>

        Two points here;

        1) Just in Time compilers

                These seem to be the make or break point for Java. If they
                appear fast enough and are good enough, then Java is sure 
                to become very popular (imagine Netscape, Microsoft, etc. 
                having to develop only *1* source tree for each version of
                their products.

        2) Other developpers are investing

                Many high profile software firms are developping for Java,
                suggesting that they believe Java is/will be capable of
                running large applications. Corel already has a demo suite
                of its office software running under Java.


        Some other thoughts on porting Swarm to Java;

                * In one feld swoop, you will have expanded the potential
                user base enormously (ie. all the non-UN*X users) without
                alienating any current users (unless Java is not available
                for some UN*X systems?).

                * From anecdotal evidence, there seem to be many more
                people who have some programming experience in Java than
                in Objective-C. 

                * Java's "network-aware" structure and threading should make 
                parallelizing swarm code fairly straightforward.

                * True electronic journals could be distributed in HTML/PDF
                with the experiments included (that would be amazing).

                * As you mentioned, no messing around with Tcl/tk, BLT, etc.


        Things that worry me;

                * Speed (as above): Does anyone out there have info on JIT
                compiler's for Java?

                * Openness: Sun seems to be very cagey about their licensing
                of Java. I know that the developper's of the JDK for Linux
                had to wait weeks to release their port while Sun lawyers
                bickered.