Java Performance/Python etc

[Simon Bowring]

On Tue, 19 Sep 2000 07:25:33 -0700, Steve Lamb wrote:

>    Funny, the same is said for Python.  Of course Python is fast to work in
>for other reasons.  No compile time, short load time, radical syntax, strong
>but not overly-strong typing, etc.
Absolutely! Python appears to be a much cleaner language - sadly part of Java's
"success" is almost certainly due to the illusion that it's C like :-(  I wish
they'd taken more from good strong robust languages like Eiffel and Python
(but at least you can vote for these features as part of Sun's community 
process).

>It just doesn't have the run-time speed
It also doesn't have as rich a standard library - Java's is truly 
impressive but has some wierd ommissions (like regexps, but again you
can vote for them!).  

>I was really put off to Java when I saw "Hello world" take over a minute to load on a
>PII-400.
But if the JVM and libraries were already loaded it would have been much 
faster! It's a bit like having to start Windows on an OS/2 box when you 
run a windows program.

In web application servers (where the JVM etc is already loaded), Java 
servlettes blow the pants off all other forms of CGI (in terms of performance)!  
If Java ever takes off "on the desktop", no doubt the JVM and libraries will be 
preloaded - there'd still be a load time delay because Java does so much dynamic 
binding - it has to due to the dynamic nature of it's objects model (this is 
also one of the reasons that OS/2's WPS, which uses much courser grain SOM objects,
is a bit slow.

Simon