Ken, I'll expand on Justin's response a bit. A language and a runtime environment are 2 very different things, and are largely independent. That's where the whole "Java is a great language, but you got to write to the Windows API" line comes from. The Windows API, POSIX, C stdio, and the C++ standard template library are all runtime environments of sorts, some pretty independent of the language you call them from, some closely tied to a particular language. OS binding was always a very thorny issue for high level languages. It's always been more of an issue for program portability that differences among language versions, as near as I can tell.
I don't write about it much, but old timers here will tell you I get about as aggravated with the various Microsoft attempts to sabotage Java portability as I get with the whole antitrust thing. Portable runtime environments is a missing link that's been attacked in the past without much success. Ada was probably the biggest attempt to define a standard runtime environment as well as language, but it collapsed under its own weight. Microsoft's solution to the problem, of course, is to just run Windows everywhere. Very convenient for them. But, to use a favorite word of Bill's, Windows is just so random. Clean and well thought out? If you've lived with it for a while, I guess you can convince yourself of that. Me, I hold with the Roach Motel metaphor for Windows- code goes in, but it doesn't come out.
On the "random" issue, here's a column from a couple days ago which says something about why CS types find Windows world problematic.
With Computers, Ugliness Overshadows Beauty nytimes.com
"How," he asks, "did ugliness manage to dominate the game for so long?" How could a beautiful machine like Apple's Macintosh, for example, ever have taken second place to the cloddish design of MS-DOS? And now that Microsoft has adopted that design in Windows, why is it, in its marred form, finally acceptable?
These are not minor matters. Gelernter considers beauty to be an essential part of the computer revolution; it is, ideally, "a happy marriage of simplicity and power." Right now, he said, both simplicity and power are sadly lacking.
Leaving aside the issue of "standard Microsoft business practices", this is my fundamental objection to Windows world. It's just so inelegant. But Microsoft has declared that "though shalt write to the Windows API", and in its war on Java is doing its best to assure that the current best hope for a better environment gets trashed. Compaq removing the sacred IE icon is "slicing and dicing", "fracturing and fragmenting" the "uniformity and integrity of the Windows experience", but Microsoft doing much worse to Java is acceptable and necessary. Oops, I guess that gets us back to SMBP.
Cheers, Dan. |
