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To: Seeker of Truth who wrote (40555)	3/18/2001 2:33:47 PM
From: Thomas Mercer-Hursh	Respond to of 54805

In his talk, the head guy at BEAS seemed to be making a big deal out of Java vs. other languages so I was addressing that. I don't know what the original reference was like, but I will say that I see a lot of misunderstanding about Java versus other languages in the market. Java is unlike many other languages, but certainly not all, in being an Object Oriented language. There seems to be a consensus among at least the forward looking development community that this is a good thing. However, it is also a hard thing. I.e., having merely mastered the language itself does not mean that one has mastered OO and, unless one does, one can be at best a mediocre Java developer. There is also a lot of hype that Java is a "safe" language by comparison to C++ since C and C++, the OO version of C, are notorious for the colorful ways in which a programmer may shoot themselves in the foot in obscure and difficult to diagnose ways. Java eliminates some of these dangers, but it does so at the expense of power in some cases and I am not always clear that this was the right trade-off to make in critical high end applications. Java has also been marketed and developed in such a way as to create a kind of religious fervor, including the perverse inclination of some companies to push for 100% pure Java environments, when there are perfectly good C++ applications available to them. I find this fervor offputting and suspicious -- it is just another language and it certainly has some aspects which I find quite unappealing. Bottom line -- there are lots of people developing in Java; but a much smaller group of people who are doing it well.