[rescue] Mozilla Firefox

[Dave McGuire]

On Apr 26, 2004, at 4:41 PM, Joshua Boyd wrote:
>>   Exactly.  It's what C++ should have been.  I believe the world would
>> be a much better place if:
>>
>>   - C++ would completely disappear
>>   - Java would be renamed to C++
>>   - the "virtual machine" aspect of Java would be completely removed
>>   - all Java implementations would compile to native binaries
>
> One question.  If we used Java instead of C++, how would we do inline
> assembly?

   In C, of course.

> Aside from that, in a large complex application, performance was
> consistent, accurate, and stable on:
>
>   - RS/6000 running AIX
>   - PeeCee running Linux
>   - PeeCee running Windows (with the exception above)
>   - UltraSPARC running Solaris9
>   - PPC G4 running MacOS X
>
>   Now yes, these are the machines that you mentioned...but, for a
> commercial product, what else would you really want to run it on??
>
> MIPS/Irix, HP/UX/PA-RISC, Tru64/VMS/Alpha, Itanium/Linux,
> PPC64/Linux/zOS and perhaps just maybe NetBSD.  Not saying Java doesn't
> run well on those, just that they are possible platforms for a
> commercial product.

   Well, not for *this* commercial product.  It'd probably run fine on 
those platforms too, but we never had a reason to try it.

>   If it was something server based that didn't rely
> on proprietary hardware, it would seem to me that you wouldn't want to
> limit your support platforms more than nescesary.

   The product in question was for a desktop application in a classroom, 
Josh...the target platforms were x86 Linux and MacOS X.  We ran it 
under AIX because that was one guy's development platform, and under 
Solaris because that was my development platform (and we were 
investigating putting SunRays in some classrooms).

> On a side note, Limewire was almost decent.

   For a while, yes...but it succumbed to bloat.  "Hey, let's use EVERY 
SINGLE FEATURE of Swing!"

> That said, a mediocre programmer who follows the guidelines would 
> likely
> turn out faster executing code than a mediocre C programmer.  Real life
> doesn't seem to bare this out, but in theory using sort routines and
> data structures written by the best minds should be faster than doing
> your own poor implementations of them.  The only platform that seem to
> even come close to living this out is Squeak and other smalltalks
> though, and exactly how much real world stuff do we see come from 
> there?
>
> I still maintain that for the majority of the world, C is the wrong
> language.  A language that comes bundled with an appropriate assortment
> of data structures for the mediocre programmer is much better.  VB (at
> least as of versions 5 and 6) don't meet this description.

   Perhaps.  But mediocre programmers should really find a different 
career or hobby.  But I think C is suitable for a great many more 
things than you [apparently] think it's suited for.

         -Dave

--
Dave McGuire          "PC users only know two 'solutions'...
Cape Coral, FL          reboot and upgrade."    -Jonathan Patschke