From: Lothar Scholz <mailinglists@...>
Date: 2004-08-28T18:42:31+09:00
Subject: Re: performance comparison

Hello Gavin,

GS> ISTM that the state of the art in Java IDEs is much much much much
GS> better than any C++ IDE.  Is that the case?

Yes. Absolutely.

GS> If so, it could be because of Java's standard reflection mechanism and
GS> intermediate byte code.  Is that a fair comment?

No. Reflection has nothing to do with the things that Java IDE's do
and were mentioned here. Reflection is only available at runtime, but
IDE's need static code analysis by looking at the source code files.

The reason why C++ has so much problems is that the there are so many
things that has influences to complex C++ systems (and the standart runtime is
a complex C++ system). Remember the dozens of #ifdef symbols a C
system has and the size of "sophisticated" make files / build systems.
In java the only thing that has an influence is the CLASSPATH
variable, thats all.

Also calling C++ as static typed language is not true. Oberon, Java or
Eiffel are such languages. C++ has its typecasts and hunderts of dirty
tricks. It's still a high level assembler.

GS> I agree that in general static languages are far more amenable to
GS> tools than dynamic ones (Smalltalk being an exception).  It's probably
GS> also worthwhile considering the differences between popular static
GS> languages.

Smalltalk is in a third class, so called image languages. Since these
language don't depend on the execution order of the files the tools
can do much more. What should a static code analyser do with a ruby
code like this:

if ENV["OS"] == "linux"
  require "linux_optimization"
else
  require "total_other_implementation"
end

This are code snippets that you will never find in Smalltalk.
So it is much easier to develop tools support for Smalltalk then
doing tools for ruby. I mean look at the ruby refactoring browser, its
not much more then a better search/replace tool which is only usefull
in very very restricted cases.


-- 
 Best regards,                        emailto: scholz at scriptolutions dot com
 Lothar Scholz                        http://www.ruby-ide.com
 CTO Scriptolutions                   Ruby, PHP, Python IDE 's