From: Lothar Scholz <mailinglists@...>
Date: 2005-07-22T14:18:08+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby/Rails as a starter language?

Hello Kev,

KJ> Smalltalk had p-code and vms, but Javas VM is a very aggressively
KJ> optimized design.  I was suggesting that the Java team did a good job of

This has to do with the JIT compiler not the VM (if you are precise)
the VM has to provide hooks into the JIT but they are separated.

And comparing the VM of a statically typed language with that of a
highly dynamically typed language is also unfair.

KJ> pulling together different pieces and making them fairly mainstream.  To
KJ> be honest you might as well say Lisp had everything before anyone else -
KJ> muhahahahahaha! Lisp rocks!

Correct !!! :-)

KJ> Like it or not, it was Sun's marketing that drove VMs, safe code etc
KJ> into the mainstream.  Do you think without Java Microsoft would have
KJ> produced .Net?  The next stage of C evolution?

The problem of it is that in the 80'th and early 90'th there was no
mainstream with such a monopolistic languages. For me often it looks
there is only Java and C++ these days. Everything else is a niche.
From the perspective 10 years ago i can tell you that SmallTalk was
mainstream - nobody was laughing about you when you mentioned it for
the next project. This terribly changed and unfortunately i
have never seen any analysis why this happened so fast.

KJ> produced .Net?  The next stage of C evolution?

.NET is a framework and not a language !!
If you mean C#, then this has nothing to do with 'C'.
A next stage of 'C' might be 'D' but not '#C'

KJ> Again, to re-iterate, I'm not suggesting that Java was first at 
KJ> anything, rather that it was first to push these ideas out of the niches
KJ> and into mainstream programming.


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