On Sun, 2012-07-29 at 04:59 +0200, Era Scarecrow wrote: […]
>   It does do low-level bit manipulation for built-in types,
> however I think that's it's limit.

There are no unsigned types which leads to extremely ugly bit manipulation codes.

Primitive types are now effectively deprecated in Java, and this is likely a deprecation which will actually lead to a removal – unlike everything else in Java that has been deprecated which is still there.

Sun did one time actually remove something from a Java release but there was such an outcry that it got put back in. Sadly it should never have been taken out in the first place. Unlike all the stuff that has been deprecated for >10 years which should have gone long ago.

-- 
Russel. ============================================================================= Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder@ekiga.net 41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel@winder.org.uk London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder

On Sat, 2012-07-28 at 22:40 -0400, Nick Sabalausky wrote: […]
> allocation. Even natively-compiled, that doesn't sound like my idea of a
> good embedded language. But I dunno, I guess maybe if they're
> using it in the sort of way that game devs use Lua...(Not that I'm a fan
> of Lua - far too dynamic for my tastes.)

The benefit of using Java in an embedded context is exactly to avoid native code. The use of a language that has no access to physical memory makes operating system level security management significantly easier.

For example on smart cards – which has to be one of the most constrained
multi-application platforms out there – the lengths processor
manufacturers have to go to support management of native code
applications is awful compared to those who support only Java Card. Yes
I know Java Card is not Java in any meaningful way, shape or form, but
it is an bytecode virtual machine based system.

The use of dynamic languages in systems such as games, post-production, image manipulation has many similarities in terms of security management, but is there for a wholly different purpose: the C and/or C ++ code does all the real computational work.

-- 
Russel. ============================================================================= Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder@ekiga.net 41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel@winder.org.uk London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder

On Sunday, 29 July 2012 at 08:34:33 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:
> On Sun, 2012-07-29 at 04:59 +0200, Era Scarecrow wrote:
> […]
>>   It does do low-level bit manipulation for built-in types, however I think that's it's limit.
>
> There are no unsigned types which leads to extremely ugly bit
> manipulation codes.
>
> Primitive types are now effectively deprecated in Java, and this is
> likely a deprecation which will actually lead to a removal – unlike
> everything else in Java that has been deprecated which is still there.
>
> Sun did one time actually remove something from a Java release but there
> was such an outcry that it got put back in. Sadly it should never have
> been taken out in the first place. Unlike all the stuff that has been
> deprecated for >10 years which should have gone long ago.

I like Java, but currently have a few issues with the some of the design decisions after Java 5, namely the overuse of annotations instead of adding new keywords. Examples are @Overload, @Checked, @NotNull, @Null, or worse the possible @Value annotation.

I mean, use @Value to specify a class with value semantics, really?! Is it that complicated to add struct as keyword?

Nowadays I find myself having more fun with C#, a language I used to criticise as being a cheap Java clone back in 2001. How things change.

--
Paulo

The only thing Java is good for is portability. And its standard library is very good too.

However the language as it is, really sucks in my opinion. I mean, there's no way to change the value of a primitive type passed to a method? Come on.

On 7/29/12 4:34 AM, Russel Winder wrote:
> Primitive types are now effectively deprecated in Java, and this is
> likely a deprecation which will actually lead to a removal – unlike
> everything else in Java that has been deprecated which is still there.

That's interesting. Do you have references to some related resources?

Thanks,

Andrei

On Sun, 2012-07-29 at 09:31 -0400, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 7/29/12 4:34 AM, Russel Winder wrote:
> > Primitive types are now effectively deprecated in Java, and this is likely a deprecation which will actually lead to a removal – unlike everything else in Java that has been deprecated which is still there.
> 
> That's interesting. Do you have references to some related resources?
> 
> Thanks,

It's on the Java road map for Java 10. I can't immediately find the actual road map, but you will find lots of people blogging about the fact which has been "announced" at most of the main Java conferences. e.g. http://java.dzone.com/articles/oracle-discusses-features-java

-- 
Russel. ============================================================================= Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder@ekiga.net 41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel@winder.org.uk London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder

On Sun, 29 Jul 2012 13:14:06 +0200
"Paulo Pinto" <pjmlp@progtools.org> wrote:
> 
> Nowadays I find myself having more fun with C#, a language I used to criticise as being a cheap Java clone back in 2001. How things change.
> 

Ever since I first tried it out, many years ago, I've been convinced that C# is "Java done right". Or at least "Java done much better". Still think so.

It used to actually be tied with D as my favorite language, but eventually I grew more and more tired of the limitations C# does still have, while I grew to like D more and more.

On 2012-07-29 15:10, Minas Mina wrote:
> The only thing Java is good for is portability. And its standard library
> is very good too.
>
> However the language as it is, really sucks in my opinion. I mean,
> there's no way to change the value of a primitive type passed to a
> method? Come on.

There are many other languages available on the JVM platform. Scala for example.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

On Sunday, 29 July 2012 at 19:23:38 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
> On 2012-07-29 15:10, Minas Mina wrote:
>> The only thing Java is good for is portability. And its standard library
>> is very good too.
>>
>> However the language as it is, really sucks in my opinion. I mean,
>> there's no way to change the value of a primitive type passed to a
>> method? Come on.
>
> There are many other languages available on the JVM platform. Scala for example.

The problem is that in the enterprise world with expendable programmers, is very hard to do JVM based projects with anything other than Java.

I was very happy when on a project for a new internal proprietary JSF based framework, we were allowed to have Groovy as part of the framework's supported languages.

That only happened because the said company was replacing the Perl scripts by Groovy scripts in their deployment infrastructure.

--
Paulo

On 7/27/2012 7:38 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> True, but I'm kind of shocked that anything 16-bit even still exists. _32-bit_
> is on its way out. I thought that 16-bit was dead _years_ ago. I guess that
> some embedded stuff must use it. But really, I wouldn't expect the lack of 16-
> bit support to be much of an impediment - if any at all - and in the long run,
> it'll mean absolutely nothing.

For those who may not realize it, C++ is simply not suitable for 16 bit systems either. It theoretically supports 16 bit code, but in practice, full C++ will never work on them.

So, you might ask, why was 16 bit C++ popular on 16 bit MSDOS in the 80's? That was C++ before exception handling and RTTI, both of which were unimplementable on 16 bit machines. (Yes, you could do it, but the result was practically unusable.)

C and 16 bits go reasonably well together, but even so, the best programs were written all in asm.