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From: clgonsal@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (Carl Laurence Gonsalves)
Subject: Re: Parenthesized syntax challenge
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Date: Wed, 11 Oct 1995 17:53:32 GMT
References: <44aa9a$j5h@miso.cs.uq.edu.au> <MARCOXA.95Oct4094304@lox.icsi.berkeley.edu> <453po8$175@Yost.com> <LUDEMANN.95Oct6140930@expernet26.expernet.com>
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In article <LUDEMANN.95Oct6140930@expernet26.expernet.com>,
Peter Ludemann <ludemann@expernet.com> wrote:
>
>Because Java has garbage collection, no pointers, and somewhat more
>sensible handling of strings and arrays than C++, it might start
>whetting C programmers' appetitites for the things that programmers
>who use high-level languages (Prolog, Lisp, Smalltalk, etc.) have long
>taken for granted, but which the C programmers have either not
>understood or have thought to be too inefficient.

The incredible slowness of Java is only evidence of the inefficiency of
garbage collection. I've programmed in a few languages that have garbage
collection (among them are Scheme, Modula-3, and now Java), and all have
been *much* slower than C or C++. I'm not saying Java is bad. Just don't
call it "efficient" when it most certainly is not. It's fine for a lot of
things, but it is unusable for anything computationally intensive. I have
yet to hear of a person who has seen the "bouncing heads" demo run
smoothly...

I'm also not saying that garbage collection is the only reason Java is
slow. The fact that it's interpreted and is continually doing range
checking must slow it down too. But Java is not going to convince anyone
(except maybe people used to really slow languages like Rexx or BASIC) that
garbage collection is efficient.

-- 
        Carl Laurence Gonsalves - clgonsal@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca
                   Computer Science, University of Waterloo
               http://www.undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca/~clgonsal/
                   http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~clgonsal/
