On Thu, 23 Jan 2003 13:22:41 EST, Witness said: > Here I must digress and cite the example of Java. While it is certainly > the hll - and probably the one you are most thinking of - it is also the > language with the worst performance. While throwing more hardware > (memory/cpu) at it will speed it up and perhaps make the speed > differences between it and C or C++ less noticible, the difference will > still be there. And I for one don't think we should pay such a penalty > for security. Instead, I think that programmers should do it right in > the best language - that is one that provides the best speed/performance > and functionality - for the scenerio and then do it right so as there is > no need to incur costs like that of using Java. On the gripping hand, there exist a number of compilers for Java (gcc now has a Java front end, and there's several good JITC packages for Java as well) which make the performance *very* close to things coded in C. And let's face it, a *LOT* of code does not have a speed/performance dependency, because it's waiting for user input or similar. As a result, there are very good reasons for biasing the language choice in favor of functionality and security at a slight hit on the speed/performance side of things. If you're writing a GUI interface to the corporate database, and you know beforehand that 95% of the time you're going to be waiting for the user to push a button, and another 4% of the time you will be waiting for the database server to answer, it's much more important that the code be correct and secure than that it be fast. -- Valdis Kletnieks Computer Systems Senior Engineer Virginia Tech
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