Re: [Caml-list] ocaml killer

[Chet Murthy <chet@watson.ibm.com>]

Alexander,

I don't know what to say, except that clearly, you should spend some
time in the trenches, working with the COBOL of the 21st Century --
Java.

That's what I do for a living.  I've written extremely complex Java
systems.  I've debugged more Java code than anybody else at my current
employer, and I'm not kidding.

And, y'know what?

Java/the JVM still sux.

I left CAML in 1994, when it still didn't have a native-code
compiler.  I started hacking on Java in the spring of 1996.  I've got
code in (probably) every JVM.  I've debugged dozens of very large, and
hundreds of only somewhat large Java deployments, some of them in
situations involving large amounts of business at risk.

And y'know what?

Java/the JVM still sux.

"concurrency"!  You ever tried to use Java threads to do anything
meaningful?  Check out the J2EE spec.  It basically is BUILT around
NOT sharing anything between threads.

Oh, and y'know, we have a joke: "every Java bug is a connection-pool
(or resource-pool) bug".

Here's another: "When you arrive onsite,  grep for synchronized, and
if you see it, put your laptop back in your bag, tell 'em you're going
to get coffee, and don't come back".

Java/the JVM is not a systems-programming language.  Period.  Oh, and
I'll defend that against all comers.  Difference is, though, if you
wanna attack, I'll expect real examples, not the academic crap that
most programming language theorists throw around.

--chet--

P.S.  I came back to CAML for personal programming in 1999, and after
that four-year hiatus, during which I became a commercial JVM
internals guy, as well as a commercial transaction-processing
firefighter (think "Mr. Wolf" from _Pulp Fiction_).  So I think I have
the experience to compare, and the verdict seems manifestly
incontrovertible: Java/the JVM sux.

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