Could I use Java or c#? [was: Re: re-writing college books]

[crispin at novell.com (Crispin Cowan)]

mikeiscool wrote:
> On 11/14/06, Leichter, Jerry <leichter_jerrold at emc.com> wrote:
>   
> > The joke we used to make was:  The promise of Java was "Write once,
> > run everywhere".  What we found was "Write once, debug everywhere".
> > Then came the Swing patches, which would cause old bugs to re-appear,
> > or suddenly make old workaround cause problems.  So the real message
> > of Java is "Write once, debug everywhere - forever".
> >
> > Now, I'm exagerating for effect.  There are Java programs even quite
> > substantial Java programs, that run on multiple platforms with no
> > problems and no special porting efforts.  (Hell, there are C programs
> > with the same property!)  But there are also Java programs that
> > cause no end of porting grief.  It's certainly much more common to
> > see porting problems with C than with Java, but don't kid yourself:
> > Writing in Java doesn't guarantee you that there will be no platform
> > issues.
> >     
> True, but that doesn't mean runtime portability isn't a good thing to aim for.
>   
It means that compromising performance to obtain runtime portability
that does not actually exist is a poor bargain.

Crispin

-- 
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.                      http://crispincowan.com/~crispin/
Director of Software Engineering, Novell  http://novell.com
     Hack: adroit engineering solution to an unanticipated problem
     Hacker: one who is adroit at pounding round pegs into square holes