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Re: [COLD] Is there a shortcut to @def?

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mon Dec 2 15:08:08 1996 )

Date: Mon, 02 Dec 1996 11:58:38 -0800
To: Frank Crowell <frankc@maddog.com>
From: Jeff Kesselman <jeffk@ten.net>
Cc: coldstuff@cold.org

At 12:11 PM 12/2/96 -0800, you wrote:

>I'm also talking to some people at Electric Communities about using
>their version of Java language called E (for enhanced Java) that 
>includes some security stuff.  Maybe something to consider for Cold 2.0.
>The lanuage is free and available from:
>	http://www.communities.com
>Their stuff is in *.class, but a good decompiler will rebuild the
>source.
>

I've looked at both E and Java as alternatives to ColdX and rejected them
both for the following reasons:
	Java -- No way to redefine a class on the fly.  Due to the way
               links are resolved (at class load time) in order to unload
		 and reload a class you must delete ALL instances... it gets
		 even worse if its inherited by other classes...

       E -- I AM doing front end stuff in JAVA. I looked at E for this but
	     rejected it because (1) its not supported directly by browsers
            , it needs its own variant JAVA VM (2) the only language support
            is from EC, a small struggling company that they themselves admit
            are NOT in the language business.

In re implementing ColdX in JAVA (or E), the efficiency issues would scare
me. You are putting an interpreter on top of another interpreter. JAVA has
become a pretty fast interpreter but it still is NOT even in the same order
of magnitude i think as good C or C++ code..

All IMO.

JK