On Wed, 31 Oct 2001, Jon Glass wrote:
> > However, the jury is still out for me at this point. I'd like to see a
> > JavaOS PDA. Considering all the Java work I do, that would rock.. :)
>
> But wouldn't a Java OS PDA be as slow as molasses in January on anything but
> the fastest processors? Also, I have yet to see anything written in Java
> that was actually useful, although I would be glad to be proven wrong on
> this. It seems that Java is the buzzword-compliant platform with little to
> show for all its "promise." :-) Somebody show me something! (Or is it like
> Open Doc--promise of "solutions" but no real answers...)
Well, you have to understand something about the way Java is handled.
There is a specification for the Java Virtual Machine. A description of a
machine (computer) with CPU registers like so, memory addressing like
this, etc etc - if you've ever taken a course or dabbled in assembly
language, you know what I'm talking about. So the JVM software that runs
on your PC/Mac/whatever is emulating the Java Virtual Machine. That's why
it's so slow.
Sun has been threatening for a while to make a machine that conforms to
the JVM specification - meaning that it would run Java code natively,
without an emulation layer. Which would be cool for people (like me) who
like Java. So if such a CPU existed, a JavaOS PDA would be rather zippy
indeed.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Thu Nov 01 2001 - 10:02:54 EST