Will GPL Java eat into Python marketshare?

[Harry George]

Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed at ix.netcom.com> writes:

> On Wed, 15 Nov 2006 22:41:19 GMT, Maurice LING <mauriceling at acm.org>
> declaimed the following in comp.lang.python:
> 
> > 
> > I'm hoping for a more optimistic outcome that this may open a 
> > possibility for tigher interoperability between java programs and python 
> > programs. That is, run java class files or java codes natively on python 
> > VM. Is this still a blue sky dream?
> >
> 	Most unlikely to happen... I don't really see anyone going to the
> effort to change the javac back-end to target a totally different
> runtime engine. 
> -- 
> 	Wulfraed	Dennis Lee Bieber		KD6MOG
> 	wlfraed at ix.netcom.com		wulfraed at bestiaria.com
> 		HTTP://wlfraed.home.netcom.com/
> 	(Bestiaria Support Staff:		web-asst at bestiaria.com)
> 		HTTP://www.bestiaria.com/

I once wrote a partial JVM in Modula-3 (strictly a researchware
effort), so I can imagine it being done technically.  But why?

The big problem with Java-and-Python is not the VMs underneath.  It is
the fact that Java has layers upon layers upon layers of idiosyncratic
libraries and idioms.  When you write bindings to that world (even if
the bindings are generated automagically), you have to *think* in
those same layers.  The Python-oriented developer suddenly has to use
a dozen imports in order to do things already done better in
Pythonesque libraries.

-- 
Harry George
PLM Engineering Architecture