When will Java go mainstream like Python?

[Lie Ryan]

On 02/24/10 12:08, Nobody wrote:
> On Wed, 24 Feb 2010 12:22:05 +1300, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> 
>>> Java - The JVM code been hacked to death by Sun engineers (optimised)
>>> Python - The PVM code has seen speed-ups in Unladen or via Pyrex..
>>> ad-infinitum but nowhere as near to JVM
>>
>> Python is still faster, though. I think a key reason is that its VM supports 
>> reference-counting, which the Java folks never quite got the grasp of.
> 
> So how does Python handle circular references?

There is an optional garbage collector built into the interpreter. Look
at here on how it works: http://python.ca/nas/python/gc/