[Tutor] Sun says: Don't use Java, use Python!

Willi Richert w.richert@gmx.net
Mon Feb 10 03:18:01 2003


Hi,

I've found this link via slashdot: 
http://www.internalmemos.com/memos/memodetails.php?memo_id=1321

Some thoughts in this article:

"...If the Java runtime were as small as that of Python, it is likely that the 
Java daemon would become popular and could provide basic services to 
applications written in any number of languages...."

"...A study performed by an outside team appears to indicate a rough parity in 
performance between Java and a common implementation of another OO language 
called Python (see IEEE Computing, October 2000, "An Empirical Comparison of 
Seven Programming Languages" by Lutz Prechelt of the University of 
Karlsruhe). Both platforms are Object Oriented, support web applications, 
serialization, internet connections and native interfaces. The key difference 
is that Python is a scripting language. This means there is no compilation to 
byte code so the Python runtime environment has to do two things in addition 
to what the Java runtime environment does. It has to perform syntax checks 
and it must parse the ascii text provided by the programmer. Both of those 
tasks are performed at compile time by Java and so that capability does not 
have to be in the JRE."

Nice memo,
wr