Re: [tlug] C vs. other languages (was: tlug-digest Digest V2004#194)

[Steve Smith <sjs@example.com>]

On Fri, 30 Jul 2004, Godwin Stewart wrote:

> Why are 99% of the operating system I use and its auxiliary tools written in
> C rather than Java? What about the mailer I use? A few of the tools I use
> (including the GUI) are written in C++ - why not in Java if Java's OO is so
> good? ("because they suck" isn't an answer...:)

Actually -- you can write OO code -- or for that matter --
process oriented code.  Where I work, the powers-that-be
decided to use Java on an embedded system (telephony -- a
DLC) and it's eating us alive.  The problem isn't just Java
-- it's the way the system was written.  But in our case a
major part of the problem is the OO paradigm that was
chosen.

We thrash through about 8Mb of memory to fetch 5kb worth of
data out of a data base.

And to make life more interesting, management and systems
decided on a Java Compiler (rather than a JVM approach) that
the vendor never quite got working and is now end-of-life,
but this is way off topic.

In general OO is much more resource intensive (memory and
CPU) than a more process driven design.  And C is a much
more suitable languzge for this than C++ (Although I do like
type-safe linking) or Java.

Steve S.