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25 sep 06 "Can I have some cream and Java?" rahul, you retard, put some effort into these questions. look at this shit: 24th September 2006 19:31:42 barnacle.gomen.org/form.pl 24th September 2006 19:32:22 barnacle.gomen.org/form.pl 24th September 2006 19:37:30 barnacle.gomen.org/form.pl he was probably drunk. i don't feel at all bad about answering these three with a few lines, but i have to admit that i'm a little curious about what he meant, especially because Java is capitalized in his question. is 'hul aware of the programming language called Java? might this not be 'hul? the world is full of the Mysterious and the Unexplained. i'm uncomfortable with java (Results 1 - 10 of about 1,020 for "uncomfortable with java"), because it's in its own special category. java is like a toy robot you buy, and then notice "some assembly required" on the side of the box when you get home. it's somewhere in between a low-level binary-compiling language and an abstract interpreted scripting language; instead of compiling into a binary, java programs compile into something called "bytecode", which is interpreted by an entity called a "java virtual machine" (JVM). java's principle quality is that it's able to run on any operating system/machine architecture that has a JVM installed (unlike a compiled binary, which has to be native for a certain type of OS/machine). the JVM is a computing environment that can run the same java code regardless of what "actual" machine a given JVM is installed on. java has attributes of both an interpreted and a compiled language -- a program is written in java, then "compiled" into bytecode, and finally the bytecode is "interpreted" by the virtual machine. java is an interpreted language if you consider the JVM to be just a program, and it's compiled language if you consider your "virtual machine" to be your "actual" machine. of course, calling java an interpreted language is like saying that physical machine architecture "interprets" machine code. if a JVM is installed on windows, mac, or unix (or vms, or commodore 64, or whatever), then the same java "bytecode" ("java" is to "bytecode" as "C" is to "machine code") will execute, regardless of what actual kind of computer is housing the JVM. from now on, i'm going to refer to my web browser as an "html virtual machine". that was a joke, by the way, but it does illustrate something -- if you have to install a platform-specific JRE (java runtime environment, the principle component of which is the JVM), then what's the point, exactly, of this "platform independent" language that's paid so much lip service? saying java is platform-independant is like saying a scripting language with a specific interpreter is platform-independant. but, i'm sure there are nuances i'm missing. there exist special compilers that will compile java programs into native machine code, so you can eliminate all of that JVM nonsense if you so desire. this is the main one. if you're running windows, then go to this local address: C:\Program Files\Java\. then,double-click on the subfolder, whatever it might be named -- jre-something. read the `welcome` and `readme` files, and generally poke around. this program directory is how your personal windows machine is able to execute java's "compiled" bytecode. java has left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth due to web applets, which are pointless things, considering the existence of both flash and DOM/javascript (even though they can do some things flash/DOM can't). not helping my anti-java feelings is the peer-to-peer client limewire, which is frustratingly slow to run (someone told me this is because it was written in java). also, i don't like that the user must keep a secret beast lurking on his computer, as if the computer weren't satisfactory in and of itself. i feel as though java programs are prima donnas, and require a "special handler" to make them work, as if they were some delicate species of exotic bird, instead of a way to produce slow and useless applications. BORING BORING BORING BORING BORING (to most people). i'm don't think i'm a "computer person"; i feel like there's just too much to know and learn, and that most of it is really quite uninteresting. learning how to use a computer is like memorizing a complex pattern of sticks on the ground: sort of fun because it's fully understandable, but ultimately repetetive, meaningless, unfulfilling, and suicide-inducing. computing is appealing because there aren't any gray areas (something i touched upon on my esr-confessional); it's sort of reassuring to have this environment where things do what they're told, and are predictable (notwithstanding fire ants eating your transistors in mid-execution). people confuse computers with computer science, which has more to do with logic and philosophy than it does with learning photoshop or even computer languages. when someone says "i hate computers", most often what they mean is "i don't like siting here in this chair, staring at a screen and clicking my way through some buggy, unintuitive, overly-complicated, inflexible software to make some little specks of light on this screen appear different than other little specks of light". and this is totally reasonable -- the rewards of computing, if indeed there are any, aren't all that tangible. but some can sense the presence of the logic circuits, and rest assured that the computer will do what a program tells it to do. |
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