Re: Java

[Dan Weinreb <address@hidden>]

   Date: Fri, 7 Dec 2001 08:24:59 -0500
   From: "Steven Richman" <richman@lcs.mit.edu>

   Jeremey mentioned some gripes that I think are much more valid: lack of
   generics, 

Yup, but fortunately this will be fixed Real Soon Now.

	     broken memory model
   (http://www.cs.umd.edu/~pugh/java/memoryModel/), 

Pugh has some good points about how the memory model could be
improved, but he's mainly talking about improving Java rather than
comparing Java to other programming languages.  Most languages don't
even *have* a memory model in the sense that Pugh means.  Common Lisp,
for example, never even tried to address these issues (about
multi-thread access to shared memory in the presence of caches and
compiler optimizations).

						    lack of tail call
   optimization. 

Sure.

	 You can't download a little library that gives you tail calls or a
   reasonable memory model.

See, here you (collectively) go again.  Even Pugh doesn't use words
like "broken" and "unreasonable".  This is what I mean about
"trashing".  The implication is that Java is *bad* because it has an
*unreasonable* memory model, with the implication that some unnamed
other language is *good* because it has a *reasonable* memory model.

Please tell me more about how other languages provide better solutions
than Java to the problems that Pugh is trying to solve.