Re: The Joy of Java

[mpd@netcom.com (Mike Duvos)]

Alex Strasheim <cp@proust.suba.com> writes:

 > I like Java -- I'm not a professional programmer, and Java
 > is a lot easier for me to work with than C++.  And I can buy
 > the argument that for many people the benefits of applets
 > will outweigh the security risks.

I hope everyone here realizes that Java is not just about
Applets. Applets are simply one of many abstract classes in Java,
suitable for further refinement into things that get plugged into
Web pages.

Java itself is a full-blown programming language, like C or C++,
with command line processing conventions, runtime libraries, and
all the other amenities of procedure-oriented programming
languages.  You can write anything you want in Java, and execute
the program at a shell prompt by simply typing its name followed
by some arguments.  (Perhaps you might have to alias "name" to
"java name", but you get the general idea)

While the security issues being discussed are indeed important
for Applets, where untrusted code from God-knows-where comes into
intimate contact with the program visible decor of ones platform,
they are less important when Java is used as an ordinary
programming language, in order to take advantage of its
platform-independence and incorruptable run-time structure.

Again, this is not directed at Alex or anyone else specifically,
but some of the messages I have read here recently have given the
distinct impression that people are thinking of Java as a
language solely for writing Applets, as opposed to something more
general and a bullet-proof replacement for C++ and C.

I think we'll be seeing a lot of things written in Java in the
future.  A good first start would be a set of Daemons for Unix
which run on any platform and are totally immune to the
buffer-overrun type holes which permit people to easily break
into systems.

--
     Mike Duvos         $    PGP 2.6 Public Key available     $
     mpd@netcom.com     $    via Finger.                      $