Re: Java Risks (should be Java mis-speak)

[stt@henning.camb.inmet.com (Tucker Taft)]

Richard Riehle (rriehle@nunic.nu.edu) wrote:
: On Fri, 31 May 1996, The Right Reverend Colin James III wrote:

: Colin,

: I appreciate your taking the time to post a reply to my comments.

: > Richard Riehle <rriehle@nunic.nu.edu> posted with deletions:
: >
: > Apparently Riehle does not understand that bytecode produced by Java is
: > exactly what FORTH produces.  

The Java bytecode and the FORTH representation are not "exactly" the same.
In fact, FORTH generally uses a "word" code rather than a byte code.
The Java byte code and the FORTH word-code have some common goals,
but the details are all quite different.

: > Therefore for Ada or Eiffel to produce bytecode is silly.

:     If I implied that Ada or Eiffel should produce bytecode, I apologize.
:     That was never my intention.  However, there are already Ada products,
:     and, I believe, Eiffel products in development, that will generate
:     either Java code or some intermediate Java representation that will
:     ultimately be translated into bytecode.

Our Ada/Java product ("AppletMagic(r)") generates Java-compatible 
byte codes directly, with no intermediate steps.  Java byte-codes are 
stored in ".class" files.  The output of AppletMagic, just like 
the output of Sun's Java compiler, is one or more ".class"
files, containing byte-codes to represent methods, and other information
to provide the symbol table information necessary to support
dynamic linking.

The Java byte-code/".class"-file format, although designed to support
Java, is not inherently dependent on the "surface syntax" used to
write a program.  The semantics of languages like Modula-3, Ada 95, 
Oberon-2, etc., are all quite directly representable in Java byte codes.
Eiffel would be a bit more of a challenge, given its heavy dependence
on multiple inheritance of implementation, though it could probably
be done with some appropriate mapping.

In any case, by generating a Java-compatible ".class" file, AppletMagic 
allows the Ada 95 programmer to create the same kind of platform independent,
browser-executable applets as one can create using a Java compiler,
and to call back and forth between Ada95 and Java code.

There is a lot of information available on Java (see www.javasoft.com), 
as well as on our Ada => Java-byte-code compiler 
(see www.inmet.com/javadir/download).  There is no need to
speculate...

: ...
:   Richard Riehle

-Tucker Taft   stt@inmet.com   http://www.inmet.com/~stt/
Intermetrics, Inc.  Cambridge, MA  USA