Re: No call for Ada (was Re: Announcing new scripting/prototyping language)

[James Rogers <jimmaureenrogers@att.net>]

Marin David Condic <nobody@noplace.com> wrote in
news:406EE6EB.8040507@noplace.com: 

> Yes, that's probably a more accurate characterization. But if Sun Java
> is essentially equal to "Java" (I don't know about any other major 
> implementations) then - as a language - the libraries are essentially 
> part of it. People tend to ignore any distinction between a "Language 
> Standard" and whatever they get with their compiler. In the absence of
> a competing implementation, for any practical purposes, the compiler
> *is* the standard.

There are no other major vendors. Microsoft tried making their
own implementation and suffered a lawsuit from Sun. The Microsoft
response was C#, which looks and smells a lot like Java but is being
marketed as a different language.

Sun provides several different and somewhat incompatible versions of
Java. There are Java Standard Edition, Enterprise Java, Real Time Java,
and Java Micro-Edition. The major difference between these versions is
the accompanying library set. The core Java language remains the same.
This is similar to different Ada compilers providing different sets of
optional annexes.

When managers decide to use Java they seldom recognize the differences
between the various versions. Sun provides the different development 
tools at no cost to the managers. Of course, there is a learning curve
for dealing with the different libraries, but that is seldom acknowledged
by managers.

Jim Rogers