[aprssig] Rant - Cross platform portability

[Brian Riley]

Bravo, well said , and well done ... as a mainly Mac, but PC and  
Linux and lotsa little MCUs guy. I really appreciate it when I see  
these kind of efforts.


---
cheers ... 73 de brian  riley,  n1bq , underhill center, vermont
   <http://web.mac.com/brianbr/>  Tech Blog
   <http://www.wulfden.org/DiskShop.shtml>
    Home of the
       K107 Serial LCD Controller Kit   FT817 Power Conditioner Kit
       Tab Robot Laser Tag Kit            MSP430 Chips and Connectors
       Propeller Robot Controller         SX48 "Tech Board" Kit



On Sep 17, 2006, at 9:12 PM, Gregg Wonderly wrote:

> Jim Lux wrote:
>> Gregg makes some comments about the availability of software for a  
>> variety of environments, and that triggers some comments about  
>> software development, not necessarily directed at Gregg  
>> personally, but at a general misunderstanding of how and why  
>> software gets developed.
>
> Hi Jim, I guess I stirred up some emotions.  Without going after  
> every point that you enumerated in your response, let me just say  
> that I've been developing software in a number of environments over  
> the past 20+ years.  I have a masters degree in software  
> development focused in areas of operating systems and computer  
> language development.  I've developed windows software, unix  
> software extensively, and 10 years ago started using Java for all  
> of my core application development.  So, I have some experience to  
> draw on for my opinions.
>
> If you will search on the internet for "gregg wonderly java jini  
> software" you will find that I have about 10 open source projects  
> visible in the communities related to my interests.  These  
> projects, include a complete replacement for Echolink, written in  
> Java, which runs, without ANY porting needed on windows, linux and  
> mac os-x.  Because Java provides a nice abstraction to the sound  
> system, I don't have to know about how that works.  Because Java  
> provides a "look and feel" abstraction, the OSes native graphics  
> subsystem is abstracted for me and all the font sizing, spacing and  
> layout is taken care of for me.
>
> When I started openlink, I had some free moments.  When I got GUI  
> done after a couple of weeks of spare time work, I started looking  
> around for PSK-31 libraries to copy by translating to Java.  As I  
> said, unfortunately, these libraries are optimized with ASM code,  
> or are otherwise tied into a particular environment.
>
> On any of the existing OSes that are in consumer computers, you  
> will always have scheduling pauses related to timesharing of the  
> CPU.  Your comments about the speed of Java seem to be based on old  
> experience or some third party comments. I have large scale  
> production systems running on Java with massive throughput and not  
> problems with performance.  The Sun Just In Time (JIT) compiler can  
> typically equal or better many C and C++ compilers of the same  
> algorithms because of the depth of analysis and the fact that they  
> compile with runtime knowledge about the actual execution paths and  
> frequency of passes through the code.
>
> I stick by my comments that there is no reason that Amatuer radio  
> software should not be being developed as cross platform.
>
> We all had to study for and take a test to demonstrate our  
> knowledge.  Taking the time to learn more about software  
> development seems like a good idea to me.  I've spent my life  
> learning about software and contributing software for others to use  
> freely.
>
> Allowing everyone to take advantage of your efforts is one way to  
> let others spend their time being productive doing something  
> besides repeating your work so that they can have the benefits.  If  
> you can't spend the time to learn how to do something different  
> than what you are doing now, I accept that as a fact of your life.
>
> I still think it's a good idea for all Amatuer Radio software to be  
> portable across OSes.
>
>> While the sentiments expressed by Gregg are wonderful, there's a  
>> fairly big gap in the ability to do "write once, run everywhere"  
>> software, except for the most trivial of applications.  Web  
>> browsers are about the closest thing that you see, and you'll note  
>> that there are numerous incompatibilities, even with fairly simple  
>> HTML.  There are also "market realities" to consider, some of  
>> which I touched on initially.
>
> Jim, maybe you can tell me which Java application(s) you have  
> developed.  How many lines of code, type of application etc.  Which  
> versions of the Java specification has it ran on, and what problems  
> you encountered?  I'm always interested in hearing what other's  
> experiences have been using Java.  You seem to have some opinions  
> about Java and I'd like to learn what experience those are based on  
> so that I can better understand them.
>
> Thanks for sharing you thoughts and experiences.
>
> Gregg Wonderly
> W5GGW
>
> _______________________________________________
> aprssig mailing list
> aprssig at lists.tapr.org
> https://lists.tapr.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/aprssig