Re: MF having issues?

"Alistair" <alistair@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:1141483601.140438.229890@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I don't think that Java should be so summarily dismissed for large
batch data processing systems. It probably could handle millions of
transactions but I suspect that garbage collection could be a problem
(or is that just C/C++?).

I've heard from Java advocates that because it's very common in Java to write a program in which you create and quickly throw away objects, many implementations of Java are heavily optimized for this kind of usage.

I've read some articles about garbage collection algorithms -- generative garbage collectors do in fact keep track of "how old" objects are, and do some optimizations to be able to quickly recycle younger objects -- so I can confirm that a lot of thought was actually put into the issue. (see for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_Collection#Generational_GC_.28aka_Ephemeral_GC.29 )

But as to this means GC is "no longer" the bottleneck for these kinds of applications (assuming that GC ever was the bottleneck in the first place), I don't know.


I suspect that complexity of application may be a big issue with Java
i.e. is a four foot high listing of a Java program as easy to
understand and maintain as a four foot high listing of a Cobol program
(especially at 3 am)?

(Not to start a language war, but...) I suspect, all other things being equal (quality of the program, familiarity with the language of the reader, etc.) the COBOL program would be easier to understand, COBOL being much more verbose than Java. 4 feet of COBOL code probably says less than 4 feet of Java code.

- Oliver

.

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