[fpc-devel] New FPC target: JVM

[Graeme Geldenhuys]

On 20 August 2011 17:54, Mattias Gaertner wrote:
>>
>> Why did Google do that?
>
> Why don't you google yourself?

Lets see if I understand this correctly. Dalvik was designed to be
suitable for systems that are constrained in terms of memory and
processor speed. (Quoted from Wikipedia) Yet today's smart phones and
tablets are more powerful than the desktops of just a few years ago,
or even the computers that first sent man to the moon. Now lets not
even talk amount of memory. Most mobile devices have 512-1GB memory
these days - again more than most desktops had just a few years ago.

So Google creating a incompatible Java for this supposed limitation of
processor speed and low memory. Yeah Sun's Java ran fine on desktops
of 10-15 years ago, and even on PDA's of that time.

Google is doing with Android just the opposite of what Sun's Java
stands for - compile once, run everywhere.
If Google wanted something different for their Android platform, they
should not have called it Java then.


> What benefits do you miss?

Compile Java (SE, ME etc) apps once, run everywhere.


> Java is just a language.

No, Java is also known as a platform (like Java Virtual Machine).
Google (like Microsoft before it) is now tainting the Java platform by
making it incompatible with existing Java. Like I said, if they wanted
something different, they should have named it differently too.

Anyway, I never said I'm an expert in Android. I'll research the
subject further to get a clearer picture.


> A jvm backend for fpc is great. I hope it is not too much work to
> maintain.

I have no issues with FPC supporting the Java platform as a target - I
think this is great news indeed.



-- 
Regards,
  - Graeme -


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