If you need high speed processing like SCADA (2 second or fast scan 
rates) or realtime control of mechanical devices and alarm processing, 
you will most likely use some natively compiled code.   Especially if 
the app(s) requires many daemons all using some form of inter-process 
communication and file and/or database access.

If this is the case, you will also have matched the hardware to the task 
(larger more expensive machines or small embedded systems designed for 
the task).  

For the vast majority of business and personal apps the latency of using 
bite code that is NOT natively compiled does not have much of an impact. 
  I would NOT use kaffe or gcj, because of the reasons of limitation you 
gave below, but rather the standard Java development kit from Sun.  It 
is available for most platforms (including linux)  as is the runtime 
environment.  

Further, I have found that if I code java without a integrated 
development environment, I can get smaller jars that load and run more 
quickly.  I think the maturity in java needs to occur more in the IDE's 
currently available than in the packages.   I am able to take advantage 
reusing variables like strings and ints and process loops coding using 
vi than using the IDE's.  

Ryan Hayle wrote:

>Java is non-free.  It should be avoided like the plague, or alternatives
>like gcj (GNU java complier), kaffe, and the like should be used.  All
>of these have very limited awt/swing support, however.  GCJ does allow
>compiling to native code, which is important if you ever want a java
>application to be less than painfully slow (anyone tried using Limewire
>lately?).
>
>Until it matures, let's just leave java in the server-applet realm where
>it seems to belong.  Just my $.02.
>
>Ryan
>
>On Mon, 2003-04-28 at 09:01, Matt Thoren wrote:
>  
>
>>-<my previous comments in support of java>
>>
>>
>>Matt Thoren
>>mthoren at mttcc.com
>>    
>>
>
>  
>

-- 
--
Matt Thoren
MTT Computer Consulting Inc.
mthoren at mttcc.com
http://www.mttcc.com
612-743-8773


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