Java Certification

[Per Bothner]

james_williams@optusnet.com.au wrote:

> Why doesn't the GCJ team design a new language that maps closely to 
> java (like
> microsoft did with C#) and create their own framework.   The new language
> could be called "G"  or a more stylized "X"  and you guys would be 
> free to
> innovate your own framework on top of all of the innovation that you have
> already done.   It seems to me that certification is holding back this
> project.

Not really.  We don't really worry about it much.  The JCK would be nice
to have as a comprehensive test-suite.  However, starting a new language
from scratch wouldn't help any - we still wouldn't have the JCK!

> If you were your own language (which would be more attractive to
> the open source and increasingly non-open source community) then you 
> would
> have your freedom, which seems to be the purpose of the venture anyway.

There re lots of programming languages.  Creating a new one just to
"own your own" doesn't really make such sense, unless you have some
very specific ideas/goals.  I consider both Java and C# to be rather
safe, traditional and relatively low-level.  While there are various
ways they can be improved in small but valuable ways, it doesn't seem
worthwhile, given that Java and C# exist.

By the way, I get my language-design jollies in the context of
Kawa:  http://www.gnu.org/software/kawa/ while sits on top of
Java, being a compiler to JVM bytecodes.
-- 
	--Per Bothner
per@bothner.com   http://www.bothner.com/per/