@Loftar: Java vs Flash

[Delamore]

(the reason, why H&H consumes such amount of resources - client is not optimized;

The goon who worked on the goon client before the actual client was opensource broke something that caused contours to not be displayed behind objects, this somehow made the client run much more smoothly for everyone until he accidently fixed it.

[loftar]

Wait, did you just imply you'd rather be working in Lisp, sitting on top of Java?

As quoted from the SBCL manual: "Even today, some 30 years after the MacLisp compiler, people will tell you that Lisp is an interpreted language. Ignore them."

ABCL compiles Lisp to JVM bytecode. It wouldn't be "Lisp on top of Java", but simply "Lisp instead of Java". Both are different languages that run on the JVM.

All the craziness of Lisp with all the memory management issues of Java?

Obviously, I'm not one you'd have to ask twice to get complaints about the Java language and the JVM, but sometimes I think people are complaining about the strangest things. Memory management issues? Sun's JVM uses as straight-forward and traditional a generational GC as you could ever ask for. I'm not one to budge for some manual memory management (the server is written in C), but you have to appreciate the pure speed of memory allocation in a GenGC. :)

And if you question my sanity for liking Lisp, I'll have to question yours for liking C++. One needs to look no farther for weird type systems and floating abstractions.

I think your choice of language is what fills the bears with murderous rage.

It isn't called Armed Bear Common Lisp for nought, obviously. :D

browsers tend to be pretty crap in general.

Don't get me started. I could rant on for pages. :)

[kaka]

browsers tend to be pretty crap in general.

Don't get me started. I could rant on for pages. :)

But you didn't mention Uzbl!

[InfamousLlama]

ABCL compiles Lisp to JVM bytecode.

Alright, that does sound interesting. I'd actually like to see openGL code in Lisp.

Java "memory management" is probably a bad way to put that. I was talking about these:
http://java.sun.com/javase/technologies ... ptions.jsp
And having to know how much heap you need up front. Most problems I've hit with Java are getting the VM to play nice with the host -- security stuff, initial memory allocation, etc. Webstart doesn't help. You don't seem to be butting against these limits, so they're a non-issue for H&H.

I'd prefer flash for internet-based distribution only because there's no install, assuming folks already have flash.
Java's perfectly usable, and will let you do more complicated things later, but involves more hassle upfront. AS3 is actually a halfway decent language; you'd have to pay me a lot to get me to do anything in AS2. The flash "VM" is also less well officially documented than Java's, though there's adequate unofficial info on google for both.

But yeah, C++ can get terrible; the only reason to use it is when you need serious low-level control, or you're familiar enough with it it'll take less time to learn how to do whatever in a faster (for development) language. Or if you're crazy. I qualify for one of those, most projects. I will say that with the right libs, cross-platform dev, even cross-compiling, isn't that big of a hassle.

(Well, isn't any more of a hassle than building makefiles is in the first place)

[theTrav]

Steve Jobs hates flash