Quotes Archive

Java will be more attractive than WAP for many reasons, including:

Usability and Interface Sophistication. Not only is WAP primitive; in the consumer space, it is guilty of a worse crime - it is boring. Consumer-facing applications are increasingly aimed at providing an emotional experience rather than a user interface. The quality of an interface will provide competitive differentiation. The need for usability, entertainment and captivation demands a level of programmability that WAP and its successors will not be able to provide. In addition, client-side code can improve usability by hiding network performance limitations

-- N. Jones, Will Mobile Java Kill WAP?

(...) for a development-time cost of about 15%, pair programming improves design quality, reduces defects, reduces staffing risk, enhances technical skills, improves team communications and is considered more enjoyable at statistically significant levels.

-- Alistair Cockburn and Laurie Williams, The Costs and Benefits of Pair Programming

However the biggest security problem is not hackers. It's not viruses. It's not Visual Basic worms transmitted by Outlook Express. It's not even insiders erasing their hard drives and quitting your company to go to work for your competitors. No, the biggest security issue in computing today is bugs. Regular, ordinary, non-malicious, unintended bugs are responsible for more data loss and lost productivity than all other factors combined. Java, by making it easier to write bug-free code[*], substantially improves the security of all kinds of programs.

-- Elliotte Rusty Harold, online chapters of The Java Developer's Resource

Java byte codes can be compiled on the fly to code that rivals C++ in speed using a "just-in-time compiler." Several companies are also working on native-machine-architecture compilers for Java. These will produce executable code that does not require a separate interpreter, and that is indistinguishable in speed from C++. While you'll never get that last ounce of speed out of a Java program that you might be able to wring from C or Fortran, the results will be suitable for all but the most demanding applications.

As of May, 1999, the fastest VM, IBM's Java 1.1 VM for Windows, is very close to C++ on CPU-intensive operations that don't involve a lot of disk I/O or GUI work; C++ is itself only a few percent slower than C or Fortran on CPU intensive operations.

-- Elliotte Rusty Harold, online chapters of The Java Developer's Resource

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