Re: [OT] Threads, inelegance, and Java

[Dan Kegel <dank@kegel.com>]

Russell Leighton wrote:
> The lack of a good operating system _dependent_ interface
> makes running fast hard in Java when you need to do IO...
> yes, there is always JNI so you can add a little C to mmap a file or whatever,

JDK 1.4 beta comes with a way to memory-map files, and various
other I/O improvements (like poll(); see http://www.jcp.org/jsr/detail/51.jsp).
Chris Smith will have some nio benchmarks up on http://www.jlinux.org/
next week or so showing how well their nonblocking network I/O performs.

Sun is slowly getting their act together on the I/O front with java.
Still, the competition from C# and for that matter gcj will probably be 
a good thing, keep 'em on their toes.

(Disclaimer: I served on the JSR-51 expert group, representing the linux 
point of view, kinda.)
- Dan