Java OS

[Francois-Rene Rideau]

>:Daniel Joyce <dj38302@swt.edu>

> Won't Java OS blow a hole in tunes?
Unhappily not AFAIK,
though it does help promote toward the masses
a few good things that were unjustly
feared or despised befored (like GC and type-safety).

> It has all the features you have discussed,
> and in its final implementation, will be object oriented,
> machine independent, decentralized, dynamically loaded, configurable,
> and secure.
I doubt Java will ever be remotely as expressive as Tunes will have,
especially as security is concerned.
I particularly question the expressiveness
of the inheritance model for programming.
   And I doubt such "final" implementation as you describe for Java
will ever be available:
every aspect you cite is being separately studied and implemented;
but I see no way in which these separate efforts
can be brought into a one unified implementation.

> 	How is TUNEs different from the ideal of JAVA?
A lot.
Java stresses hype for the masses, which is their commercial requirement.
Tunes will stress meta-programming and programming reflection.
   This will allow us to offer such things as
structure-based interface generation
(instead of interface-based structure generation),
contract/proof-based security
(rather than blind-trust and blind-distrust based security),
unification and translation between programming styles
(rather than forcing everyone into a one stubborn programming style),
*real* non-trivial static strong typing
(allowing trivial static typing as a particular case, too),
a higher-order module system
(instead of just flat inheritance trees),
version-aware persistent structures
(instead of low-level file-based I/O),
scalability downward towards embedded real-time systems
and upwards toward global distributed databases
(instead of a one compromise for some class of PC computers),
and lots more.
As for implementation, *efficient* reflection will be achieved
through generic cache/invalidation, which allows for
dynamic partial evaluation/specialization,
coherently cached dynamically distributed structures,
both realistic and optimistic code/structure prefetching/precomputing,
reversible persistent stores,
etc.
   None of these features is considered as a possible feature
for any current or future version of Java.
Sorry, I have little time available currently.
C U

== Fare' -- rideau@ens.fr -- Franc,ois-Rene' Rideau -- DDa(.ng-Vu~ Ba^n ==
Join the TUNES project for a computing system based on computing freedom !
                TUNES is a Useful, Not Expedient System
URL: "http://www.eleves.ens.fr:8080/home/rideau/Tunes/"