Alex Strasheim <cp@proust.suba.com> writes:
I like Java -- I'm not a professional programmer, and Java is a lot easier for me to work with than C++. And I can buy the argument that for many people the benefits of applets will outweigh the security risks.
I hope everyone here realizes that Java is not just about Applets. Applets are simply one of many abstract classes in Java, suitable for further refinement into things that get plugged into Web pages. Java itself is a full-blown programming language, like C or C++, with command line processing conventions, runtime libraries, and all the other amenities of procedure-oriented programming languages. You can write anything you want in Java, and execute the program at a shell prompt by simply typing its name followed by some arguments. (Perhaps you might have to alias "name" to "java name", but you get the general idea) While the security issues being discussed are indeed important for Applets, where untrusted code from God-knows-where comes into intimate contact with the program visible decor of ones platform, they are less important when Java is used as an ordinary programming language, in order to take advantage of its platform-independence and incorruptable run-time structure. Again, this is not directed at Alex or anyone else specifically, but some of the messages I have read here recently have given the distinct impression that people are thinking of Java as a language solely for writing Applets, as opposed to something more general and a bullet-proof replacement for C++ and C. I think we'll be seeing a lot of things written in Java in the future. A good first start would be a set of Daemons for Unix which run on any platform and are totally immune to the buffer-overrun type holes which permit people to easily break into systems. -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ mpd@netcom.com $ via Finger. $