Frederico Lopes <fre### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Well, this poses another question: why not a POV-Ray version in Java?

  Firstly, Java is not as efficient as C++. (It has got significantly more
efficient than it was when it was first introduced, but it's still not as
efficient.)

  Secondly, you talk as if porting POV-Ray to Java would be a simple
operation. Haha.

  Thirdly, Java is not as a good platform as people once tried to make it
to be (and some even today pretend it to be). It has lots of problems which
have caused many developers to switch to some other alternatives (such as C#,
and some even back to C++). The decision to make Android a Java platform
(with no official support for other development languages) is a somewhat
dubious one.

  Fourthly, if the sole purpose of porting POV-Ray to Java would be to be
able to run it on a cellphone, that's just wasted effort. Nobody's going to
do anything serious with POV-Ray on a cellphone. It would be a passing
curiosity, nothing more. The whole thing would be pretty useless.

  (Running POV-Ray on an iPad *might* make some sense, but on a cellphone?
Not really. Of course if you would want POV-Ray for iPad, you'll have to
stick to C++, so the porting effort would be very small compared to porting
it to a Java platform.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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