Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> The API I'm using, for example, isn't documented. All you have is the "test" 
> program, which is about 8000 lines of top-level code (i.e., all in main()) 
> with no comments. Good luck figuring that out.

  The joys of spaghetti code. Structured programming and especially
modularity is for wimps.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> I hate to say this, but Java was *designed* for embedded programming. 

  I wonder about their design choices given that it was intended originally
for *embedded* (rather than desktop) systems. "Embedded system" usually
implies extremely low amount of RAM and very slow processors (especially
back when Java was first designed). Even if the Java program could be
compiled to native machine code for the target system (are there any such
compilers in actuality, for any embedded system?) which would mostly solve
the speed problem, it would still suffer from the memory consumption problem.

  No statically allocatable objects (including no support for arrays of
objects) and all objects always having dynamic binding means inevitably
increased memory consumption. (Also constant allocation/deallocation of
objects induces memory fragmentation, increasing overall memory consumption
as time passes, unless the system implements some form of memory
defragmentation scheme, which might be implausible for an embedded system,
especially at that time.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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nemesis wrote:
> 1) phone is always on so whatever the java startup cost is hidden

"Startup cost" for Java is pretty low if you're serving everything out of 
RAM. It's copying it from disk to RAM that's the main 'startup cost'.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

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Darren New wrote:
> nemesis wrote:
>> 1) phone is always on so whatever the java startup cost is hidden
> 
> "Startup cost" for Java is pretty low if you're serving everything out 
> of RAM. It's copying it from disk to RAM that's the main 'startup cost'.

that too.

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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> I hate to say this, but Java was *designed* for embedded programming. 
> 
>   I wonder about their design choices given that it was intended originally
> for *embedded* 

I think the idea was that they were targeting two primary things:

1) Portability, so you didn't have to rewrite your EPG-download code over 
again every time you released a new cable modem in your set-top box, and

2) Reliability, because when you have 100,000 customers, a crash for 1% of 
them once a month is a fatal problem.

I would imagine stuff like codecs would still be native code. It's the stuff 
like user interfaces and interfacing to the provisioning systems you'd want 
to be portable.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

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nemesis wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Darren New wrote:
>>> IME, if you don't know this sort of detail, you don't have the real
>> Blah blah blah. Or maybe I'm just a cranky fart who ought to be doing
>> something else.
> 
> that was not me, I swear.

Huh?  What made you think I was saying anything about you in a post 
following up my own post bitching about a topic you haven't discussed?

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

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Darren New wrote:
> nemesis wrote:
>> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>>> Darren New wrote:
>>>> IME, if you don't know this sort of detail, you don't have the real
>>> Blah blah blah. Or maybe I'm just a cranky fart who ought to be doing
>>> something else.
>>
>> that was not me, I swear.
> 
> Huh?  What made you think I was saying anything about you in a post 
> following up my own post bitching about a topic you haven't discussed?

oh.  I thought it was someone else posting under your name and calling 
you a "cranky fart".  People are kinda mad around here with me already 
and could be framming me. :P

Though I have to admit when I read your reply to me about smallptGPU 
about "hey, I have an idea" I had a gut instinct of calling you a sad 
old man. :)

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On 16-1-2010 20:39, Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> I hate to say this, but Java was *designed* for embedded programming. 
> 
>   I wonder about their design choices given that it was intended originally
> for *embedded* (rather than desktop) systems. "Embedded system" usually
> implies extremely low amount of RAM and very slow processors (especially
> back when Java was first designed). Even if the Java program could be
> compiled to native machine code for the target system (are there any such
> compilers in actuality, for any embedded system?) which would mostly solve
> the speed problem, it would still suffer from the memory consumption problem.
> 
>   No statically allocatable objects (including no support for arrays of
> objects) and all objects always having dynamic binding means inevitably
> increased memory consumption. (Also constant allocation/deallocation of
> objects induces memory fragmentation, increasing overall memory consumption
> as time passes, unless the system implements some form of memory
> defragmentation scheme, which might be implausible for an embedded system,
> especially at that time.)

When connecting an I2C AD converter to a Lego NXT brick* it appeared 
that Java does not have an unsigned 8bit datatype. Seems rather basic 
for embedded to me. Or am I overlooking something?

Don't know if I mentioned before, but our 1st year students were doing a 
project where they had to build a robot using Lego.
There were 6 teams of two groups. One to build a robot to navigate on a 
6 by 6 meter playfield with 5 barrels and find the barrel with a magnet. 
Then send the coordinates to the other group that had to build a robot 
to retrieve it.

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On 16-1-2010 22:08, nemesis wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> nemesis wrote:
>>> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>>>> Darren New wrote:
>>>>> IME, if you don't know this sort of detail, you don't have the real
>>>> Blah blah blah. Or maybe I'm just a cranky fart who ought to be doing
>>>> something else.
>>>
>>> that was not me, I swear.
>>
>> Huh?  What made you think I was saying anything about you in a post 
>> following up my own post bitching about a topic you haven't discussed?
> 
> oh.  I thought it was someone else posting under your name and calling 
> you a "cranky fart". 

I don't think anything remotely like that ever happened here. I mean 
posting under another name. Self-mockery is quite common.

> People are kinda mad around here with me already 

Don't know where you get that impression from. (and that is not ironic 
or sarcastic)

> and could be framing me. :P

What? Don't make yourself more important than you are.

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nemesis wrote:
> Though I have to admit when I read your reply to me about smallptGPU 
> about "hey, I have an idea" I had a gut instinct of calling you a sad 
> old man. :)

It's kind of a running joke, given that someone without any knowledge of how 
POV works internally suggests that all of POV could be sped up by porting it 
to GPUs about twice a year or so.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

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