On Wed, 30 Nov 2011 20:52:49 -0000, Paulo Pinto <pj...@progtools.org>
wrote:
Well doing lots of transactions per second while aggregating data
from network elements scattered across mobile network stations
seems quite a lot of work to me.
I wasn't suggesting it wasn't "a lot" but that you could "do more" with
the same hardware using a compiled language. My actual point was that the
deciding factor (as to what language to use) is actually "do you need to
do more?" not "can you do more?".
I worked in several projects from quite a few big mobile companies and I
can say that most code that runs on the network side doing analysis of
your mobile activities is either JVM or .Net based.
That doesn't surprise me. I have a friend in financial programming and
they're primarily using Java also. But... they have rewritten performance
critical sections in C/C++ where they discovered they needed to "do more".
Since 2004 the middleware used by mobile operators has been being
migrated from C and C++ codebases mostly to Java and C#. Usually only
devices with hardware restrictions are left untouched.
Most of the operators software is now Web, Eclipse/Netbeans or Windows
Forms/WPF based.
Polyglot programming is preferred to one single language (hammer), and
as such, most project managers don't see as a downside that you need to
mix languages.
Oh, I agree, definitely use the right tool for the job. I wasn't saying
Java or a JVM language was the wrong tool.. *unless* you actually hit the
performance wall and "need more". In which case you can either buy better
hardware or move to a more performant tool - like a compiled language.
I think one reason for the movement toward Java and JVM style languages is
that hardware is getting cheaper and cheaper, and developers cost the same
or more. With a 'simpler to write' 'quicker to write' language like Java
(where you don't have to learn things like manual memory management) you
can more easily train programmers, and they will be cheaper also. Then,
you can 'fix' any performance issues you have with better hardware, for
less than the cost of training/paying a C/C++ developer to re-develop it.
It makes business sense.
Regan
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