At 04:10 PM 10/18/2006, Ken Klein wrote: >Jim; > >Please excuse a really dumb question: Why NOT use Java??? Seems to me for >an Open Source project such as this, that would be the first choice.
Not a dumb question at all. It would revolve around whether you want to have maximum portability or maximum participation. There are probably 100 (maybe 1000) times as many C programmers as Java programmers out there. Java gives you portability, but a smaller developer pool to draw from. One could argue that the developer pool for "portable c" is also quite small, since the implication is that you not only need to know C, but also the particular environment and libraries you're working with (e.g. .NET framework, X11, whathaveyou). So, for maximum participation, pick the programming environment with the largest pool of participants, and that's MS Windows, VC, .NET (although VB is probably actually more popular and easier, but I'd hate to try and translate PowerSDR back into VB). OTOH, if something like PowerSDR were to be rewritten in Java (by humans, not a machine translation, which would result in incomprehensible code (viz f2c)), it would provide an excellent learning environment for learning Java (it's always nice to start with something you KNOW works and make little changes). However, no skilled Java programmer has volunteered to do the port so far. And neither goal really is correlated to Open Source, which is just a matter of having the source code available, with no implication (as has been made abundantly clear to me by several Open Source afficionados) that the source is documented, understandable, readily modifiable, or even in any standard language or character set. Open Source is a necessary but not sufficient condition for public participation. And that is still different from Free (as in speech, not as in beer) software. Jim _______________________________________________ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archive Link: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ FlexRadio Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com
