On 30 Nov 2009, at 12:51 , Vijay K. Gurbani wrote: > ...it is not the > case that Java is exposing some additional functionality that > C/C++ do not.
Indeed. That is precisely our point, although phrased in an inverse manner. The more abstracted Java Networking APIs *HIDE* some low-level/ more-specific networking information from application programmers. As with the standard situation in Computer Science, such use of information hiding encourages application programmers to use properly high-level and abstract designs both for their applications and their application protocols. In turn, this tends to make the resulting applications more tolerant of changes to low-level networking details (e.g. changes to an IP address). As our draft is entirely about the issues and limitations of IP renumbering, this is precisely on point and within scope for our draft. As an aside, I'm told that Apple's COCOA APIs (and possibly also some proprietary Microsoft Windows APIs) also engage in significant information hiding, for the same reasons as the more abstract Java networking APIs, and likely with the same benefits. However, those are not open-standard C/C++ networking APIs, but rather platform-specific networking APIs. So they don't make very good examples. The abstracted Java networking APIs are, however, both platform-independent and open-standard, which is why those are particularly good examples for our document. [And yes, I know that some Java instances might contain ugly low-level networking APIs. THese are not commonly used, however, and programmers don't have the equivalent choice of API abstraction in open-standard C/C++ today (at least for platform-independent software) that they do today in open-standard Java. The point is not that one could write bad software. The point is that Java encourages one to write good software by having suitably abstracted APIs as the "normal" and most commonly used/taught networking APIs. It is a pity that such abstracted APIs were not openly specified by the IETF during the protracted IPv6 process.] Cheers, Ran _______________________________________________ Gen-art mailing list Gen-art@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/gen-art
