begin quoting [EMAIL PROTECTED] as of Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 11:19:37AM -0700: > People seem to insist on calling virtual machine binaries "bytecode". > AFAIK, Sun and Java started this trend.
Nope. Blame Xerox. > I believe the thinking was that the JVM binaries looked like a bunch of bytes. Well, it's not source code, and it's not machine code either. It's something in between. > This makes no sense to me since *any* file looks like a bunch of bytes right? > How can a hexdump *not* look like "a bunch of bytes". Bytecode isn't a hexdump of the source. Run javap sometime with -c and look at the output. > Seems we really need a better name for "virtual machine code". Why? The term "bytecode" is established, unused elsewhere, and unambiguous. "Virtual Machine Code" can be either the code that runs on a virtual machine, or that implements a virtual machine. -- It seems more sensible to object to the term "hypervisor". Stewart Stremler -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-lpsg
