Crispin Cowan wrote... > mikeiscool wrote: ... > > True, but that doesn't mean runtime portability isn't a > good thing to aim for. > > > It means that compromising performance to obtain runtime portability > that does not actually exist is a poor bargain.
To me, the bigger loss than performance is all the functionality that you give up to gain the portability. E.g., because several system calls (in a functional/feature way, not the _specific_ sys calls) aren't portable across all OSes that Sun wanted to support with Java, they dumbed down the list to the lowest common demoninator. That makes a Java inappropriate for a lot of system-level programming tasks. Simple example: There's no way in pure Java that I can lock a process in memory. Wrt this list, that has a lot of security ramifications especially on shared processors. Sure makes hiding secrets a lot harder. Plea to moderator: Ken: While I find this debate interesting, I think it has little to do with secure coding. I'm trying to bring it back on track a bit, but I fear that it is too far gone. My vote is to kill this topic unless someone has a major objection or we can make it relevant to security. Thanks. -kevin --- Kevin W. Wall Qwest Information Technology, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: 614.215.4788 "It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration" - Edsger Dijkstra, How do we tell truths that matter? http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD04xx/EWD498.html This communication is the property of Qwest and may contain confidential or privileged information. Unauthorized use of this communication is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this communication in error, please immediately notify the sender by reply e-mail and destroy all copies of the communication and any attachments. _______________________________________________ Secure Coding mailing list (SC-L) SC-L@securecoding.org List information, subscriptions, etc - http://krvw.com/mailman/listinfo/sc-l List charter available at - http://www.securecoding.org/list/charter.php