The big buy-in for the Java language was write-once – run-anywhere. Java classes work on different machines. This was a good thing for CIOs that came from the big mainframe world and bought into various mini and micro computers, only to find that software had to be rewritten each time. The AS/400 was a counter attack by IBM against the PC that it spawned. The AS/400 felt and tasted like a mainframe so the CIOs of the big companies fell in love – until they discovered that the code needed to be re-written.
The upper management of companies with expensive development costs have been searching for a way to cut my salary for 35 years. The idea of write-once run anywhere is one answer they understand. The code re-use argument of Object-Oriented programming sounded good, but has never paid off. Java is a dog and seems to cost ten times as much as hardware costs as programmer savings, just to make it run.
This is an old idea. Back in the early 1970s, Nicklaus Wirth invented a programming language called Pascal based on an older language called Algol. Pascal (based on Algol) is the father of C, Java and PHP. One feature of Pascal was that it compiled into P-code, a virtual machine language. In the 1990s the idea of P-code was reinvented in Java Byte Codes.
Since Java, we have learned a lot about machine languages and now there is
Lina
Lina is a byte code/p-code engine for Linux and perhaps even Windows and Apple OS’s. It is designed, not only to take care of different CPUs, but to handle different operating systems and hardware. The goal is a true write-once Run-anywhere engine. Something that Pascal and Java never achieved.
I like this because it means more work for me. Now, there will be a porting of Java that compiles to the Java Byte Code to Java apps that compile to LINA. PHP, which already compiles to an intermediate byte code, could easily compile to LINA. I hope that this appeals to the CIOs of all the major corporations, and they need people like me to implement it.
By the way, nobody seems to understand that there is no such thing as a interchangeable parts when it comes to programming. I am an artist, I am a poet, I am a mystic – at least when it comes to programs. There is no one who can replace me.
I produce art, not code.