[cap-talk] Confessions of a C programmer

[David Wagner]

Bill Frantz  wrote:
>Java fails on several grounds:
>
>  Excessively slow start up times.
>  
>  Needs a file system to read class files and issue error messages for
>  uncaught exceptions.
>  
>  Does it support the ARM chip?

I'm pretty sure there are JVMs for the ARM.  See, e.g., JamVM, SableVM,
Cacao.  I have no experience with them (except maybe JamVM).

You'd have to benchmark their startup times; I have no idea what their
startup times are like.  THe following pages claim a 3-16ms startup time
for 3 ARM JVMs:
  http://bugblogger.com/java-vms-compared-160/

I wonder if you can hack around the need for a filesystem by
defining your own Classloader.

I've never tried using gcj, but I'm under the impression it can compile
directly to native code.  Maybe it can compile to ARM.