

RMS on Java bytecodes and GCC - nickb
http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2001-02/msg00895.html

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gaius
_it would have been better if you had never implemented the feature. And now
it would be better now if you take these changes off your web site, and don't
mention that they exist_

This is from 2001 - Java is Open Source now... I'd be interested to know how
this story ended, since AFAIK this feature _is_ missing in present-day GCC.

~~~
rms
Some more recent discussion in the comments here

<http://www.jnode.org/node/1067>

~~~
michaelneale
An interesting comment to me is:

"The problem is that C and C++ are based on the model that a program can
access any memory cell, and can cast between pointer-sized scalars and
pointers at will. This is fundamentally at odds with the execution model
defined by the JVM."

So it is (obviously) not really that useful an idea, other then perhaps as a
curious or academic excercise (not terribly practical).

~~~
aggieben
It's not hard to write portable C++ code that doesn't cast pointers, and it's
really not that hard to write C++ that doesn't "touch" memory cells. Being
able to access the Java class library and 3rd party APIs from C++ could be
very useful.

~~~
michaelneale
Oh no question, I know java very well, C well and C++ not at all, so maybe I
am basing what I think of C++ as C, but I haven't really been able to do much
interesting in C without extensive use of pointers (with the exception of my
thesis project, although in that case it was interspersed with chunks of #asm
- so it wasn't a good candidate either ;).

Wouldn't it look rather like java though?

~~~
aggieben
Not really, especially if you used templates.

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st3fan
I wonder if this attitude of RMS is also the reason of why some of the more
interesting compiler projects are now happing on top of LLVM?

<http://llvm.org>

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newt0311
That is what I call taking the banner of "FREE" too far. In my view, the GPL
and F/OSS software were created and exist to make computers easier to use. To
use these tools to argue against the usage of a useful feature is perverse.

