C++/Java (Re: Perl vs. C for bioinformatics)

[Tom Walsh]

In article <6d52bl$mkl$1 at usenet54.supernews.com>,
JMonahan <monahan at avigen.com> wrote:
>Understand this is a pseudo-religious question. I have been using C++ with
>MFC for years now. Its continuous extensions especially these days with DCOM
>(soon to be DCOM+) make it hard to beat in a windows environment.
>Considering the continuous increase in market share of Windows (95+NT) over
>all other operating systems (including UNIX) this is an important factor.
>
>Somebody here mentioned Java. I have looked at Java from time to time. While
>the idea of a generalized platform sounds good it appears in almost all
>cases to fall short of expectations.
>To me there seemed to be too much hype with little actual performance.  A
>well known example was a "major word processor company" that essentially
>lost their market share trying to switch their system over to Java platform.
>They gave up!  I know of no significant application written in Java out
>there at the moment.
>

 I've heard that C++ is much more difficult than Java and that people in
bioinformatics are using Java instead of C++ despite the loss of performance.
 One article I've seen predicts that the languages of choice will be Perl and
Java with C used where speed is critical, and C++ essentially only existing as
legacy code. I've a complete newbie to this and I really appreciate people
offering their thoughts.

   Tom