In article , Martin Gregorie
 wrote:

> On Tue, 01 Sep 2020 21:07:14 -0400, Mayayana wrote:
>
> >   Yes. Except that it didn't really work. And it never belonged
> > in webpages. And it never belonged on the desktop. As I said,
> > it's used for in-house applets, just as .Net is. Neither of them is well
> > suited to desktop. What is? Compiled software.
> >
> What are you talking about?
>
> Javascript != Java and has never been even remotely connected with Java
> except that Netscape tried without success to build it into their browser.
> Meanwhile they had a parallel project for an interpreted language called
> Scheme which added a few syntactical and functional elements copied from
> Java and ended up being called LiveScript, then renamed to JavaScript and
> later standardised as ECMAScript.

There is JavaScript which has been on browsers for a long time (and has
seen increasing use and increasing support) and there are Java applets,
which are a completely different beast.

Applets are downloaded by a page and run on the browser. They have had
all kinds of problems, I haven't seen one for years because much of the
functionality (but perhaps not all) they were intended to provide,
e.g., runtime graphics, has been addressed better by JavaScript and
HTML5.

>
> So, the differences are:
>
> - the two languages are syntactically different apart from some features
> in common with other languages such as curly brackets and other syntax
> that originated from C.
>
> - Javascript is interpreted while Java is compiled

Interpreted and compiled implementations are different points on a
continuum, they are not one-or-the-other propositions.

There are certainly things called JavaScript compilers running on
browsers these days (I believe the one used most widely is from Google
and was a large step forward compared to previous, interpreted
implementations in terms of performance of the code produced). I don't
know to what degree it "compiles" JavaScript, I doubt it goes to native
code.

Java has been implemented in more than one way. Including in the
"compiler" from Oracle, nee Sun, which, I am told by people who have
worked on it, contains three separate Java compilers in the same javac
binary. Which compiler you get is determined by which flags (among 120
or so) you choose on the command line and this internal structure is
not visible to the user. None of these, to my knowledge, "compile" to
native code, they compile to an intermediate language which is then
interpreted.

> Not true. Java programs using the SWING GUI run just fine on my Linux
> systems and would run equally well under Windows - no recompilation
> needed.

Unclear how you intend that to square with your claim that Java (vs.
JavaScript) is compiled.

   Tom

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