Eclipse lights up Java crowd

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Eclipse is _not_ Java

Eclipse is built on SWT, a thin layer of Java classes that are translated into native classes if IBM bothers to do the work.
When you draw a window through SWT on Win32, it's just a call to Win32 native calls. When you draw it on Linux, it's a call to GTK. Etc.
In order to draw a window on a OS you need a Java virtual machine, which might be provided by Sun or by various other providers, and a port of SWT, that may be provided by anyone, but at this moment is built only by IBM. While the choice of JVMs is a bit improved (although Sun did its best to drive away Microsoft), SWT is a lock-in.
And, since it is not platform independent as much as AWT (the equivalent system provided by Sun's Java implementation), it is not "run anywhere" as much as Sun's standard offering. You can see that the download page has a different version for each OS and there is no "generic" jar that may be launched on any system Java runs - that's not the way Java works.
SWT was chosen for its speed, but this kind of approach is a merely reminiscence of Java, it's just keeping the semi-colons and interfaces instead of working in C++ with a portable library such as GTK or with system's standard libraries.
SWT is not Java. IBM is still a hardware manufacturer, trying to make the software for its patforms a commodity. The blurbs about how much IBM cares for Java on Windows can be discarded until Microsoft's OS will power IBM-manufactured computers again.

Posted by: luci sandor   Posted on: 03/07/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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