Re: Translation to Java

Tomas Granath wrote:
> I'm doing a MSc project about translation from other languages to
> Java, and would like hear if someone has had a look at the problems
> involved in this; e.g. expressiveness of Java vs other object
> oriented languages an so on.




We address some of the questions & issues you mention in Java in the
following paper:


Jonathan Campbell and Fionn Murtagh, 1997,


Signal and Image Processing in Java.
Paper presented at IMVIP '97, University of Ulster, Magee College,
Derry, 10-13 September 1997. (note: this is not in the printed
Proceedings).


Available from
http://www.infm.ulst.ac.uk/~jgc/papers/javadl.ps PostScript (125KB),
http://www.infm.ulst.ac.uk/~jgc/papers/javadl.ps.gz PostScript
compressed (gzip) (51KB).


The abstract is in
http://www.infm.ulst.ac.uk/research/preprints.html
and the paper is also available via this link.


We expect to update the paper as we achieve more results, so 'watch this
space'.


What we find nice:


- procedural C/C++, that uses simple types and no mixed type
expressions, needs no translation to Java except maybe for function
heading. E.g. a cleanly written linear equation solver, or an FFT, needs
little or no translation. This will be of great interest to those who
involved in numerical analysis & scientific programming.


- nice object model in Java.


- well documented supporting classes for everything you ever dreamt of.


- garbage collection.


- avoidance of (direct reference to) pointers.


- stricter typing than either C or C++.


It would make an ideal "introduction to programming" teaching language
-- with, in my opinion, assurance of easy migration to C/C++ afterwards
if neccessary.


Best regards,


Jon Campbell


--
Jonathan G Campbell Univ. Ulster Magee College Derry BT48 7JL N. Ireland
+44 1504 375367 JG.Campbell@ulst.ac.uk http://www.infm.ulst.ac.uk/~jgc/
--

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