Java: not the best language to teach at schools?

"Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?" dogs Java as the one and only programming language to teach but does include it as one of 5 languages recommended languages to learn (C, C++, LISP and Ada are the other 4).

Personally, I'd wish they work on a better programming language(s) to teach the right concepts rather than trying to create a better hi-tech vocational courses based on the most desired languages by employers. It's unfortunate that people get hired based on their specific language skills rather than understanding concepts and ability solve problems. Sigh...

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

JPC: java PC simulator

"JPC: Computer Virtualization in Java" sounds like a promising project (hat tip to /.). However, I'm not impressed after using the demo: the initial interactivity is good but on Java 1.5 after few seconds of playing the lag between input and output turns pretty much unusable (was playing Invader). There is probably some kind of garbage collection timing problem, I would assume since it hangs for a split second and then the image speeds up to real time and pauses or slows down. Not very useful for me (on 2.13 GHz Pentium M with 2GB of RAM).

I suppose newer 1.6* Java might help but still....

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Multi-Core Debug

I was looking through JavaOne conference program and noticed Groovy language and was intrigued by it. But what really got my attention was "Java Platform Performance on Multicore: Better Performance or Bigger Headache?"

AMD is touting their AMD CodeAnalyst™ Performance Analyzer which is proposed as a tool to improve performance of multi-threaded Java program. But based on the above abstract, it seems to be a step closer to using such tools to help debug code.

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.