equivocal ramblings

After bad-mouthing Opera’s marketing yesterday, I spent some time using it (in Windows XP), and I’m quite impressed. One thing stands out the most — speed. Opera is so, so very fast.

Some things about it bother me of course — it isn’t just a web browser, and the interface is geared to support more than just web browsing… like checking email and IRC. Yes folks, a web browser that does IRC. As I said, it takes some getting used to.

But once again, thats offset by the fact that its so fast it makes you dizzy. While I don’t take back my criticism of their marketing efforts, I’ll admit that Opera is mighty tempting, and who knows… it might become my new browser.

I go away on vacation for a few days, and all hell breaks loose — Ken and Jorge have paid good money for the Opera web browser. I can’t begin to fathom the atttraction this thing has to offer. Just check this out, I found this image on the front page of the Opera website just now (click for the larger, scarier image):

People have said many things before, like “It doesn’t matter what their skin colour is, they’re still people, and you should look beyond all that and see the person inside”. But… what does one say in a situation like this? “Look beyond the freaky weirdo costume and cape, and see the browser inside”

I’m sorry, but I can’t. It’s just something I’ll have to work on.

Java is widely held as the Holy Grail of cross-platform programming. Unfortunately, for as long as that has been true, it has also been akin to the Holy Grail to the Order of Fast Moving Garden Snails.

Lately though, I’ve begun to realise that its mostly a combination of two things:

• Sucky GUI architecture in Java itself (AWT/Swing) compounded by sucky understanding by those who actually use it — that whole event handler thread issue…
• Actual usage of the JVM to run applications — why not GCJ?

Let us review the above two points now, but in the context of the Java-Gnome project. Java-Gnome not only eliminates the GUI architecture of Java from the picture, but it also allows the use of the GCJ compiler to produce native code for the target platform.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t this then eliminate the two reasons that most people (Jorge, Dweeb) don’t want Java in Gnome? Speed and good looks are no longer concerns.