On: Charlie Nutter's Response to "Why Not A Bytecode V...

[Retric]

Room for optimization suggests when time is taken you get a faster code. After all this time and all these optimizations the JVM is still terrible for 3D code and zero blockbuster games uses it. Sure, it's possible for JVM code to be on par with poorly optimized code, but that does not mean there is equal headroom for optimization. Worse yet, for web code you can't use the old standby of having the JVM call C or ASM code for truly critical code.

EX: You could probably get a minecraft clone to run faster on the JVM but that's because the game engine is crap not because JVM has any advantage.

[dextorious → Retric]

"""Room for optimization suggests when time is taken you get a faster code. After all this time and all these optimizations the JVM is still terrible for 3D code and zero blockbuster games uses it."""

I don't think Sun was particularly good at optimizing in this particular task --or even interested.

They worked towards their actual customer use, ie. the server side.

It's not just 3D code, even desktop UI libs (Swing, JavaFX) and multimedia code where left without much (or any) love from Sun (/Oracle).

That doesn't mean a VM is unsuitable for fast 3D. Don't tons of 3D games use the Unity engine, which utilizes the Mono VM?

And it's not like critical 3D parts of the implementation cannot be written in plain old C/C++/ASM -- and exposed to the web programmers via some VM interface (a special set of 3D specialized opcodes? an intermediary 3D extension language + lib other vm languages will have to use? I dunno, it's however totally possible)

[rodrigokumpera → dextorious]

Maybe it just means that Mono is much more well suited for games and embedded usage. Which arguably is the case.

[dextorious → rodrigokumpera]

Only we're not discussing Mono vs JVM here.

We're discussing VM vs non-VM languages.

So if Mono (a VM language) can do fine in 3D games usage, it proves that nice 3D performance is not incompatible with a VM language --which is what the parent suggested, bringing up Java 3D performance as an example.

[Retric → dextorious]

Mono VM just demonstrates my point. You can use it to make games with that would have had reasonable graphics 7 years ago but no so much today. EX: http://www.unearthedgame.com/ which is around Half Life 2 graphics which came out in 2004. http://store.steampowered.com/video/220/904

Feel free to look for a better example from: http://unity3d.com/gallery/made-with-unity/game-list

And again I am talking about headroom, it does not take state of the art graphics to make a great game, but it does take a non VM language for the graphics subsystem.

PS: Computers are FAST my cellphone would crush multimillion dollar super computers when I was in high school. So, generally trading speed for nicety's like virtual memory is well worth it. However, that does not mean we are avoiding the tradeoffs just accepting them with open arms.

[dextorious → Retric]

"""Mono VM just demonstrates my point. You can use it to make games with that would have had reasonable graphics 7 years ago but no so much today."""

Native C/C++ will always be better for games than anything else. We are not discussing that.

For one, I actually think most of those game examples are fine, and better that whatever Dart will attain.

For use inside a web browser those are perfectly fine.

It's not like Dart will magically give you something better than WebGL, which is already hardware accelerated anyway...