[computer-go] Monte Carlo combined with minimax search

[Don Dailey]

I did not intend to be overly critical of java,  I do like the basic
concept.   It's kind of universal cross-platform toolkit and you should
be able to do most any reasonable thing with libraries that are already
standard in the language.    That's a very good thing.   I also feel
that it is set up fairly well for managing large projects.   

My complaint is with the core language itself.   It just seems like it's
too low level without the advantages of being low level if that makes
any sense to anyone.    Of course one of the advantages is that it is
faster than most of the truly high level languages - but that's because
it isn't a very high level language!   

A part of the problem with me is that I probably don't have the major
need that java addresses.   

Perhaps when I get Lazarus to a stable state and major version,  I will
make a java version and report the results to the group.  If I get a
wild hair up my tail that is.

- Don




On Mon, 2006-07-24 at 06:50 -0700, steve uurtamo wrote:
> > Is there
> > some inherent
> > problem with memory management with Java or do all
> > garbage collected
> > languages suffer like java does from memory handling
> > issues?   
> 
> GC will create slowdowns that you don't have any
> control over -- even direct calls to the garbage
> collector are handled on an advisory basis and
> aren't guaranteed to cause anything to happen.
> 
> the nice think about malloc and free are that
> you know exactly how much ram you're using and
> can control when and how you allocate and free
> it.  the picky thing is just making sure that
> your complex structures all get freed correctly.
> that tiny bit of extra work on your end is one
> big thing that makes garbage collectors so slow.
> they are not nearly as good about timing the
> GC (even if they are sometimes better at figuring
> out how to efficiently unravel your freed
> structures).
> 
> i think that java is a great idea -- who wouldn't
> want a cross-platform language with built-in
> gui tools?  but to use the language the way that
> it's intended to be used (i.e. using "new" without
> fear of crippling your speed, creating complex
> inheritance hierarchies), i don't think that
> it's the right language for anything that needs
> to go fast.
> 
> i like the idea of using high-level languages to
> deal with meta-issues, and low-level languages to
> implement things that would otherwise be painfully
> slow.  who doesn't like to twiddle bits, anyway?
> i think that it's just stylistically odd to
> twiddle them inside a high-level language.  i
> mean, in a language intended to be cross-platform,
> what kind of knowledge do you have about, say,
> memory alignment, anyway?  and if you do know
> how memory is going to be aligned on the exact
> machine class that the code is running on, why
> would you use java?  equivalently useful tools
> without all of the ancillary pain exist in much
> faster language implementations.
> 
> s.
> 
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