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Ported Languages

Many languages are being ported to and from other language APIs. Development of Java ports are no exception.

A few languages may potentially be ported to the Java Virtual Machine. The problems and chances of each includes:

BASIC, Modula-3, Pascal, Ada - straight-forward.
FORTRAN - an easy port if arithmetic specs are compatible.
Eiffel, Sather - multiple inheritance is the biggest obstacle.
Perl - possible, but many issues need to be overcome.
Lisp, Scheme, Smalltalk - require a bit of work.
Python - difficult because of the type system.
C, C++ - not worth the trouble!

When porting a language, there are three main sections of platform-specific code:

The Language Runtime
The graphics libraries
Networking support

The Java Language Runtime is highly multithreaded:

The most difficult part of porting the runtime is figuring out how to do threads and synchronization, signals, interrupts, etc. on a platform.

The graphics and networking code connect the programmer's portable APIs to whatever support the host provides.

In a nutshell, a port to any platform is a substantial amount of work.

More commonly, users will find high-level languages being mapped to Java, to provide an easier interface to the complexities of the driving, underlying language.

Tcl/Tk and Java

Version 1.0
Java: Issues and Technology
Copyright © 1996 - Illusion Industries Inc. - All Rights Reserved
Authored by Daniel Z. Tabor Jr