Java vs Python

[Gordon McMillan]

Robb Shecter <shecter at darmstadt.gmd.de> wrote:

>... Java has the design goal
>of hiding -all- system dependencies. 

>Python seems to go about half-way in this direction. 


>...  I've seen, first hand, successful cases of "porting" a
>Java program that was written on Linux to NT by just copying the 
class
>files.

And I've seen many, many cases where differences in JVMs (even 
on the same OS) required all kinds of horrendous work arounds to 
get acceptable behavior.

It's bad enough that hiding system dependencies tends towards 
least-common-denominator functionality. It's an insult when I have  
to employ fancy work arounds where "if sys.platform ..." will do.

- Gordon