Java to Python translation

[Kemp Randy-W18971]

What the heck kind of application has 100 MB of Java code anyway? 

Boy, that is a good question.  Let's look at the size of some applications I have on my Windows 2000 machine:
JBoss-2.4.4_Tomcat-4.0.1  -  36.1 MB -- Jboss EJB server and Tomcat servlet container
Jonas244                  -  23.0 MB -- Jonas EJB server
mysql                     -  26.3 MB -- Mysql Database server
Resin-2.1.0               -  17.4 MB -- Resin servlet container    
Total space               - 102.8 MB
Now the sum of these products equals about 100 MB of Java + C code

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Rubin [mailto:phr-n2002a at nightsong.com]
Sent: Thursday, April 04, 2002 8:27 AM
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: Re: Java to Python translation


vio <vmilitaru at sympatico.ca> writes:
> > This makes no sense.  WHY do you want to migrate all that Java to Python?
> > Why not leave it in Java and keep using it?  That's what none of us
> > are understanding.  What do you GAIN from making an unmaintainable
> > machine translation?
> 
> Focus.

> Focus on one language and one environment. Which happens to be
> python. Migrating legacy code is a strategic decision. Obviously,
> the goal is to NOT end up with an unmaintaibable machine
> translation. In that case the "solution" becomes worse than the
> "problem" (one of python's big appeal is its ease of
> maintenance).

You won't get that from an automatic translation.  Part of the ease
of maintenance comes from the code for an app just being smaller in
Python than it would be in Java.  But a translation would be bigger
and not smaller.  And the code output will be awful, because the
translation system won't have any way to figure out what the programmer
was actually thinking.  Look at a Babelfish translation of French
into English to see what you'll be dealing with code-wise.  This
is what I mean when I say that the translation project might fail
disastrously, but if it succeeds, you'll have an even bigger disaster.

What the heck kind of application has 100 MB of Java code anyway?
It sounds like it may already be the output of some automatic process.