Re: [LAD] Open Source to be or not to be?

On 1 July 2014 11:37, Fons Adriaensen <fons(a)linuxaudio.org> wrote: This reminds me of a (robust! :-) ) discussion David and I had a few years back. I'll preface this by saying, which is not really a secret around here, that I'm a Java developer. Praxis LIVE is written in Java for a very particular reason - the ability to rewrite code on the fly, and have it JIT compiled. Development at the moment is very much focused on the idea of a visual patcher where you can rewrite the code of any component *as it runs*. This ability to live manipulate code, either by hand or by meta-programming, would seem to open up a wide range of interesting and creative possibilities - instant feedback as a great learning and development tool. There's lots of interesting stuff happening in this space at the moment - eg. Extempore (https://github.com/digego/extempore) I generally agree with scepticism around JavaScript for this (and to an extent with the drive to make the browser an OS), but that's primarily due to limitations of the language (types, threading, etc.) than the idea of a VM in and of itself. David, in the past you've professed to be pro-JIT and pro-GC but anti-VM - I guess I'm still having difficulty understanding what that position means -surely some level of machine abstraction is a necessary intermediate stage here? Best wishes, Neil -- Neil C Smith Artist : Technologist : Adviser http://neilcsmith.net Praxis LIVE - open-source intermedia development - www.praxislive.org Digital Prisoners - interactive spaces and projections - www.digitalprisoners.co.uk