RE: Defining Java Classes in Kawa

["Dominique Boucher" <dominique dot boucher at nuecho dot com>]

> IMHO you should not do that at all unless:
> 
> 1. You already have a LOT of pure scheme code which you want to run on 
> Java virtual machine.
> 2. The interface to existing Java classes is quite narrow and well 
> defined.
> 
> Otherwise if you just think just scheme would make Java programming 
> simplier, you are probably wrong. In general, use Java framework to 
> write java programs. Writing Java programs in scheme is possible, but 
> just not inconvenient.

Maybe I don't understand your point here, but let me disagree completely.
Kawa does not make programming in Java simpler, it makes programming on top
of the JVM a LOT more fun (at least for those of us who happen to know
Scheme well), while interfacing with existing Java code easily.

And yes, you can write serious programs in Kawa Scheme, for real businesses.
Most of my programming is done in Kawa Scheme right now, not small
peripheral tools, but real code that runs in complex application servers for
some financial institutions. And we wrote most of the code from scratch, we
did not reuse some pure Scheme code. Scheme makes us much more productive
and, since it's compiled to JVM bytecode, performances are really good.

Just my 2 cents.

Dominique Boucher
Lead Developer
NuEcho Inc.