Re: From Perl to Java

I have been working with a dozen of languages prior to Perl and occasionally I jump back Java when the need arises, i.e. I have to make sense out of some piece of code. It is used a lot in the place I work, not only for web- or fat clients, also for number crunching, i.e. processing large volumes of data.

You will find out that Java is completely different. True Perl has support for OO but you can also write non-OO programs and/or mix it. Java is a full OO language; there is no way around it. You have got to start to think OO. It is best not to compare both languages too much as they are completely different.

Java is fairly easy to learn, the syntax is not too difficult. The performance, in general, is pretty good. With support form companies like SUN, IBM, HP etc. there is a lot of stuff available (good library support and frameworks). A good starting point is the SUN website http://java.sun.com/. They have many good tutorials.

I would advice to start with Java SE (Standard Edition) and later shift, if necessary, to Java EE (the Enterprise Edition: everything but the kitchen sink). There is also a Java version for small devices like phones: Jave ME (the Micro Editon). I never liked the fat clients too much (AWT, Swing) and preferred the thin clients (Servlets, JSPs etc.). Java offers excellent support for XML, it is said Java and XML is like a happy marriage :-)

Some points on the downside of Java

Java is not so good in communication with the OS. Thinks that take a few lines of code in Perl might be several/many pages in Java or simply impossible.
Support for regular expressions is (of course) not as good as in Perl.
In general you need tons of memory, the more the better. The footprint of Java is big. For example, the “Hello World” program, just a few lines of code, triggers the creation of a huge amount of classes!

I have many Java tutorials; I can send you a few if you want.

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