Re: "Little languages" and type-checking

[Roberto Ierusalimschy <rieru@...>]

On Wed, 6 Feb 2002 RLake@oxfam.org.uk wrote:

> It's certainly true that the JVM can be implemented in a fairly tight
> environment and that Java can be parsed quite easily. I think that what
> makes Java "heavy-weight" is the enormous weight of the standard libraries.
> So there's a warning there somewhere.

Not quite. Several "libraries" in Java need explicit support from the
JVM (e.g. the reflexive API, weak references, class loaders). The
distinction between the "core" and the "libraries" is not very clear,
and a complete JVM implementation is quite a beast by itself.

-- Roberto