Ahem. Intriguing. De toekomst van

Ahem. Intriguing. De toekomst van ColdFusion en JRun, met onder meer het volgend bijzonder interessant stukje:

Tim: Does your compiler emit byte code directly from ColdFusion CFML, or do you convert it to Java and then pass to the compiler?

Edwin: The current version produces Java source code, compiles it, and we load the byte code back.

Tim: So aside from the debugging it would technically be easy to embed Java code in the CFML?

Edwin: Well, it would just parse right through. But it would be difficult to provide good error reporting. We would have some things you could do that would break the embedded Java code. We could have code that happened to generate the same variable name as something you wrote. So suddenly you use the variable and bam, you get some error message that we can?t explain.
The other thing is that in future versions we most likely won?t be generating Java source at all.

Tim: So you will go directly to byte code?

Edwin: Hypothetically, at some point we may decide to run on something other than a JVM. Again, it doesn?t make much sense to have Java source in there and then take it out again later. So we took the purist route.

Tim: Are you hinting at the possibility of compiling to MSIL as an option?

Edwin: I?m not hinting that we?re going to do it, but … we had a design decision to make. We said, well, we can?t say we?re not going to do it. So we want to leave our options open.

Tim: That would fix people?s COM problems.

Edwin: Yes, COM would definitely work better.

“Edwin” is Software Architect bij Macromedia.