Message-ID: <3AE6E26E.10AF1F88@csi.com>
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 10:42:55 -0400
From: John Colagioia <JColagioia@csi.com>
Organization: No Conspiracy Here...
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Subject: Re: Sycamora Tree: "Inform is outdated"
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Andrew Plotkin wrote:

> John Colagioia <JColagioia@csi.com> wrote:
> > I believe (and this is my own, personal, semi-biased opinion,
> having looked
> > at both the JVM and the Z-Machine in some detail) that the
> Z-Machine (and, by
> > association, Inform) is far more flexible and extensible than the
> JVM (and,
> > by association, Java--and by further association, anything WRITTEN
> > in Java),
> (such as ZPlet?)

Yes, the ZPlet applet would be less extensible than "a typical
Z-Machine," because it requires the overhead of the JVM to go with it.
Just like the Z-Machine encoded in the Z-Machine encoded in the
Z-Machine...etc. would be less extensible due to the additional layers
of overhead.

That is, they're (probably) equivalent in computational ability (in the
Turing Machine sense, and assuming infinite storage space), but the
Z-Machine has the edge in that it can do more with less space and
power.  It's more of a matter of efficient use of resources than it is
a matter of "computational power."


