After 4 happy years of coding in compiled languages of C and C++, the time has come to make a transition to the interpreted language of Java. The change is more of an imposed one than desired. And I am not getting drawn into the subject of compilers vs. interpretors, mainly because of my lack of experience with the latter category.
Starting the next week, I shall join the FICO, Bangalore. I am quite excited about the oppurtunity as I have received excellant inputs from my seniors and their friends regarding the kind of work that people do over there. Also I need a change from an university-like environment.
Now at Fair Isaac, apparently, people prefer Java over C++. Navin sir said that there are a group of people using C++, but the bulk of libraries and code is in Java. So it will be easier if I switch over to Java than C++, though it shouldn’t be a lot tougher sticking with it. And after giving it a thought, I have decided to learn Java. Learning a new programming language is all about going through its libraries and adapting them. It should be an easy enough task. Also since I have a basic understanding of objects, classes, inheritance and theior abstract nature, it should be easy enough.
The only thing I shall miss are the pointers. Sadly Java does not allow pointer access to programmers like the C does. I do not know the reason behind this restriction, but it sure makes me sad. Of late, most of my variables were being referenced by address and I was really getting into the habbit of using pointers. They make complicated things so easy to manage.
And then another thing is the usage of WIndows. I would really prefer Ubuntu for coding. I do not thing there should be any problem with using ubuntu. I just do not want to START to TURN OFF windows 
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Umm, Java an interpreted language? Technically, maybe you need to clarify that. “Compiled to bytecode, and then interpreted”, isn’t it?
You’ll hate Java for the class hierarchy the libraries have, and ROFL at the stack trace it gives during exceptions. And for the huge memory footprint. And, (phew), for the bad performance.
Yeah, you could use Java on Linux, but somehow, performance sucks. NetBeans, *and* Eclipse are somehow much faster on Windows compared to Linux.
Java is quite smart that it passes basic data types by value, and classes by reference. And, the “new” keyword doesn’t return a pointer. (The mistakes I made mixing up C++/Java, sleepy-headed me
)
But sigh, you’ll have to Start to Shutdown.
Have fun at FI