<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 1:05 AM, Tzafrir Cohen <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:tzafrir@cohens.org.il">tzafrir@cohens.org.il</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div><div></div><div class="h5">But it's a system (or user-installed) library. Why would I need to bundle</div></div>
it with my code?<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>You just hit the nail on its head!</div><div>Few years ago, you were correct, harddisks were thin, memory was spare, and if you could use a preinstalled library it'll be a great benefit.</div>
<div>Nowadays, developer time is expensive, QA time is expensive, support time is expensive. Memory is cheap, CPU is cheap, disk space is cheap. So I'd rather include another Megabyte of library the user already have, than make building and supporting my software more complicated=more expensive.</div>
<div><br></div><div>As mentioned, Mathworks would rather include a compatible JVM with matlab, then use the one availible on the computer. The cost of that is miniscule (another 20Mb on the disk, maybe a bit more memory, assuming the user is using another JVM software simultaneously), and even if the only thing it'll save you is the support call "it says JRE 1.2 is not supported, please upgrade. How do I do that?", it probably well worth it, not to mention the reduced cost of testing, the freedom of using more advanced API, etc etc. This is not always true, but I think that nowadays adding a library of 100Kb to almost any software, <b>always</b> costs less than maintaining it with ifdefs.</div>
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