Java again

[Tuan Pham <tuan.pham@unsw.edu.au>]

Hello friends

Remember our Java discussion some time ago.
Well, I had a bit of time on the plane so I bought
a book, did some reading, unloaded Java and played
around.

It seems to me that Java is not one but TWO quite
unrelated ideas: a new OO language, and a virtual
machine. The language IMO is an improvement over
C++, but that's not saying much. It's the idea 
of the virtual machine which is really important.

Is there anything to prevent people to write
new compilers for this virtual machine, using languages
that people are ALREADY familiar with (or subsets
thereof) like C, Pascal, FORTRAN, etc.? If people
don't have to learn a new language but still get the
advantages of multiplatform compatibility, then
Java will IMMEDIATELY take off (or at least, the
interpreter part of it).

What it'll mean is I can write a program in, say, Delphi,
and has it run on UNIX, NT, Windows 95, OS2 etc.
via the virtual machine.

Any comment from our computer whizzes?

Cheers
Tuan Pham