> I'm not a TOR developer; however, as an exit node server operator > and system administrator I prefer C and am willing to accept C++. Why it is preferrable over Java or C# on code that isn't that performance-critical like TOR? > C#, being a closed-source proprietary product, could be very > unpopular, .. Eh, there's Mono! > I view Java as Sun's property; ... Yes, but Sun is very open to proposals an architectural discussions as you can see from the JSR-processes. > it's an effort to get closed-source code > to work across hardware platforms. Java isn't necessarily closed-source code - look for example at JBoss. > It's extremely inefficient in terms of computing resources. Yes and no (you have a huge basic footprint, but large apps like app -servers this allotment shrinks in comparison to the rest of the code and data of the app), but that wouldn't matter for a rather small app like a TOR-server. > Licensing is such that a lot of OSs don't come with Java by default. Yes, but there are two Java-Implementations which you can get for free (the Sun- and IBM-implementations). > Java does have some merit for applets on WWW pages, > but that's a separate topic. Java is very good for server-apps. It's more secure than C (because you can't do any buffer-overflows which cause control-path changes) and it's fast for server apps; Apache Tomcat f.e. is faster than the Apache webserver even for static content!!! > Personally, I don't believe in buffer overflows; ... Ok, it's rather a myth like the Santa Claus. > my feeling is this never happens to competent programmers. Look at what a lot of prominent open-source C-projects have buffer -overflows. There are buffer-overflow-exploits for the SSLeay-lib used by TOR, Apache and other apps every few months. > No malice intended, and I know I'm very opinionated. By whom??? *g* |