"Benoit Cerrina" <benoit.cerrina / writeme.com> wrote: >didn't check but it probably is a memory hog. This has been a big problem >with java and it leads to big startup times, for short programs which >don't do much this is always penalizing: Well, the startup times have nothing to do with Java's hunger for memory but with the (too complex) class file format and the requirement that Java has to verify them. Loading class files is the problem here. And even a non-GUI trivial java application has to load 237 classes (in 1.4). As an example, my Squeak Smalltalk system (16 MB of object size, perhaps twice as much in memory) comes up in less than 3 seconds on my machine. Smalltalk traditionally stores all objects in a so called virtual image file, which is then memory-mapped into the RAM and relocated. bye -- Stefan Matthias Aust \/ Truth Until Paradox