David Dieterle

When looking for a language to modernize legacy applications, Java is a strong and viable contender. It offers portability, maintainability, extensibility, and cost effectiveness. However, for some heavy algorithmic time-critical scientific applications, Java may not be an engineer's first choice for modernization. Many algorithmic-intensive scientific applications require bit-wise manipulations for which Java has no real clean solution. This is all true, but with a little creativity, Java can handle bit-wise manipulations. There is no Java bit class. Java handles bit-wise comparisons and shifting, but currently there's no Java class that handles a native bit type. The closest native type in size is a Boolean. Varied sized data fields require a container that can handle various size data fields and still treat the data fields as objects. Java does have a BitSet cl... (more)