Then we'll have the source code.

Post #55,709 by tuberculosis 10/9/02 8:21:15 AM Reply	Then we'll have the source code. I mean, its trivially simple to get the source code to java binaries. The utilities that decompile the source are free and very very good. So if you ship java, you might as well ship source (funny how this isn't widely pointed out by Sun). Given CLR is a similar beast, it must be about the same level of difficulty to recover source from those bytecodes. Although if I know MS, the product will just use C# glue to pull together vast hunks of compiled binary they will optomistically call "components". Its really quite brilliant what Sun and MS have achived with this stuff - please use our languages so we can have your source code. Thanks. I am out of the country for the duration of the Bush administration. Please leave a message and I'll get back to you when democracy returns.
Post #55,723 by jb4 10/9/02 9:17:08 AM Reply	Well, the same sorta thing occurs with VB, don't it? Since VB (or, for that matter, all of MS BASIC language surogates) do the same thing. When to "recompile" them, all you get is a series of jmp instructions to various entry points in the libraries. (Looks a lot like Forth...) I believe your assertion will prove correct for CLR/.NoT, also. (After all, there's no new thinking at Micors~1, except for the possible "how can we extort more money from our 'customers'"...) jb4 "About the use of language: it is impossible to sharpen a pencil with a blunt axe. It is equally vain to try to do it with ten blunt axes instead. " -- Edsger W.Dijkstra (1930 - 2002) (I wish more managers knew that...)
Post #55,837 by ben_tilly 10/9/02 7:06:05 PM Reply	Not always Particularly not if it has been obfuscated by [link\|http://www.preemptive.com/\|these guys]. (Reference and description of their technique [link\|http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20020613.html\|courtesy] of Cringely.) Cheers, Ben "Career politicians are inherently untrustworthy; if it spends its life buzzing around the outhouse, it\ufffds probably a fly." - [link\|http://www.nationalinterest.org/issues/58/Mead.html\|Walter Mead]
Post #55,943 by tuberculosis 10/10/02 8:00:26 AM Reply	There's a big catch Obfuscators change method names. This means method name lookups fail when using dynamic invocation techniques (which I do a lot in non-trivial programming - its what makes OO development really powerful). So any code that works well with obfuscation is going to be 100% statically bound - you might as well write it in C or maybe C++ then. Apple ported WebObjects and their OR Mapping framework to Java then released that. An hour of machine time later and I have the source code. If you look around the code a bit you find extensive use of dynamic invocation - obfuscation would break the code. I think this is typical of the more powerful software. I am out of the country for the duration of the Bush administration. Please leave a message and I'll get back to you when democracy returns.
Post #56,086 by ben_tilly 10/10/02 9:24:01 PM Reply	Good point "Career politicians are inherently untrustworthy; if it spends its life buzzing around the outhouse, it\ufffds probably a fly." - [link\|http://www.nationalinterest.org/issues/58/Mead.html\|Walter Mead]

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