Not to contradict Xavier, because in essence, he is right -- Caml is
indeed far faster than Java on any realistic applications in almost
any area I have ever bothered to try -- but the story as to Java is
actually rather complicated.

(1) different JDKs exhibit remarkably different results on real-world
examples, as their implementors have different backgrounds.  I
remember that the first JITs all did great on integer and
floating-point loops, and that was _it_ -- the rest of the time, they
were often slower than just a hack like inlining interpreter
code-segments.  This is just a human thing.

(2) different JDKs from different manufacturers exhibit different
behaviours.  E.g., I find that the Sunsoft JDKs on Solaris are a lot
faster than the Javasoft JDKs on Solaris.  I also find (no, I'm not
shilling for IBM) that IBM's JDK on Linux is a lot faster than
Javasoft's.  There are, again, social issues involved here, which I am
not sure I am at liberty to discuss.

That said, by and large I find that when you don't go near issues of
allocation and interprocedural optimization, Java is and can be as
fast as Caml.  *However*, when you _do_ go near those things, e.g. if
you do anything I/O or string-processing-intensive, well,

  go get a rocking chair, 'cos you're gonna have a looong wait.

--chet--

P.S. Or get thee to a caml and get it done.  *grin*
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