Wicked Cool Java

She Sells C Cells: Simulating a Cell Matrix in Java

Perhaps you've heard the old programmer's joke: "How many programmers does it take to change a light bulb?" Of course, by now everyone should know that it's a hardware problem and not to bother the programmers with it! Joking aside, as programmers we typically think of the hardware as being separate from the software. This is especially true with Java, where our programs are cross-platform and can run in a wide variety of systems. We don't normally write anything differently for a Unix system than for a Windows system, or for a Pentium versus a PowerPC. But there are also advantages to writing code tailored to a particular type of hardware—higher performance and access to special features ...