title: Why was Cassandra written in Java?
body: <p>Question about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra_(database)" rel="noreferrer">Cassandra</a>
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  Why the hell on earth would anybody write a database ENGINE in Java ?<br />
  I can understand why you would want to have a Java interface, but the engine...<br />
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  I was under the impression that there's nothing faster than C/C++, and that a database engine shouldn't be any slower than max speed, and certainly not use garbage collection...
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  Can anybody explain me what possible sense that makes / why Cassandra can be faster than ordinary SQL that runs on C/C++ code ?
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  <b>Edit:</b><br>
  Sorry for the "Why the hell on earth" part, but it really didn't make any sense to me.
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  I neglected to consider that a database, unlike the average garden-varitety user programs, needs to be started only once and then runs for a very long time, and probably also as the only program on the server, which self-evidently makes for an important performance difference.
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  I was more comparing/referencing to a 'disfunctional' (to put it mildly) Java tax program I was using at the time of writing (or rather would have liked to use).
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  In fact, unlike using Java for tax programs, using Java for writing a dedicated server program makes perfect sense.</p>