Support for Java?

[macknight]

I see this repo's backend(seal, palisade) mainly is composed of C++ code. So why isn't this repo be written in Java? What's the considerations for coding languages?

BR

[AlexanderViand]

Most advanaced cryptographic software is written in languages like C / C++ or modern alternatives like Go or Rust because they perform lots of numerical computations requiring low-level optimizations. Java just isn't efficient enough for these applications.

If you're asking why Pyfhel isn't written in Java: It's because Python is a much, much more accessible language/ecosystem and there's huge demand for exposing C/C++ FHE libraries in Python but, afaik, virtually none to do so for Java.

[ibarrond]

Python is, as of today, the default language for Data Science and one of the top languages for the newcomer software developers, with a much flatter learning curve compared to Java. As such, writing Pyfhel in Python aims to:

• Approach complex HE libraries to a much wider audience, lowering the entry barriers for non cryptographers.
• Approach HE to the most used data science tools, so that HE can be used as seemlessly as possible alongside them (numpy, pandas, etc...).

I'll finally add that the most used Python interpreter (CPython) is written in C, and thus there is already a natural relation between Python & C++, strengthened by tools/metalanguages like Cython/pybind11/CFFI/ctypes. Instead, Java runs in the JVM and uses completely different compiler toolchains.