Not to correct you, Judd, but many aspects of Java have been tried in the past, and failed because the concepts were before their time. Most of Java's novelty is in its object- and internet-oriented language and runtime features. As far as building an operating system around it and chips to run it, that was done, to cite one of probably several instances, with something called the "UCSD p-system" in the late 70's, so named because a lot of the development was done at the University of California at San Diego.
The language was a version of Pascal that was compiled into byte code called "p-code". The operating system and runtime environment were written in Pascal. They were quite portable. All you had to do was implement the so-called "p-code interpreter" (which corresponded pretty exactly with today's byte-code-executing Java Virtual Machine--JVM). Once you did that, the operating system and all the applications just "wrote once, ran anywhere".
Though original implementations of the interpreter were in software (they existed on the Apple II, on the original 1981 IBM PC, and on other microcomputers), one or two hardware implementations of the p-code interpreter (i.e. p-code chips) actually reached the market, and a couple of computers were built around them. They flopped because the concept was too far ahead of the then-current state of microcomputer technology. Somebody may correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Western Digital built one of the first p-code chips. It was slower than molasses. The "p-machine" wasn't designed well enough, and the state of microprocessor design was too primitive.
Also, UCSD Pascal was an ordinary procedural language, and a rather limited one at that, with no concept of objects, networking, security, concurrency, etc. etc. It was designed as a teaching language.
Java has brought "architecture-neutral" byte code up to date at a time when the world and the state of technology are finally ready for it. While it will totally change computing despite what the Microsoft-zombies say, Java is mostly the reappearance of an idea whose time had not come in 1980 but definitely will come in 2000.
Jini's a different story.
Regards,
--QwikSand |
