If the speed of the chip alone determined the success of a platform, the Alpha version of NT would be kicking butt right now instead of doing essentially nothing. The issue is not performance, performance, performance; it's applications, applications, applications.
Well, you're right there. And therefore a fundamental problem with Sun.
Say what you will about scalability and reliability etc, one thing that Windows has going for it is applications. Hundreds of thousands of them. All of them, most almost all of the time, work on one Windows box and the next.
The problem with the UNIX industry was there were so many players with their own flavours of UNIX. If you weren't a leading contender then your platform was second tier or perhaps not supported at all, but the *application* vendor.
So Sun sought to become a development tool vendor, and therefore Java. Guess who's strategy that was originally? Microsoft. Yes, indeedy. A brilliant plan. First C - sure there was some competition - like Borland C and OWL; but it was still on Windows. And if you control the tools, then you can direct which platform people write to.
I don't think Sun had altrustic intentions in mind when they thunk up Java. Nope, they wanted to attack the market with a tried and true Microsoft strategy.
And COM? DCOM? Unlike other posters I don't think Microsoft intentionally decided to architect an inferior object mechanism. They are stuck with some legacies, and I'm sure in time they'll deal with them.
In the meantime, I'll components of a solution on the platform that makes the most sense. If I'm not rolling out an app suited for dumb / semi intelligent terminals (like banking and airlines) where the end user doesn't need good office productivity tools, then I'd consider Java and NC's etc.
Otherwise, Windows it is. Quick poll here? How many posters are accessing this forum with a Windows-based browser? How many of you think you could fire up a UNIX box to do the same?
Java in and of itself does not make it easier for non-technical people to get things done.
JMO |
