Robert/Will - sorry for delay; have been on the road and remote network access problems have meant I have been off-line.
However, as I am a Win95-centric laptop user I have still been working, sans Internet even! Just as well I was not a wholly Java-enabled, Internet-committed, NC user, eh?!
Robert, I must correct you - I do not VISIT London Zoo - I am a resident! I am allowed to roam freely every few weeks to keep my hunting instincts finely honed.
I do not trust the Stags, Bulls or Bears, however. The Chimps are fine and most accurate with market-assessments.
Bill G only licensed Java to give added credibility to Active/X, which is what people are/will develop with increasingly over Java, from what I see within many investment banks. Saying that, even that development scale is nominal.
ANY in-house development is minimal in any commercial organisation nowadays, people - sensibly - buy off the shelf packages, be it for word processing, security, job scheduling, risk analysis, personnel, etc. There will ALWAYS be anorak/geek hackers who play with new s/ware coding toys such as Visual Basic, C++, Java, Active/X, etc ... but how many of them produce professional, globally marketable s/ware applications that do anything? Very few.
Having Web-enabled applications or NC/Java-architected apps is very different. Web-enabled apps makes great sense, as is just another interface and a nice one at that, portable, easy to code, etc. A wholly Java-architected application makes little or no sense currently, except in use within domestic technology apps - WebTV's and the like. Remember, this was Java's roots and raison d'etre to begin with!
No way did DOS put us back 10yrs. From 1979-82 I had to do all my work via a TSO screen and a Wang mini-computer(!) for word-processing/reports, etc - submitting my Cobol jobs to a distant mainframe via JCL coding, and if I asked the operators nicely they would maybe make my jobs run sooner rather than later. Maybe. Then along came PC's and most importantly the killer-app, Lotus 1-2-3.
Bang! For once, 'paradigm shift' was more than a cliche. It was not until 1991 that I could consider a X Windows desktop and then that was hellish complex/expensive; come Windows 3.1 one wondered - unless a CAD/Power user - why one needed any other form of desktop - ie, could run X emulation apps, 3270 emulation, etc, all from Win3.1. I always also kept my Unix dekstop because I needed to run specific local apps, that is the only reason - but for last 2yrs I have only used a Win95 and/or NT laptop and run X from a remote Unix box on the odd occasions required.
NC cost-savings re: TCO are wholly speculative babble. Where are the 2,000 user+ NC environments that have been running for several years to analyse with REAL data?! Honestly, come on, let's not absorb all NC propaganda - there IS a place for NC's, as for X terminals, as for 3270 screens as for Win95, NT, Linux, SCO Xenix, Novell, etc. The dominant desktop will remain Win95/NT, however. Real developers are generally writing for MFC interfaces (Microsoft Foundation Class) and offering Web derivatives as an option at the expense of Motif apps (which are dying away).
WHERE is the Java killer-app? Hello?
Most importantly, 'old fruit' is a British (only?) term of greeting/endearment like 'old bean', 'me old sausage' and 'me old fruitcake', etc ... heaven knows the origins - who said the Brits had to make sense!? I mean, you've seen Monty Python, yes?! QED.
Toodle Pip! Take care, folks ...
Carl |
