Right, Keith. Want me to dig up the very explicit declaration of war on Java from Microsoft, last summer? Want to tell me what the point of portable byte codes and the JVM mechanism is when you're supposed to rely on native OS calls? Makes no sense to me, but that's the Microsoft position.
The Java based Network Computer has been an enormous disaster because of Sun's foolish desire to see Java as "the great equalizer of platforms" (Goslings exact words). They ended up taking forever to design a cross platform gui toolkit just so they could breath some new life into their dying workstations.
Uh, want to back up that somewhat scattershot attack with some real information or references? The NC hasn't taken off, true, but I think a more rational analysis has to do with what happened to the cost of PC hardware in the past year. It's hard to compete against quite fast hardware that costs maybe $600 or so in parts, at retail (on the web at least). This doesn't mean the idea of portability is bad. At this point, it makes more sense on the server than the desktop.
This is an old subject here. I don't expect Java to take over the world, but a big part of its appeal has always been independence from Microsoft. I don't think Sun is the world's saviour either, but to repeat an old line, if worst comes to worst, from a competitive standpoint, two ubiquitous bloated middleware OS's are better than one. Fans of monopolies will disagree, of course.
Cheers, Dan. |
