Courtesy of Java advocacy:
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"There was a dream that somehow Java coupled with the new exciting
Netscape browser, back in '95, that OSes, especially Windows was
obsolete.
Win32 was encroaching on the enterprise server markets. So this Java
cult arose, chant-dancing with this magic Java potion to ward off the
evil "shrink-wrapped" intruders.
The assumption was, and is, that apps make the difference. So WORA
(Write once run anywhere) would solve this problem. Now there is this
left over belief, even though it is generally conceded, and sometimes
asserted, depending on the context, that the basic Java language is
fixed (while Java the theme park continues to expand), and it is clear
that Java by itself is not suited for writing apps.
Some of these now quaint notions, such as the idea that the browser
was going to replace the OS (despite Apple's failure to get out its
next generation OS, nearly killing the company), have continued on
such that the M$ Antitrust judge bought this one that Netscape was the
new OS.
Actually, it was known back after a big discussion in the industry,
back in '95, that the browser was obsolete, being expected to be
incorporated into the OS (all of Marc's two-day writing of
mainframe-terminal network file retrieval code notwithstanding).
After a flurry of expected browsers, it was widely conceded that the
browser would not have a distinct existence on any OS after a certain
time, and interest in new browsers disappeared. Netscape, is basically
in the position of Novell, and the minicomputer before them, ie their
technologies have been subsumed by progress.
Others insist Java is the all purpose OS/language/platform,etc. (I can
remember when there was strenuous objection to calling Java a
platform). This is problematic when it is realized that OO is being
replaced by componentized systems like COM, where all else but the
interface is being separated out in the interest of the replaceable
software part.
Java is the opposite approach--to put all else in so as to run a
device. So now a Java-centric componentized system has to be built
around Java, JavaBeans. We know Java is not too good at creating user
interfaces, as well as apps, unless JavaBeans is going to provide the
infrastructure, and still use a VM.
So now Java has turned to the server as the next frontier. On the
server, Java is competing with COM's so-called "third wave," or
transaction and other services. Java is morphing into Enterprise Java
Beans for this attempt at a beachhead.
Here Java can't complain about M$, because this is the heart of the
enterprise server territory--home base of the ABM alliance. Yet EJB
is in a draft spec stage, and NT5 has all the goodies built in and due
out next year.
And if M$ itself ports COM cross-platform in order to sell
BackOffice--its latest money tree bonanza., and offers enterprise
customers control of software specs through industry standard
interfaces, Java may be reduced to creating business components
written for COM, even tho to make sure they are redundantly
cross-platform, M$ will not be able to extend Java to work better with
COM, as some have said, due to the inevitable 100% Pure Java uprising.
So the cross-platform dream may actually be realized. Java business
components running in COM ported to Solaris. What a vision!" |
