Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : All About Sun Microsystems -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Scott McPeely who wrote (8490)	3/24/1998 2:04:00 PM
From: Scott McPeely	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 64865

Courtesy of Java advocacy: ******************************************************************* "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!"