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To: Mary Cluney who wrote (61889)	8/5/1998 4:23:00 PM
From: gnuman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Mary, re: Java You might want to look at some of the applications that have been implemented and are listed at Sun's site. A quick browse seem's to indicate most are customized applications. An interesting list of companies that have already implemented Java. Look's like the Health Care industry likes Java. java.sun.com

To: Mary Cluney who wrote (61889)	8/5/1998 4:49:00 PM
From: Paul Engel	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 186894

Mary - Re: " Do you know of any instances where Java (Script, OS, programming language, anything) has been successfully implemented ..." First and foremost, Java is a programming language - not a magic elixir - a programming language. It is used to write application programs, mostly, although SUN wants to push JAVA for operating systems so that perhaps SUN can monopolize the OS market instead of Microsoft - envy and jealousy go a long way with Scott McGreedy. Java's mantra of a universal language - "Write one, run everywhere" (sometimes referred to as "Write once, Crash Everywhere") - lends itself useful to some applications, notably small routines that run on various web sites. I am encountering more and more of these as time goes on - ON THE WEB/INTERNET. Thus, there does seem to be some level of usefulness for WEB-BASED applications. By virtue of Java being slow (it is an "interpreted language" in its original incarnation), it taxes the processing speed of whatever machine it runs on. Consequently, Java is a BOON for Intel processors ! Paul

To: Mary Cluney who wrote (61889)	8/5/1998 6:24:00 PM
From: Tony Viola	Respond to of 186894

Mary, FWIW, outside of website development stuff, we have one Java-based application in development here. It's a multi-platform browser, in which case any of a number of browsers (PCs, workstations, MAC's, whatever) can interrogate the status of any of several large computers to which they're networked. Or, a person on the browser PC or workstation can look at the internet or play games, whatever. One attractive aspect of Java is its advertised multi-platform capability. So, the browsers can have 95, or NT, or Sun OS, or OS/2 running, and a Java based user interface, for example, is reported to be able to run on top of any of them. Interestingly, re the IBM-Sun Java announcement today, it's the Sun workstation that doesn't run the Java Ap I describe yet (not sure if the WS is running Sun OS or Solaris). Not sure where the problem is either. Outside of what I describe above, I really don't have much visibility into what Java applications are being developed out there. We have a software developer here that mostly hangs out on another Intel thread. That's Ann Janssen. Are you reading, Ann? Tony

To: Mary Cluney who wrote (61889)	8/7/1998 12:50:00 AM
From: Mike Wong	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 186894

I have been a software developer for years, and one things that seems to be the holy grail is a language that runs on everything. Ten years ago it was "C", now its JAVA. Management types all love the ticky marks on a chart that says that their application runs on everything. Ome thing they always do not talk about is performance. Hardware always takes care of that problem, so they say. However, 1. JAVA is not platform independent if the programmer writes platform dependent code, regardless of what language he uses. As a matter of fact, SUN has a bunch of WEB pages that shows how that should be done. 2. I have read that JAVA is anywhere from 3X to 500X slower than "C" depemding on what you are trying to do, and depending on who makes the interpreter. As a matter of fact, I read that many companies that started writing in JAVA (eg Corel), stopped using it, once they found out how slow it was. In addition, there is less functionality than existing languages, not because of any inherent limitation, but because it is less mature. So a program written in JAVA will have less functionality than one written in traditional "C". By the time JAVA moves ahead in functionality, "C", and "C++" will have moved ahead that much more. 3. JAVA is supposed to make software run not only on Intel platforms, but other hardware platforms as well. So I have to take a big degradation in performance to run on a SUN and PowerPC platforms. Hmmm..... What if I am perfectly happy with my Intel platform? 4. JAVA will only run on some given platform if somebody writes an interpreter for it on that platform. So if you have a chip that can run a car engine, you'll need to invest bookoo bucks to get a JAVA interpreter for it before you can program it. IBM and SUN aren't writing any interpreters for them. So it seems a lot faster to write in native assembler or "C". 5. SUN is claiming that Microsoft is deliberately making their JAVA different from the JAVA standard. The key word is "deliberate". Software is so complex that you dont have to be deliberate to have different versions be incompatible. That said, let me get off the technical issues. In software, it is still hype that causes momentum, and momentum solves all technical issues. Once people write many programs with some tool, demand will happen for more tools to solve problems this tool may have. So whether JAVA will succeed or not is dependent less on what technical merits it has, than the hype it generates. McNealy is pretty good at salesmanship. So far, I think the jury is still out whether it will succeed or not.