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> As for Unix - it's the Java of operating systems. What do you mean by this? IMHO Java's goal was ubiquitous mediocrity: a cross-platform VM for a language s
by username223 11y ago
> As for Unix - it's the Java of operating systems.
What do you mean by this? IMHO Java's goal was ubiquitous mediocrity: a cross-platform VM for a language suitable for large teams of interchangeable workers. We had Lisp operating systems (and hardware) back in the day, and it didn't catch on.
- beat 11y agoI don't think Java actually started that way. It was a lab experiment gone rogue, starting as a way of shoehorning complex application code into the very primitive web browsers of the mid-late 1990s. That never really caught on, but it was fashionable enough for Sun to invest in developing JEE as a way to build sophisticated server-side apps. Back then, we were hacking apps together with CGI and server-side includes - so primitive, so insecure. IBM took to the field with Sun and started selling Websphere so management could feel better spending millions on licenses rather than using that crazy open source stuff, and it all rolled from there.