5 ms·
Why Java Is Doomed to Fail (1997)
- mindcrime 10y agoInterestingly enough, I think the author TFA was right about a lot more than he was wrong about. Yes, very few people would say that Java "failed" in the overall sense, but in terms of not making much money for Sun... well, he seems to have nailed that big-time. For as popular as Java has been over the years, all you ever heard about was how Sun never actually profited much from it. I think they did make some money licensing the mobile Java stuff there for a while, but not much more than that, unless they kept it really secret. OTOH, the stuff about Microsoft "borging" Java... well, the author was prescient in terms of predicting that they would try. It just worked out that Sun was able (though a lawsuit among other things) to block Microsoft's efforts to borg Java.
- enkiv2 10y agoThe strangest thing about this essay is the assumption that the only function of Java is to financially "save" Sun. The second strangest thing about this essay is that the author, even as late as 1997, considered both Java and Windows to be technically interesting and advanced.