4 ms·

They did spend a fortune marketing Java when Smalltalk was poised to be THE new enterprise language.

• pacaro 10y ago
  I remember all too well. Sun had mindshare at the time too, in a way that the far bigger IBM didn't. I'm just glad none of the 4GLs won
  • throwaway7645 10y ago
    I'll cede my past reading of internet blog articles describing a time I was pooping in diapers to your actual real-world experience :) 2 questions..why did the smaller Sun have more mindshare and what were the 4GLs? I might not be familiar with the term.
    • pacaro 10y ago
      The Fourth Generation Languages where supposed to take over from the Third Generation Languages (C, C++, Pascal, Fortran, COBOL etc.) for higher level work (like business computing) Many have been successful within niches, but Java was a brand new 3GL at a time when a lot of industry focus was on 4GLs. I think sun had mindshare because they understood the nascent internet much better. From my perspective it was the first time I had seen a marketing effort of that scale behind a programming language. Sun also supported SunSITE which was pretty much the best place to find FOSS at the time [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth-generation_programming_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth-generation_programming_...
      • throwaway7645 10y ago
        Interesting thanks!