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I don’t follow Java too closely these days as I haven’t worked in it in years. Pretty wild that Applets are now removed. I still remember the wonder of being ab

I don’t follow Java too closely these days as I haven’t worked in it in years. Pretty wild that Applets are now removed. I still remember the wonder of being able to build a compiled application that could run from command line or in the browser. RIP Applets, long live Java :)

ChuckMcM 8y ago
With the removal of applets I feel like the last of the Java that helped build is gone. The process of working on the development of, and then watching the weaponizing of Java is one of the more memorable chapters in my career. For those who weren't there to remember, the concept of Applets, or applications that ran in a web browser and didn't need an operating system to run, was apparently terrifying to Microsoft. Sun's senior management exploited that terror blunt the invasion of Windows desktops in Sun's enterprise accounts. So many complex technical issues resolved with the test "will it scare/attenuate Microsoft?" rather than "Is this what the language/system should be?" [1] https://stuff.mit.edu/afs/sipb/user/marc/hotjava/doc/people.html https://stuff.mit.edu/afs/sipb/user/marc/hotjava/doc/people....
- nineteen999 8y ago
  > applications that ran in a web browser and didn't need an operating system to run Huh? The web browser/JVM certainly needed an operating system to run, and by extension the applets did too.
  - twic 8y ago
    I think the point is that they weren't tied to a particular operating system. If someone wrote an application as an applet, they could sell it to customers who had Windows, or who had Solaris. They could, to coin a phrase, write once, run anywhere.
    - nineteen999 8y ago
      As long as "anywhere" meant Windows and Solaris. There were a lot more commercial operating systems in those days (eg. Tru64, SCO, HP-UX, OpenVMS, AIX, Linux, QNX, Classic MacOS etc), many or most of which didn't get a JVM/JRE until much later. I wonder if any significant amount of money was ever made from selling Java applets. I can't remember the last time I saw one in the wild.
      - rsynnott 8y ago
        Java 1.0 was available for MacOS. But yeah, platform support wasn’t great for a while.
        nineteen999 8y ago
        After 1.0 even the Mac lagged pretty significantly. http://www.javaworld.com/jw-07-1997/jw-07-javamac.html http://www.javaworld.com/jw-07-1997/jw-07-javamac.html
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Not on JavaOS and bare metal JVMs, where the VM is the OS.
    - nineteen999 8y ago
      JavaOS was DOA and end-of-lifed in 1999. Superseded by J2ME, which didn't support applets, as least not without an application-specific loader, or within a web browser AFAIK. I'm pretty sure it's safe to say that Java applets on bare metal never took off. As has been pointed out in another response, "running Java applets without an OS or browser" was not exactly the intent of the OP's words in any instance.
      - pjmlp 8y ago
        You are missing the embedded and factory automation market, blu ray players, cable TV boxes, where plenty of JVM vendors are happily selling bare metal JVMs. The ones that never had any issue with either Sun or Oracle, because they always played by the license rules.
        nineteen999 8y ago
        I'm not missing anything. You can keep moving the goal posts all you want. The conversation was about applets, running in a web browser, and how a browser AND the the JVM's available at Java's release, did or didn't require an operating system to run. Embedded Java is not "applets". Nobody is denying that there is billions of devices running client side Java code. https://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2443810/oracle-signals-the-end-of-java-applet-support-for-browsers https://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2443810/oracle-signals-the-e...
        pjmlp 8y ago
        > The web browser/JVM certainly needed an operating system to run, and by extension the applets did too. Not moving goal post at all "JVM certainly needed an operating system to run".
- duckduckgone 8y ago
  I remember AWT&Swing from the 1.0-1.2 days. heck, I got an A for some project at DeAnza that was an applet for something, maybe a chess board. Circa 1997 I put a JRE on a brandable installer CD for a client that used JNI to call Win32 API to write Windows registry entries, make shortcuts and a desktop shortcut basically as an "InstallAnywhere" before it existed. A couple of years later, I wrote a Java to MIPS direct compiler for a compiler course... in both C++90 and Java 1.3.
  - sixstringtheory 8y ago
    Ah yes, I believe I have a Knight’s tour solver written in Swing. Not sure I ever fully mastered GridBagLayout! Now to convert that to Autolayout and Swift...
    - ta468757 8y ago
      GridBagLayout I actually grew to love, it has perfect control of GUI elements imo. The implementation is nasty, but I miss it still.
- lokedhs 8y ago
  I was working for Sun during those days. They used to have this vision that everything would be written in Java. They threw everything at that wall, and ran with the ones that stuck. I've been in presentations showing all kinds of things being rewritten in Java just because apparently that was something that needed to be done. I particularly remembers seeing a NIS (YP) server and and NFS server in Java. When I asked why they did that, and particularly why they didn't go for NIS+ (which was many years old at the time) or event LDAP, they had no answer.
  - ChuckMcM 8y ago
    Java wasn't really good at being a server early on, it was very much 'client side.' It would have been an interesting exercise for me to implement NIS+ in it :-)
  - sixstringtheory 8y ago
    I remember that being pushed hard in college... it would power washing machines, refrigerators etc.
jjordan 8y ago
It's coming back via WebAssembly.
- vbezhenar 8y ago
  WebAssembly can't do anything JavaScript can't do. Applets on the other hand have full access to computer and hardware. The only thing WebAssembly does better is performance and even that is questionable.
  - lmz 8y ago
    Not any random applet, that's where the security manager comes in (in theory anyway).
  - twic 8y ago
    Applets were heavily sandboxed. I think the only substantial things they could do that JavaScript can't were start threads and open TCP sockets (although still only to their origin host?). WebAssembly seems like a very good comparison.
    - johannes1234321 8y ago
      Yes they were sandboxed, but could request the user to approve further system access.
    - vbezhenar 8y ago
      Signed applets could do anything, I wrote one myself to communicate with USB device.
  - ktpsns 8y ago
    The java applet's possibility to gently jump over the sandbox fence was probably the most terrifying feature of java which probably put Java on an equal footing as Adobe Flash, i.e. a potentially dangerous browser extension which requires regular updates (Flash and Java updaters were omnipresent in the Microsoft Windows tray in these days, isn't it?) and which the average user does not understand. That's a pity because both Adobe Flash as well as Java Applets were interesting pieces of software for certain applications. However, due to their availablity they were abused anywhere. I remember some 90s DHTML sites having one Java applet per navigation bar button just because the effect was looking nicely. This was the same kind of bloat we experience with huge JavaScript libraries today. Probably the browser plugins were even easier to control (i.e. disable as a user) as an ubiquitous JavaScript is :-/

ChuckMcM 8y ago

With the removal of applets I feel like the last of the Java that helped build is gone. The process of working on the development of, and then watching the weaponizing of Java is one of the more memorable chapters in my career. For those who weren't there to remember, the concept of Applets, or applications that ran in a web browser and didn't need an operating system to run, was apparently terrifying to Microsoft. Sun's senior management exploited that terror blunt the invasion of Windows desktops in Sun's enterprise accounts. So many complex technical issues resolved with the test "will it scare/attenuate Microsoft?" rather than "Is this what the language/system should be?" [1] https://stuff.mit.edu/afs/sipb/user/marc/hotjava/doc/people.html https://stuff.mit.edu/afs/sipb/user/marc/hotjava/doc/people....

nineteen999 8y ago
> applications that ran in a web browser and didn't need an operating system to run Huh? The web browser/JVM certainly needed an operating system to run, and by extension the applets did too.
- twic 8y ago
  I think the point is that they weren't tied to a particular operating system. If someone wrote an application as an applet, they could sell it to customers who had Windows, or who had Solaris. They could, to coin a phrase, write once, run anywhere.
  - nineteen999 8y ago
    As long as "anywhere" meant Windows and Solaris. There were a lot more commercial operating systems in those days (eg. Tru64, SCO, HP-UX, OpenVMS, AIX, Linux, QNX, Classic MacOS etc), many or most of which didn't get a JVM/JRE until much later. I wonder if any significant amount of money was ever made from selling Java applets. I can't remember the last time I saw one in the wild.
    - rsynnott 8y ago
      Java 1.0 was available for MacOS. But yeah, platform support wasn’t great for a while.
      - nineteen999 8y ago
        After 1.0 even the Mac lagged pretty significantly. http://www.javaworld.com/jw-07-1997/jw-07-javamac.html http://www.javaworld.com/jw-07-1997/jw-07-javamac.html
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Not on JavaOS and bare metal JVMs, where the VM is the OS.
  - nineteen999 8y ago
    JavaOS was DOA and end-of-lifed in 1999. Superseded by J2ME, which didn't support applets, as least not without an application-specific loader, or within a web browser AFAIK. I'm pretty sure it's safe to say that Java applets on bare metal never took off. As has been pointed out in another response, "running Java applets without an OS or browser" was not exactly the intent of the OP's words in any instance.
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      You are missing the embedded and factory automation market, blu ray players, cable TV boxes, where plenty of JVM vendors are happily selling bare metal JVMs. The ones that never had any issue with either Sun or Oracle, because they always played by the license rules.
      - nineteen999 8y ago
        I'm not missing anything. You can keep moving the goal posts all you want. The conversation was about applets, running in a web browser, and how a browser AND the the JVM's available at Java's release, did or didn't require an operating system to run. Embedded Java is not "applets". Nobody is denying that there is billions of devices running client side Java code. https://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2443810/oracle-signals-the-end-of-java-applet-support-for-browsers https://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2443810/oracle-signals-the-e...
        pjmlp 8y ago
        > The web browser/JVM certainly needed an operating system to run, and by extension the applets did too. Not moving goal post at all "JVM certainly needed an operating system to run".
duckduckgone 8y ago
I remember AWT&Swing from the 1.0-1.2 days. heck, I got an A for some project at DeAnza that was an applet for something, maybe a chess board. Circa 1997 I put a JRE on a brandable installer CD for a client that used JNI to call Win32 API to write Windows registry entries, make shortcuts and a desktop shortcut basically as an "InstallAnywhere" before it existed. A couple of years later, I wrote a Java to MIPS direct compiler for a compiler course... in both C++90 and Java 1.3.
- sixstringtheory 8y ago
  Ah yes, I believe I have a Knight’s tour solver written in Swing. Not sure I ever fully mastered GridBagLayout! Now to convert that to Autolayout and Swift...
  - ta468757 8y ago
    GridBagLayout I actually grew to love, it has perfect control of GUI elements imo. The implementation is nasty, but I miss it still.
lokedhs 8y ago
I was working for Sun during those days. They used to have this vision that everything would be written in Java. They threw everything at that wall, and ran with the ones that stuck. I've been in presentations showing all kinds of things being rewritten in Java just because apparently that was something that needed to be done. I particularly remembers seeing a NIS (YP) server and and NFS server in Java. When I asked why they did that, and particularly why they didn't go for NIS+ (which was many years old at the time) or event LDAP, they had no answer.
- ChuckMcM 8y ago
  Java wasn't really good at being a server early on, it was very much 'client side.' It would have been an interesting exercise for me to implement NIS+ in it :-)
- sixstringtheory 8y ago
  I remember that being pushed hard in college... it would power washing machines, refrigerators etc.

jjordan 8y ago

It's coming back via WebAssembly.

vbezhenar 8y ago
WebAssembly can't do anything JavaScript can't do. Applets on the other hand have full access to computer and hardware. The only thing WebAssembly does better is performance and even that is questionable.
- lmz 8y ago
  Not any random applet, that's where the security manager comes in (in theory anyway).
- twic 8y ago
  Applets were heavily sandboxed. I think the only substantial things they could do that JavaScript can't were start threads and open TCP sockets (although still only to their origin host?). WebAssembly seems like a very good comparison.
  - johannes1234321 8y ago
    Yes they were sandboxed, but could request the user to approve further system access.
  - vbezhenar 8y ago
    Signed applets could do anything, I wrote one myself to communicate with USB device.
- ktpsns 8y ago
  The java applet's possibility to gently jump over the sandbox fence was probably the most terrifying feature of java which probably put Java on an equal footing as Adobe Flash, i.e. a potentially dangerous browser extension which requires regular updates (Flash and Java updaters were omnipresent in the Microsoft Windows tray in these days, isn't it?) and which the average user does not understand. That's a pity because both Adobe Flash as well as Java Applets were interesting pieces of software for certain applications. However, due to their availablity they were abused anywhere. I remember some 90s DHTML sites having one Java applet per navigation bar button just because the effect was looking nicely. This was the same kind of bloat we experience with huge JavaScript libraries today. Probably the browser plugins were even easier to control (i.e. disable as a user) as an ubiquitous JavaScript is :-/