7 ms·

Was Java that big on the Mac? Neither Windows nor most Linux distros ship with a Java runtime.

by krelian 16y ago

masklinn 16y ago
It was a very long time ago (> half a decade, at one point it was almost on par with Obj-C as far as runtime-favoritism goes). These days, it's mostly fallen by the wayside
patio11 16y ago
Windows may not, but most Windows computers do, because manufacturers put it there. This used to save me a lot of pain.
Corrado 16y ago
Yes, at one point Apple made a big deal about Java being a "primary" language on the OS X platform. It had proper Coca bindings, Mac like look & feel, etc. Steve hawked it in one of the early OS X keynotes as being the future of the Mac platform. An easy language for all those that were confused by Objective-C. Several years ago Apple reversed their position on Java and have been ignoring it ever since. This is merely the last act in the Java play at Apple. Goodnight sweet prince!
- rbanffy 16y ago
  > Steve hawked it in one of the early OS X keynotes as being the future of the Mac platform That's standard practice. You make it easy to port apps to your platform until you gain traction and until your exclusive technologies do, then make it hard to port away from your platform by phasing out technologies that would enable that. A Java app that runs fine on OSX but that's easy to port to (or directly run on) Windows or Linux does Apple no good while an application written in Objective-C depending on the latest *Kit stuff locks both developer and user into Apple's walled garden. Their move from GCC to clang is no coincidence.
  - masklinn 16y ago
    > Their move from GCC to clang is no coincidence. Erm... what? Clang has already been ported to Windows (and other platforms). Their move from GCC to clang comes from GCC sucking goat's balls at error reporting and being integrated into an IDE. You might want to note Apple produces an IDE so that's kind-of a big deal for them, and a big reason for the existence of LLVM and related technologies (Clang, LLDB, ...) is very much that they can be used as libraries and easily integrated into tools. Seriously, you should be careful, your anti-apple-tag shows a bit too heavily in that comment.
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      Clang/LLVM is BSD while GCC is GPL. That means Apple can extend them all they want without ever giving you, or their competition, any sources. If they ever perceive a threat from their competition, Clang/LLVM provides a lot more maneuvering space than GCC ever would. And yes, GCC is a very hard thing to integrate into tools and it's that way by design.
      - lemming 16y ago
        And yes, GCC is a very hard thing to integrate into tools and it's that way by design. Any reference for that claim? This would seem to be an absurd design decision. It's more work to design this way but the benefits are enormous.
        Someone 16y ago
        http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/GCC_Plugins http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/GCC_Plugins gives some background.
        Hemospectrum 16y ago
        GCC has always been a centerpiece in the plan for the "viralization" of the GPL, and support for its role in this plan has always driven design decisions in GCC. This policy has caused a lot of headaches even just within the free software community (eg. http://lwn.net/Articles/343608/ http://lwn.net/Articles/343608/). I can't find a citation for this at the moment, but RMS has said on several occasions that GCC has to be difficult to integrate into other tools just for the sake of pushing the GPL. For example, this was his explanation for why improvements to GCC's intermediate representation formats (GIMPLE and friends) were refused for a long time.
- protomyth 16y ago
  Apple's "proper Coca bindings" was probably an overstatement. It had a binding that didn't really work well and was incomplete due to the dynamic nature of Objective-C and the lack of it on Java.
buster 16y ago
Still it is installed on pretty much every machine i know, be it server, desktop, windows or linux. Like Flash it is most of the time one of the first 3rd party tool to be installed, i guess..
Samuel_Michon 16y ago
"Was Java that big on the Mac?" The precursor to Mac OS X, Rhapsody, had three environments, treated as equals: classic MacOS, Java, and OPENSTEP. Schematics here: http://macguild.org/rhapsody.html http://macguild.org/rhapsody.html Obviously, OPENSTEP/Yellow Box/Cocoa won out.
Naga 16y ago
Windows and Linux don't ship with Java because they depend on Sun to produce the runtime. Apple produces it for OS X.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

Was Java that big on the Mac? Neither Windows nor most Linux distros ship with a Java runtime.

by krelian 16y ago

Was Java that big on the Mac? Neither Windows nor most Linux distros ship with a Java runtime.

It was a very long time ago (> half a decade, at one point it was almost on par with Obj-C as far as runtime-favoritism goes). These days, it's mostly fallen by the wayside

patio11 16y ago

Windows may not, but most Windows computers do, because manufacturers put it there. This used to save me a lot of pain.

Corrado 16y ago

Yes, at one point Apple made a big deal about Java being a "primary" language on the OS X platform. It had proper Coca bindings, Mac like look & feel, etc. Steve hawked it in one of the early OS X keynotes as being the future of the Mac platform. An easy language for all those that were confused by Objective-C. Several years ago Apple reversed their position on Java and have been ignoring it ever since. This is merely the last act in the Java play at Apple. Goodnight sweet prince!

rbanffy 16y ago
> Steve hawked it in one of the early OS X keynotes as being the future of the Mac platform That's standard practice. You make it easy to port apps to your platform until you gain traction and until your exclusive technologies do, then make it hard to port away from your platform by phasing out technologies that would enable that. A Java app that runs fine on OSX but that's easy to port to (or directly run on) Windows or Linux does Apple no good while an application written in Objective-C depending on the latest *Kit stuff locks both developer and user into Apple's walled garden. Their move from GCC to clang is no coincidence.
- masklinn 16y ago
  > Their move from GCC to clang is no coincidence. Erm... what? Clang has already been ported to Windows (and other platforms). Their move from GCC to clang comes from GCC sucking goat's balls at error reporting and being integrated into an IDE. You might want to note Apple produces an IDE so that's kind-of a big deal for them, and a big reason for the existence of LLVM and related technologies (Clang, LLDB, ...) is very much that they can be used as libraries and easily integrated into tools. Seriously, you should be careful, your anti-apple-tag shows a bit too heavily in that comment.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    Clang/LLVM is BSD while GCC is GPL. That means Apple can extend them all they want without ever giving you, or their competition, any sources. If they ever perceive a threat from their competition, Clang/LLVM provides a lot more maneuvering space than GCC ever would. And yes, GCC is a very hard thing to integrate into tools and it's that way by design.
    - lemming 16y ago
      And yes, GCC is a very hard thing to integrate into tools and it's that way by design. Any reference for that claim? This would seem to be an absurd design decision. It's more work to design this way but the benefits are enormous.
      - Someone 16y ago
        http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/GCC_Plugins http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/GCC_Plugins gives some background.
      - Hemospectrum 16y ago
        GCC has always been a centerpiece in the plan for the "viralization" of the GPL, and support for its role in this plan has always driven design decisions in GCC. This policy has caused a lot of headaches even just within the free software community (eg. http://lwn.net/Articles/343608/ http://lwn.net/Articles/343608/). I can't find a citation for this at the moment, but RMS has said on several occasions that GCC has to be difficult to integrate into other tools just for the sake of pushing the GPL. For example, this was his explanation for why improvements to GCC's intermediate representation formats (GIMPLE and friends) were refused for a long time.
protomyth 16y ago
Apple's "proper Coca bindings" was probably an overstatement. It had a binding that didn't really work well and was incomplete due to the dynamic nature of Objective-C and the lack of it on Java.

buster 16y ago

Still it is installed on pretty much every machine i know, be it server, desktop, windows or linux. Like Flash it is most of the time one of the first 3rd party tool to be installed, i guess..

Samuel_Michon 16y ago

"Was Java that big on the Mac?" The precursor to Mac OS X, Rhapsody, had three environments, treated as equals: classic MacOS, Java, and OPENSTEP. Schematics here: http://macguild.org/rhapsody.html http://macguild.org/rhapsody.html Obviously, OPENSTEP/Yellow Box/Cocoa won out.

Naga 16y ago

Windows and Linux don't ship with Java because they depend on Sun to produce the runtime. Apple produces it for OS X.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]