3 ms·
Then Java arrived and sucked all of the air and mindshare out of the ecosystem. Java lucked into ideal circumstances, Not only that but Java was free and Small
by goatinaboat 6y ago
Then Java arrived and sucked all of the air and mindshare out of the ecosystem. Java lucked into ideal circumstances,
Not only that but Java was free and Smalltalk was $50k/seat. There was a chicken-and-egg problem, no one could learn Smalltalk unless their organisation had already committed to it. It sounds weird to say it now but Java won by grassroots adoption.
- twic 6y agoAlso, you could share Java code, or entire libraries or applications, by posting some files on a website. You already had the files, and someone downloading them could use them straight away. To share Smalltalk code on a website, you would go through the file out / file in process, which was considerably clunkier. Also, i don't think Smalltalks of the time had namespaces, which also makes sharing code harder to get right. Java's reverse-DNS package naming is a surprisingly important innovation.