7 ms·

It is almost forgotten now, but the platform which carried Java to critical mass was the browser. Java successfully pivoted to server-side, but initially it was

by goto11 5y ago

It is almost forgotten now, but the platform which carried Java to critical mass was the browser. Java successfully pivoted to server-side, but initially it was considered a client-side language. C++ was the preferred application development language on Windows. Python is popular because of the numeric and ML ecosystem.

coldtea 5y ago
>It is almost forgotten now, but the platform which carried Java to critical mass was the browser I think that's backwards. I was there. Aside from a few e.g. banking and government applets one was forced to use and a couple of exceptions, applets never got anywhere and died fast. Enterprise Java became what Java is all about very very soon. Java landed in 1996. Servlets/Tomcat landed in 1998. By 2000 there was plenty of enterprise Java development - in fact that was the year MS created its own Java copy, in the form of C#/.NET after having tried to extend their version of Java for the Windows platform.
- Izkata 5y ago
  Back when Flash was called Shockwave, it was competing with Java applets for browser games. It did lose, but it was out there.
  - NoSorryCannot 5y ago
    Minor nit, Shockwave wasn't the same as Flash. All three plus ActiveX overlapped in their time on the market, which is hair-raising to think about.
    - Izkata 5y ago
      Was Shockwave a platform for Flash then, or something? I don't know any technical details here, but from a user perspective Shockwave did turn into Flash. The Flash file extension "swf" even stands for "ShockWave Flash".
      - detaro 5y ago
        Shockwave was Flash's larger brother, feature wise. Shockwave stuff could contain Flash files, but Shockwave could do things Flash couldn't, or could do them earlier. (And if I remember correctly Shockwave came first, and when Macromedia aquired it they then build Flash)
      - goto11 5y ago
        It was two separate products with separate origins. Macromedia had Shockwave and then they purchased Flash (which was called Splash then) and branded it Shockwave Flash. Shockwave was somewhat similar to Flash, but it was developed for the "multimedia" CD-ROM's, which meant the files was generally too big for online. Flash was much more compact which is why it won out.
      - native_samples 5y ago
        Shockwave = plugin for playing Macromedia Director content. Director was a GUI builder for interactive multimedia apps which were programmed in a custom language called Lingo. Flash was originally called FutureSplash, if I recall correctly. When Macromedia bought it they rebranded it to fit their general branding theme, hence the confusion. Flash wasn't really intended to be an app platform, it started out as a vector animation format, but later they added scripting using a dialect of JavaScript called ActionScript. Most users ended up with the Flash plugin but not the Shockwave plugin. Macromedia Director was huge in its day - my first programming job involved writing Lingo - but it died out pretty quick when the internet started taking off.
        CRConrad 5y ago
        > Flash was originally called FutureSplash So had the renaming taken place now in stead of twenty years ago, it would be called F7lash in stead of just Flash.
    - selfhoster11 5y ago
      Notably, Linux support for Shockwave was missing.
tragomaskhalos 5y ago
I would say that in the enterprise software world Java was an irrelevant toy before the pivot to server side. At that point though, whoosh stratosphere
- iainmerrick 5y ago
  I'm not sure that's quite right. I feel like there was a decent span of time where many desktop apps were written in Java (with AWT or Swing), particularly enterprise apps where you valued development speed and ease of deployment more than a slick UI or high performance.
  - mannschott 5y ago
    My $JOB is maintaining such a desktop CRUD app that's been in use for the past 20 years. It uses a Swing (via a proprietary higher-level framework) for its GUI. Over the years it's accreted a few dozen services (also in Java) in its orbit, but the central GUI app and its data-base still remain and continue to be extended as new requirements arise.
foota 5y ago
I don't think ML was what it is today when python started.
- iainmerrick 5y ago
  Right, definitely not. From my perspective, Python became popular as the simplest and friendliest general scripting language along the lines of Perl or TCL, and the easiest for somebody familiar with other languages like C or Java to pick up. If I wanted to do something just a bit too fiddly for a shell script, I'd reach for Python (and still do, although I've recently started using Node too). Perl initially became popular as the best text-wrangling language for CGI scripts and the like, but (I think) was a bit too weird to be a general-purpose hit for the masses like Python. Likewise Tcl/Tk was great for whipping up quick UIs, but both parts seemed a little too weird to stand on their own. Ruby was another strong contender; I think Python was already too well-established to be displaced by Ruby, but Ruby found its audience via Rails (which I'm guessing is better than Django).
  - somejan 5y ago
    Rails was the first of that type of web framework. Django and all similar frameworks are Rails clones. At that time Rails was the killer app for Ruby. Unfortunately for Ruby the other languages were willing to put in the effort to copy it, and Rails is no longer a unique advantage.
    - iainmerrick 5y ago
      Django and all similar frameworks are Rails clones. Hmm, are you sure? I’m not saying you’re wrong, because I’m not sure myself! I heard of Django before I ever heard of Rails but that doesn’t mean much. Wikipedia suggests they were released at around the same time -- Django started slightly earlier, Rails open sourced earlier.
    - crucialfelix 5y ago
      Zope was the leader in python long before Django or rails. Since 1999 ColdFusion and JSP and PHP were dominant for a long time before Rails as well.
thaumasiotes 5y ago
> It is almost forgotten now, but the platform which carried Java to critical mass was the browser. I'm still confused by the cycle of - You can run Java applets in a web browser! - Ew. Time to stop doing that. - I've had a brilliant idea! We need a bytecode-based VM in the browser so a web page can run arbitrary code. - I'll call it "WebAssembly".
- 1f60c 5y ago
  Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the problem with applets was that they were too powerful and it took eons for vulnerabilities to be fixed.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  - Now you can go back to run Java applets in a web browser!
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  Other than security, the other bad thing about applets was that they were very slow to start, and required a Java runtime that did not come bundled with the browser - you had to download an installer for it manually, install it, and then the thing was constantly nagging you about updates (and, IIRC, the updating agent or whatever it was that sat in my tray noticeably degraded the machine's performance even if nothing was using JRE).
- malft 5y ago
  Java has all the security logic INSIDE THE VM. That's the big difference.
- coldtea 5y ago
  Here: - You can run Java applets in a web browser! -> Yeah, so? There are all crap, slow to start, big on resource bloat, slow to draw, and don't offer much). -> Ew. Time to stop doing that. Then 15+ years passed, during which JS became the dominant way to build CRUD/Enterprise/form-based/and more apps, got big features (from WebRTC to an embedded DB, and from accelerated canvas and 2D graphics to MIDI). And it even hit big on the server too. Then: - I've had a brilliant idea! We need a bytecode-based VM in the browser so a web page can run arbitrary code. WebAssembly, is faster than Java Applets was back then, has easier ties to the DOM for UI (as opposed to being a sandbox), can be used to supplement conventionally written web apps, and is not tied to a single company. So, quite a lot of differences due to time, and also in the characteristics of the technologies involved.
SergeAx 5y ago
Python is popular because their teach it in US schools and colleges as a next best thing after BASIC int terms of ease. During ML uprise Python became a common denominator between mostly US-based scholars.

by goto11 5y ago

coldtea 5y ago

>It is almost forgotten now, but the platform which carried Java to critical mass was the browser I think that's backwards. I was there. Aside from a few e.g. banking and government applets one was forced to use and a couple of exceptions, applets never got anywhere and died fast. Enterprise Java became what Java is all about very very soon. Java landed in 1996. Servlets/Tomcat landed in 1998. By 2000 there was plenty of enterprise Java development - in fact that was the year MS created its own Java copy, in the form of C#/.NET after having tried to extend their version of Java for the Windows platform.

Izkata 5y ago
Back when Flash was called Shockwave, it was competing with Java applets for browser games. It did lose, but it was out there.
- NoSorryCannot 5y ago
  Minor nit, Shockwave wasn't the same as Flash. All three plus ActiveX overlapped in their time on the market, which is hair-raising to think about.
  - Izkata 5y ago
    Was Shockwave a platform for Flash then, or something? I don't know any technical details here, but from a user perspective Shockwave did turn into Flash. The Flash file extension "swf" even stands for "ShockWave Flash".
    - detaro 5y ago
      Shockwave was Flash's larger brother, feature wise. Shockwave stuff could contain Flash files, but Shockwave could do things Flash couldn't, or could do them earlier. (And if I remember correctly Shockwave came first, and when Macromedia aquired it they then build Flash)
    - goto11 5y ago
      It was two separate products with separate origins. Macromedia had Shockwave and then they purchased Flash (which was called Splash then) and branded it Shockwave Flash. Shockwave was somewhat similar to Flash, but it was developed for the "multimedia" CD-ROM's, which meant the files was generally too big for online. Flash was much more compact which is why it won out.
    - native_samples 5y ago
      Shockwave = plugin for playing Macromedia Director content. Director was a GUI builder for interactive multimedia apps which were programmed in a custom language called Lingo. Flash was originally called FutureSplash, if I recall correctly. When Macromedia bought it they rebranded it to fit their general branding theme, hence the confusion. Flash wasn't really intended to be an app platform, it started out as a vector animation format, but later they added scripting using a dialect of JavaScript called ActionScript. Most users ended up with the Flash plugin but not the Shockwave plugin. Macromedia Director was huge in its day - my first programming job involved writing Lingo - but it died out pretty quick when the internet started taking off.
      - CRConrad 5y ago
        > Flash was originally called FutureSplash So had the renaming taken place now in stead of twenty years ago, it would be called F7lash in stead of just Flash.
  - selfhoster11 5y ago
    Notably, Linux support for Shockwave was missing.

tragomaskhalos 5y ago

I would say that in the enterprise software world Java was an irrelevant toy before the pivot to server side. At that point though, whoosh stratosphere

iainmerrick 5y ago
I'm not sure that's quite right. I feel like there was a decent span of time where many desktop apps were written in Java (with AWT or Swing), particularly enterprise apps where you valued development speed and ease of deployment more than a slick UI or high performance.
- mannschott 5y ago
  My $JOB is maintaining such a desktop CRUD app that's been in use for the past 20 years. It uses a Swing (via a proprietary higher-level framework) for its GUI. Over the years it's accreted a few dozen services (also in Java) in its orbit, but the central GUI app and its data-base still remain and continue to be extended as new requirements arise.

foota 5y ago

I don't think ML was what it is today when python started.

iainmerrick 5y ago
Right, definitely not. From my perspective, Python became popular as the simplest and friendliest general scripting language along the lines of Perl or TCL, and the easiest for somebody familiar with other languages like C or Java to pick up. If I wanted to do something just a bit too fiddly for a shell script, I'd reach for Python (and still do, although I've recently started using Node too). Perl initially became popular as the best text-wrangling language for CGI scripts and the like, but (I think) was a bit too weird to be a general-purpose hit for the masses like Python. Likewise Tcl/Tk was great for whipping up quick UIs, but both parts seemed a little too weird to stand on their own. Ruby was another strong contender; I think Python was already too well-established to be displaced by Ruby, but Ruby found its audience via Rails (which I'm guessing is better than Django).
- somejan 5y ago
  Rails was the first of that type of web framework. Django and all similar frameworks are Rails clones. At that time Rails was the killer app for Ruby. Unfortunately for Ruby the other languages were willing to put in the effort to copy it, and Rails is no longer a unique advantage.
  - iainmerrick 5y ago
    Django and all similar frameworks are Rails clones. Hmm, are you sure? I’m not saying you’re wrong, because I’m not sure myself! I heard of Django before I ever heard of Rails but that doesn’t mean much. Wikipedia suggests they were released at around the same time -- Django started slightly earlier, Rails open sourced earlier.
  - crucialfelix 5y ago
    Zope was the leader in python long before Django or rails. Since 1999 ColdFusion and JSP and PHP were dominant for a long time before Rails as well.

thaumasiotes 5y ago

> It is almost forgotten now, but the platform which carried Java to critical mass was the browser. I'm still confused by the cycle of - You can run Java applets in a web browser! - Ew. Time to stop doing that. - I've had a brilliant idea! We need a bytecode-based VM in the browser so a web page can run arbitrary code. - I'll call it "WebAssembly".

1f60c 5y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the problem with applets was that they were too powerful and it took eons for vulnerabilities to be fixed.
pjmlp 5y ago
- Now you can go back to run Java applets in a web browser!
TeMPOraL 5y ago
Other than security, the other bad thing about applets was that they were very slow to start, and required a Java runtime that did not come bundled with the browser - you had to download an installer for it manually, install it, and then the thing was constantly nagging you about updates (and, IIRC, the updating agent or whatever it was that sat in my tray noticeably degraded the machine's performance even if nothing was using JRE).
malft 5y ago
Java has all the security logic INSIDE THE VM. That's the big difference.
coldtea 5y ago
Here: - You can run Java applets in a web browser! -> Yeah, so? There are all crap, slow to start, big on resource bloat, slow to draw, and don't offer much). -> Ew. Time to stop doing that. Then 15+ years passed, during which JS became the dominant way to build CRUD/Enterprise/form-based/and more apps, got big features (from WebRTC to an embedded DB, and from accelerated canvas and 2D graphics to MIDI). And it even hit big on the server too. Then: - I've had a brilliant idea! We need a bytecode-based VM in the browser so a web page can run arbitrary code. WebAssembly, is faster than Java Applets was back then, has easier ties to the DOM for UI (as opposed to being a sandbox), can be used to supplement conventionally written web apps, and is not tied to a single company. So, quite a lot of differences due to time, and also in the characteristics of the technologies involved.

SergeAx 5y ago

Python is popular because their teach it in US schools and colleges as a next best thing after BASIC int terms of ease. During ML uprise Python became a common denominator between mostly US-based scholars.