3 ms·

I thought we tried this already...

bmacho 4y ago
And it was way better than anything before and after, but the current politics the given time killed it (which may or may not be relevant anymore).
- dhosek 4y ago
  The load times and performance for applets were all pretty dismal, and given that about half of them were a site logo with moving waves at the bottom, not so missed. That said, I have a Number Theory textbook which uses computer-assisted explorations (e.g., get lists of pythagorean triples, factor a bunch of large numbers, etc.) and the most accessible version of those was through a set of applets which are challenging to run now (it also has Maple and Mathematica versions of the explorations).
  - kaba0 4y ago
    > The load times and performance for applets were all pretty dismal Javascript was abysmally slow as well, but then it got some insane amount of man-hours spent on it. Also, with that internet speed, everything was slow - I don’t see why would that be a valid criticism against java, especially that Java byte code is insanely compact, much more so than minified js. I think it was just ahead of its time, and Java itself could have easily been used as the web-native language if it is made to interact with the DOM natively.
    - cesarb 4y ago
      > Javascript was abysmally slow as well From what I remember, the Java VM took around a minute to start the first time you opened any page with a Java applet, and it locked the whole browser while it started. Compared to that, Javascript loaded instantly. Also keep in mind that much less was done in Javascript back then, so even though it was interpreted, it didn't feel that slow. > and Java itself could have easily been used as the web-native language if it is made to interact with the DOM natively. From what I recall, a Java applet could interact with the DOM directly (even though most applets didn't); the DOM specification had both Java and Javascript as targets, and it always felt to me that it favored the Java style in its interfaces.
      - bmacho 4y ago
        > From what I remember, the Java VM took around a minute to start the first time you opened any page with a Java applet, and it locked the whole browser while it started. Compared to that, Javascript loaded instantly. Also keep in mind that much less was done in Javascript back then, so even though it was interpreted, it didn't feel that slow. I don't remember this. Probably its very early days at most.
      - qsort 4y ago
        > Java applet could interact with the DOM directly It could. A funny piece of web-gore from that time: some mostly static websites (especially those made by people who didn't really know what they were doing), used Java Applets for client-side interactivity, like you would use Javascript in a server-rendered page today.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

And it was way better than anything before and after, but the current politics the given time killed it (which may or may not be relevant anymore).

dhosek 4y ago
The load times and performance for applets were all pretty dismal, and given that about half of them were a site logo with moving waves at the bottom, not so missed. That said, I have a Number Theory textbook which uses computer-assisted explorations (e.g., get lists of pythagorean triples, factor a bunch of large numbers, etc.) and the most accessible version of those was through a set of applets which are challenging to run now (it also has Maple and Mathematica versions of the explorations).
- kaba0 4y ago
  > The load times and performance for applets were all pretty dismal Javascript was abysmally slow as well, but then it got some insane amount of man-hours spent on it. Also, with that internet speed, everything was slow - I don’t see why would that be a valid criticism against java, especially that Java byte code is insanely compact, much more so than minified js. I think it was just ahead of its time, and Java itself could have easily been used as the web-native language if it is made to interact with the DOM natively.
  - cesarb 4y ago
    > Javascript was abysmally slow as well From what I remember, the Java VM took around a minute to start the first time you opened any page with a Java applet, and it locked the whole browser while it started. Compared to that, Javascript loaded instantly. Also keep in mind that much less was done in Javascript back then, so even though it was interpreted, it didn't feel that slow. > and Java itself could have easily been used as the web-native language if it is made to interact with the DOM natively. From what I recall, a Java applet could interact with the DOM directly (even though most applets didn't); the DOM specification had both Java and Javascript as targets, and it always felt to me that it favored the Java style in its interfaces.
    - bmacho 4y ago
      > From what I remember, the Java VM took around a minute to start the first time you opened any page with a Java applet, and it locked the whole browser while it started. Compared to that, Javascript loaded instantly. Also keep in mind that much less was done in Javascript back then, so even though it was interpreted, it didn't feel that slow. I don't remember this. Probably its very early days at most.
    - qsort 4y ago
      > Java applet could interact with the DOM directly It could. A funny piece of web-gore from that time: some mostly static websites (especially those made by people who didn't really know what they were doing), used Java Applets for client-side interactivity, like you would use Javascript in a server-rendered page today.

deleted 4y ago

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