> While whole sales pitch for Java was to write and compile once, and run reliably anywhere which was never true, BTW There are few things in the story that a

> While whole sales pitch for Java was to write and compile once, and run reliably anywhere which was never true, BTW There are few things in the story that are simply corporations VS corporations and not good vs evil. Sun wanted to completely control Java and they sued MS for not completely adhering to the standard they imposed. It wasn't simply a different implementation, it was a Windows only implementation, the fastest Java implementation on Windows plus some Windows only extension. Which, honestly, wasn't that bad, considered that Java applications on Windows started to be a viable option almost 10 years later. Those who remember the first editions of Eclipse know what I mean. Many java programs were tied to specific OS implementations anyway, especially UI, Swing was always quite out of place on every platform. Anyway, long story short, Sun sued MS for not respecting their standard, but then Sun almost killed Java because the development stagnated for a very long time, features were not coming, bugs weren't being resolved and they mostly made a big ball of corporate ready mud. Their inability to handle the success made .Net a much more viable platform on Windows first and *nix much later, which otherwise would not exist. Visual J++ was probably the best Java IDE at the time, probably second only to IBM Visual Age Java for OS/2, that was born for SmallTalk and had a lot of the SmallTalk vibes.