4 ms·

The web ate Java's original premise.

colechristensen 3y ago
Yup, java just didn't actually do it very well. Or java was too heavy for the computers at the time to get people to use "applets" for everyday things (i.e. go to a new website a do a thing on it) Flash et al also failed to catch for long. The web browser's success might have something to do with neverending feature creep as opposed to "this can do everything but as such it's broken and vulnerable".
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  I think everyone instinctively knew that “once it is in the browser it cannot fail”, so it has been a schelling point for tech.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  Java's constant security nightmares and lack of integration into browsers was the bigger problem, IMHO.
  - antupis 3y ago
    Also you had to install runtime vs browser which is bundled every OS.
- DrScientist 3y ago
  Applets implementations were terrible - the problem wasn't so much Java ( though early versions pre-jit were slow ) , but the interface between the browser and the applet. Memory leaks abounded in particular. Life cycle management was difficult as well. Note the interface had to be implemented in each and every browser separately - compounding the problem - for applets to be viable it had to work on all the major browsers well. Not blaming the people who worked on it - I suspect the origin design was put together in a rush, and the work under-resourced, and it required coordination of multiple parties.
DrScientist 3y ago
Yes on the client, no on the server. Java's real success was ( and still is ) on the server - powering a whole generation of internet applications, and creating a cross vendor ecosystem that stopped MS leveraging it's client dominance to take over the server space as well. I don't believe Unix/Linux would have survived the Windows server onslaught without Java on the backend and the web on the front.
- jholman 3y ago
  It's true that the server is where Java has been most successful, by a large margin. But it was never Java's "original premise", which is what the comment you are replying to was about. According to their (very heavy-handed) marketing at the time, Java was supposed to be for native desktop applications and for "applets". But yeah, in the many years it took for those promises to truly become hollow, Java carved out a surprisingly robust niche for itself on the enterprise server. Also, I am skeptical of this last sentence of yours. The thing that resisted the Windows server onslaught, broadly, was the wide range of free-as-in-speech-and-as-in-beer backend technologies, like Perl, PHP, Python, Postgres, and some other things that start with "P", as well as, yeah, Java. Java played a role, but it was just one of many.
  - nunobrito 3y ago
    Java was created from the beginning for embedded devices. Most people don't realize that is has been there since the beginning on each Nokia 3310 device all the way up to most Android apps on the newest smartphones. On the desktop we had Swing which was OKish to build GUI apps (albeit still underneath Borland) and then totally lost sight of desktop with JavaFX that was created without hearing the community and then abandoned, also refusing to improve Swing. Quite a pity.
    - DrScientist 3y ago
      > Java was created from the beginning for embedded devices. Exactly. The biggest deployment of Java was/is on Java smart cards - billions of devices every year.

Yup, java just didn't actually do it very well. Or java was too heavy for the computers at the time to get people to use "applets" for everyday things (i.e. go to a new website a do a thing on it) Flash et al also failed to catch for long. The web browser's success might have something to do with neverending feature creep as opposed to "this can do everything but as such it's broken and vulnerable".

quickthrower2 3y ago
I think everyone instinctively knew that “once it is in the browser it cannot fail”, so it has been a schelling point for tech.
mschuster91 3y ago
Java's constant security nightmares and lack of integration into browsers was the bigger problem, IMHO.
- antupis 3y ago
  Also you had to install runtime vs browser which is bundled every OS.
DrScientist 3y ago
Applets implementations were terrible - the problem wasn't so much Java ( though early versions pre-jit were slow ) , but the interface between the browser and the applet. Memory leaks abounded in particular. Life cycle management was difficult as well. Note the interface had to be implemented in each and every browser separately - compounding the problem - for applets to be viable it had to work on all the major browsers well. Not blaming the people who worked on it - I suspect the origin design was put together in a rush, and the work under-resourced, and it required coordination of multiple parties.

DrScientist 3y ago

Yes on the client, no on the server. Java's real success was ( and still is ) on the server - powering a whole generation of internet applications, and creating a cross vendor ecosystem that stopped MS leveraging it's client dominance to take over the server space as well. I don't believe Unix/Linux would have survived the Windows server onslaught without Java on the backend and the web on the front.

jholman 3y ago
It's true that the server is where Java has been most successful, by a large margin. But it was never Java's "original premise", which is what the comment you are replying to was about. According to their (very heavy-handed) marketing at the time, Java was supposed to be for native desktop applications and for "applets". But yeah, in the many years it took for those promises to truly become hollow, Java carved out a surprisingly robust niche for itself on the enterprise server. Also, I am skeptical of this last sentence of yours. The thing that resisted the Windows server onslaught, broadly, was the wide range of free-as-in-speech-and-as-in-beer backend technologies, like Perl, PHP, Python, Postgres, and some other things that start with "P", as well as, yeah, Java. Java played a role, but it was just one of many.
- nunobrito 3y ago
  Java was created from the beginning for embedded devices. Most people don't realize that is has been there since the beginning on each Nokia 3310 device all the way up to most Android apps on the newest smartphones. On the desktop we had Swing which was OKish to build GUI apps (albeit still underneath Borland) and then totally lost sight of desktop with JavaFX that was created without hearing the community and then abandoned, also refusing to improve Swing. Quite a pity.
  - DrScientist 3y ago
    > Java was created from the beginning for embedded devices. Exactly. The biggest deployment of Java was/is on Java smart cards - billions of devices every year.