5 ms·

Because they learned from netscape's mistake, that's why. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0

Because they learned from netscape's mistake, that's why. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html

lhnz 15y ago
"You are wasting an outlandish amount of money writing code that already exists." On the contrary, there has been a number of times that I've completely rewritten some code to use a framework or library that was already battle-tested and more fully-featured than the previous effort. I ended up saving myself from writing code that already exists.
- anonymous 15y ago
  Right, but you're one person and you're redoing the plumbing. At this point oracle can't rewrite Java. If they don't support the current programs, nobody would use it, if they do, they will really be rewriting code that already exists.
sek 15y ago
I didn't say they should rewrite everything, but to make a new Java version with backward incompatibilities. Drop a new 1.x version on java for decades can't be the solution.
moonboots 15y ago
The netscape rewrite became Firefox.
- shangrila 15y ago
  Yeah no kidding. That's one thing people seem to forget about that Joel article ... the new code base he's mocking went on to become the only browser capable of taking on Microsoft's juggernaut for many years. It was faster & better than everything else out there. Eventually the only thing capable of overtaking it was WebKit ... another from-scratch code base!
  - nknight 15y ago
    That new codebase was iterated on for five years before a viable browser was released, and two more before Firefox 1.0 appeared. The history of the WebKit codebase stretches back as far as Gecko. The earliest KDE HTML work I can definitively establish is in 1997. We got Konquerer in 2000, but Safari didn't emerge until 2003. 5-7 years before something other than IE could again be competitive... Do you really think that disproves Joel's point? I think it may be quite the opposite...
InclinedPlane 15y ago
That article is an incredibly useful warning against the temptation for casually taking code rewrites, but it's incomplete. Sometimes full rewrites are necessary and good. The trick is doing it correctly. Rewrites are riskier, more difficult, and require more development resources than greenfield development. More so when you consider that you can't just abandon the old code until the new code is mature and has proven itself. Most people do rewrites the wrong way, and they get into trouble, but that doesn't mean there isn't a right way. There are many examples of unsuccessful rewrites in history, but also many examples of highly successful ones.

Because they learned from netscape's mistake, that's why. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html

lhnz 15y ago

"You are wasting an outlandish amount of money writing code that already exists." On the contrary, there has been a number of times that I've completely rewritten some code to use a framework or library that was already battle-tested and more fully-featured than the previous effort. I ended up saving myself from writing code that already exists.

anonymous 15y ago
Right, but you're one person and you're redoing the plumbing. At this point oracle can't rewrite Java. If they don't support the current programs, nobody would use it, if they do, they will really be rewriting code that already exists.

sek 15y ago

I didn't say they should rewrite everything, but to make a new Java version with backward incompatibilities. Drop a new 1.x version on java for decades can't be the solution.

moonboots 15y ago

The netscape rewrite became Firefox.

shangrila 15y ago
Yeah no kidding. That's one thing people seem to forget about that Joel article ... the new code base he's mocking went on to become the only browser capable of taking on Microsoft's juggernaut for many years. It was faster & better than everything else out there. Eventually the only thing capable of overtaking it was WebKit ... another from-scratch code base!
- nknight 15y ago
  That new codebase was iterated on for five years before a viable browser was released, and two more before Firefox 1.0 appeared. The history of the WebKit codebase stretches back as far as Gecko. The earliest KDE HTML work I can definitively establish is in 1997. We got Konquerer in 2000, but Safari didn't emerge until 2003. 5-7 years before something other than IE could again be competitive... Do you really think that disproves Joel's point? I think it may be quite the opposite...

InclinedPlane 15y ago

That article is an incredibly useful warning against the temptation for casually taking code rewrites, but it's incomplete. Sometimes full rewrites are necessary and good. The trick is doing it correctly. Rewrites are riskier, more difficult, and require more development resources than greenfield development. More so when you consider that you can't just abandon the old code until the new code is mature and has proven itself. Most people do rewrites the wrong way, and they get into trouble, but that doesn't mean there isn't a right way. There are many examples of unsuccessful rewrites in history, but also many examples of highly successful ones.