Java's Greatest Missed Opportunity?

jg21 writes "It looks like Bruce Eckel has hit the nail on the head again. No sooner did he finish stirring debate by writing about the 'departure of the Java hyper-enthusiasts,' previously discussed here on Slashdot, than he now rubs salt in the wound by highlighting in AJAXWorld Magazine how and why Java missed its golden opportunity to become the language undergirding Rich Internet Applications. He comments: 'We must ask why Java applets haven't become ubiquitous on the internet as the client-side standard for RIAs....This is an especially poignant question because Gosling and team justified rushing Java out the door (thus casting in stone many poorly-considered decisions) so that it could enable the internet revolution. That's why the AWT and Applets were thrown in at the last second, reportedly taking a month from conception to completion.'"

Re:Missed the Boat on Missing the Boat

[AP2k]

"But since one OpenGL/DirectX game looks just like another, who can tell it's Java? "

Sounds eerilly like "I cant believe its not butter."

Re:Lemme guess...Microsoft stopped bundling Java?

[Anonymous Coward]

TFA is too pop-uppy for mere mortals to read, so I'm just going to guess. Is the reason that Javascript-based stuff taking over the role Java was supposed to fill ten years ago that Microsoft no longer ships a Java engine but it does ship a Javascript interpreter?

Sort of. Quick version: Every browser has that JS interpreter and Google provided the GWT to translate Java into browser-specific JS. Java not only has the installation problem, but is stale. JS, though, won't do everything we want it to in the future. Flash will. But flash doesn't have a real programming language attached to it. But it does now! And the future is writing flash apps in Java. yay.

Flash and Plugins

[nova_ostrich]

But for much of the same reason that web users balked at Flash and Plugins

The numbers disagree [adobe.com].

Re:Coming from 10 years full-time Java experience

[Anonymous Coward]

> It was incorrect and unfair, but true nonetheless.

These novice programmers you mention, did any have problems with boolean algebra?

Re:Missed the Boat on Missing the Boat

[mad.frog]

I bet 10 bucks that Mr. Eckel's 3D card drivers are out of date or not installed. ...in which case Java should fail gracefully and warn the user of this fact. Just failing without any further info is inexcusable, regardless of the configuration issues.

The easy way of debugging the app is ...

Bzzzt, sorry, this scenario has already failed the Mom Test. Mom doesn't want to debug an app... she doesn't even know what "debug" means.

usually

[DrSkwid]

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Re:Java was just too heavyweight

[badfish99]

And what colour background do you see while upgrading to Java 5?

It's a good general rule of thumb with Java that, whatever you want to do, it can be done once you've upgraded to the next version.

missed opportunity

[Sloppy]

I always thought the Jawas' biggest missed opportunity was the battlestation plan that slipped through their fingers. They had it all, right there in the memory of an R2 unit that they sold for a pittence to some farmer. If they had taken the time to really check that droid out, and think big for a change (I don't mean sandcrawler big, I mean really big) they could have become a force to be reckoned wi--

What? Oh, Java!