Live data from Hacker News

Bill Gates: I'm literally losing sleep over Java (1996)

techemails.com

31–40 of 239 posts

Re: Bill Gates: I'm literally losing sleep over Java (1996)

#31
post #12

I still have a JavaOne tshirt in the back of my closet that says, In a World Without Fences, Who Needs Gates?

There was a tombstone of Gates during hackers in progress (hip97) iirc.

Shows you how much he and windows was loved. Today’s microsoft is forced to play nice.

Re: Bill Gates: I'm literally losing sleep over Java (1996)

#32
post #9

> it seems like it could make it easy for people to do competitive operating systems. Wow. Losing sleep becasue progress might actually happen in the operating systems space. How very '90s Microsoft.

> Wow. Losing sleep becasue progress might actually happen in the operating systems space

I mean, any business owner should be watching out for rising competitive threats and thinking about how to nullify them.

Unfortunately for us that means the big players are trying hard to stifle the innovators....

Re: Bill Gates: I'm literally losing sleep over Java (1996)

#34

> First, the excitement is overblown - at least from a business perspective. At the moment Java is expanding into a vacuum. It allows you to make cool web pages, and that is a very attractive thing for people. It gives programmers something new to learn, book people something new to sell books on, software tool companies a way to issue new development tools etc. This is a pretty interesting take, and it feels relevan…

He’s right.. this is what BASIC used to be

Re: Bill Gates: I'm literally losing sleep over Java (1996)

#35
post #9

> it seems like it could make it easy for people to do competitive operating systems. Wow. Losing sleep becasue progress might actually happen in the operating systems space. How very '90s Microsoft.

Wait until you see what Apple has been at for the last 15 years.

I'm well aware how extremely anti-competitive and anti-progress Apple is.

Re: Bill Gates: I'm literally losing sleep over Java (1996)

#36
I had never heard of Nathan Myhrvold before, but, his lucid descriptions of the nature of technology has me convinced he's a genius.

Incredibile career he's had. Went to the best schools, published in top scientific journals in multiple foods. And, he took a leave of absence as Microsoft CTO (around when these emails were written) to go to chef school in France. He even has cookbooks!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Myhrvold

Re: Bill Gates: I'm literally losing sleep over Java (1996)

#38
post #32
post #9

> it seems like it could make it easy for people to do competitive operating systems. Wow. Losing sleep becasue progress might actually happen in the operating systems space. How very '90s Microsoft.

> Wow. Losing sleep becasue progress might actually happen in the operating systems space I mean, any business owner should be watching out for rising competitive threats and thinking about how to nullify them. Unfortunately for us that means the big players are trying hard to stifle the innovators....

The point is that he is worrying here not about improving their own things to compete, but about barrier for entry being low which means fast progress. Gatekeeping is bad, business owners or not.

Strategy to nullify competition instead of competing is disgusting and damaging to progress and market itself.

Re: Bill Gates: I'm literally losing sleep over Java (1996)

#39

I had never heard of Nathan Myhrvold before, but, his lucid descriptions of the nature of technology has me convinced he's a genius. Incredibile career he's had. Went to the best schools, published in top scientific journals in multiple foods. And, he took a leave of absence as Microsoft CTO (around when these emails were written) to go to chef school in France. He even has cookbooks! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na…

and then became an infamous patent troll

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_Ventures

Re: Bill Gates: I'm literally losing sleep over Java (1996)

#40
post #9

> it seems like it could make it easy for people to do competitive operating systems. Wow. Losing sleep becasue progress might actually happen in the operating systems space. How very '90s Microsoft.

If your current OS is the market leader why wouldn't you lose sleep over it. They are running a business and have to worry about the competition. Progress on competing products might be good for consumers but not for the employees or shareholders of the company.

If you are afraid of progress then you aren't the market leader because you aren't leading. You just happen to be the biggest company currently on the market.

Why not expand on the things where portable software is weak, like making a well-integrated system? But they missed it and let Apple fill that space.

Why not accept the future you predicted and be the first to arrive there? But web development only considered Microsoft an annoyance for a long time due to Internet Explorer.

Post reply on HN