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

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

#141

Post by Denvercoder9 »

kragen wrote: post #51
Scaevolus wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to be logged into github for the SSH clone tab to appear-- if they don't know your pubkey you can't connect using the SSH protocol. Git can push over HTTPS, too.

aha, that wasn't previously the case, thanks for the correction whether i'm logged in in my browser has nothing to do with whether my ssh client has access to an authorized private key

FYI if you don't want to manually convert to a SSH URL, you can use a insteadOf setting in your gitconfig to make git do it automatically: https://git-scm.com/docs/git-config#Documentation/git-config...

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

#142

Post by icelancer »

Beltalowda wrote: post #127
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Microsoft hadn't existed, everyone would be bitching just the same about whichever tech titan would have formed in their absence and erecting tombstones of their founders. It's not as if any of the other wannabes jockeying for power in that era would have had any hesitation in using their dominance anti-competitively either if they had gotten it. Even a certain scrappy don't-be-evil business that hackers were chee…

The question is whether an omnidominant platform like Microsoft's would have arisen in the first place. While the current Android/Apple situation isn't ideal, it's certainly better than only one of the two. I don't think it's a forgone conclusion that a "Microsoft-esque" monopoly would have happened.

For as bad as Microsoft was/is, imagine if Oracle filled that role.

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

#143

Post by rusticpenn »

mrblampo wrote: post #132

This was super interesting, and it would seem Bill Gates absolutely predicted the effect that not Java, but ultimately interactive web apps in a broad sense would come to have by making it less important to have one operating system or another. Interesting that the reply mostly implied that there wasn't much reason to worry, and that the future and dominance of web apps was still uncertain. But we are reading this em…

The reply was on point and serious . Mainframe still exists and generates billions in revenue. Windows/ Microsoft lost their foothold in a new market. However Microsoft is also transforming into a cloud first company.

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

#144

Post by thejammahimself »

mrblampo wrote: post #132

This was super interesting, and it would seem Bill Gates absolutely predicted the effect that not Java, but ultimately interactive web apps in a broad sense would come to have by making it less important to have one operating system or another. Interesting that the reply mostly implied that there wasn't much reason to worry, and that the future and dominance of web apps was still uncertain. But we are reading this em…

In the reply though he said:

> Pundits always say that this is going to kill the old businesses - eventually that happens but not anywhere near as soon as they say.

So to me maybe he was implying that he did think that web apps would eventually take over, just not at a rapid speed.

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

#145

Post by smcl »

> The new Java applications are NOT credible threats to traditional PC software any time soon

Well, Nathan was right there. But even with Java as (depending on where you look) 2nd, 3rd or 4th popular programming language, how many of those applications are being run on Windows hardware? Developed maybe, but deployed? Ultimately Microsoft didn't get stung too badly by this, since they embraced Linux on the server but it's weird to see them talking about how it's "expanding into a vaccuum" so early, batting around what to do about it when we know now that ultimately Windows lost that battle.

> Continue to "embrace and extend" - both at the level of new Java tools (like J++), and our broader browser strategy.

Kind of an "Oh my god, he admit it!" moment, it's wild to remember how open they were on the EEE strategy.

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

#146

Post by Beltalowda »

cm2187 wrote: post #89
Beltalowda wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because compiling on windows and deploying on linux/unix/etc, that was posssible 20 years before java in c/c++. "20 years before Java"? That's 1975 we're talking about. Was it possible to build a program on Windows 95/NT and then deploy that to a Unix system? Probably. But given that today this can still be quite a pain to cross-compile C code I bet it wasn't easy. Besides, "it compiles" doesn't mean "it works" or…

> Java abstracted a lot of details like endianness, platform-specific APIs, etc. away. Well POSIX dates from the late 80s. That's not cross-CPU, but at least cross-OS, which is what Gates was really concerned about.

It's not like POSIX was universally adopted the day it was released; that took a long time. And not all systems were Unix/POSIX in the first place (e.g. Windows, VMS, the IBM s/3.., and on the consumer side Amiga, Mac OS, BeOS, etc).

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

#147

Post by unhammer »

faefox wrote: post #29
eddsh1994 wrote: post #18

> Virtual worlds could be such a thing Haha, Metaverse talk while Zuckerberg was in preschool

Oh man, VR and metaverse-style concepts were big in the 90s even if the technology obviously wasn't quite there yet. Active Worlds predated Second Life by several years and surprisingly enough is still online to this day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4FGzE4endQ is a nice and accurate demonstration of the 90's VR dream

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

#148

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

ryanmccullagh wrote: post #24

Oracle had already acquired Sun by the time I was in the technology industry. The respondent states that Sun is so set on giving things away. Can someone comment on the culture of Sun at that time? Sun seems to have left a legacy in the open source community. What was the business logic on giving away the software for free? I know it's very common today, but Sun may have been a leader in open source. Any books recomm…

IMO it was a strategic move to commoditize their complement. My impression during that era was that Scott McNealy saw Microsoft (whose strength was in software) as Sun Microsystems' (whose strength was in hardware) most important competitor and took steps to stem their influence. Java was one example of a giveaway intended to create a Sun-controlled moat to protect their business. The purchase of StarOffice and its open-sourcing as OpenOffice, which eventually begat LibreOffice, seemed to be an attempt to put a dent in Microsoft's MSOffice revenue.

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

#149

Post by steve1977 »

jbverschoor wrote: post #31
hinkley wrote: 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.

> Today’s microsoft is forced to play nice.

And looking at the success of Visual Studio Code and GitHub, people actually fall for it.

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

#150

Post by rawoke083600 »

tluyben2 wrote: post #17
mccorrinall wrote: post #6

Javabeans give me nightmares too

My first successful company sold EJBs. It was a nice hype; simple to get into and go from sitting in your underwear in the attic to 10s of millions of revenue and contracts and sitting at Fortune 1000 corps with the cto. And of course learning (me as a university student and geek still) rapidly that enterprise software is not about software but about process, support, sla, contracts, consultancy (we went from 400 dev…

>that enterprise software is not about software but about process,

True that ! NOTHING moves as slow as a B2B software contract, it can take 6+months and even sometimes years to go from proof-of-concept and golf-talks to actual first invoice being paid to you the provider.

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