161–170 of 239 posts
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I was also puzzled by this one. Does he mean Java applets maybe?
Yes, they were a really big deal at the time, before security concerns came along and sunk them.
If history taught me anything it is that this attitude is not history.
> 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…
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 o…
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/
If you sell hardware the last thing you want to do is commoditize hardware, which is what a portable software strategy does. What you want is hardware lockin. Java was the opposite of that. Sun eventually had to be sold, but Microsoft didn't.
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jscript was JavaScript engine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JScript J++ was a 'clone' of Java https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_J%2B%2B . Sun sued Microsoft, https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/sun-microsoft-settle... and that's how .Net was born ( with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_J_Sharp to ensure transition)
Welp, it seems I misremembered how it all fitted together. It was a stressful time to be a non-MS user back then, so I blame Post-Microsoft-Stress-Disorder.
A good thing, surely.
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I still don't understand what they are.
Basically data objects loaded via orm, with code to repersist to database when updated. ... except there was a long road of transactions, distributed architecture issues, etc still to hammer out, and these were the days of a gig of ram maybe and no ssds, and 100 base t if you were lucky. And jit was a wip. So it was a app server with its own dedicated mumbo jumbo for everything to dazzle CEOs.
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.
I loved this part. It's not new but nicely put: > As you and know very well, this sort of widespread interest can become a self fullfilling phenomenon, because programmer attention creates programs. Some of these will be successful and that only fuels more participation in the phenomenon. I hope this is what's happening with Rust. :) I also thought this paragraph just afterwards had an interesting point: > In the lim…
Internet Explorer dominated for years. Microsoft killed Netscape not the other way around. Mozilla helped with the downfall of IE but it was really Google that put the final nail in the coffin. As for backend, Microsoft had some systems running IIS and Apache can run on Windows Server too, but UNIX and Linux was always the dominant platform for web hosting. Java didn’t change anything there. Javas impact on Windows c…
A friendly reminder that what CEOs of large corporation focus on is often against the best interest of the user. I had the same feeling reading one of Andy Grove's books. He treated everything I perceived as positive for the customer (such as commoditization of hardware, rise of thin clients etc.) as a threat. If history taught me anything it is that this attitude is not history.