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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)

#71

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

What's interesting to note is that Microsoft now owns Minecraft, which is one of the most successful "virtual worlds" I can think of.

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

#72
post #65

Has anyone ever used the cross platform capability of java? Java is cross platform in the way c is cross platform, you can compile to many target platforms. But aren't pretty much all java applications intended to run on one specific platform only? Developers like the idea of cross platform but they pretty much never use it. I think javascript is the only language that is truly used in a cross platform way.

It was (and is) very common to develop on a Windows desktop / laptop and deploy to a Linux server

Exactly, that's the "c is cross platform" way. What java offers is that you compile once and you can run the same binaries on any platform (hence freely switching OS as Bill Gates feared). But who uses that in real life?

Because compiling on windows and deploying on linux/unix/etc, that was posssible 20 years before java in c/c++.

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

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no one will be going out of business just because their frontend isn't React Yes. But one is more likely to go out of business if their frontend is still using JQuery. It's harder to maintain and iterate, harder to recruite good engineers. I would ask for more money if the company hiring me uses JQuery and doesn't use TypeScript/React. And if the company somehow hires me, I would be less productive because I can't…

I’ll take jquery over react any day of the week and ask for less money because it’s more productive

Glad I'm not the only one that thinks this

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

#74

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…

Giving things away is not the same as open source. Java was closed source until 2006. Sun released the Java runtime and class library for no charge but not the source. The class library's interfaces were public as was the JVM specification so there were open source Java implementations like Kaffe, gcj, and the GNU classpath before Sun open sourced Java proper.

Originally Sun released the JRE (on PC/Mac/etc) at no charge but charged for licenses elsewhere. With the release of Java 1.2 (J2SE) Sun charged for releases of J2ME on devices and J2EE products like application servers.

Sun wanted to get the Java runtime spread as widely as possible to make it the platform to develop stuff on. The idea was to get stuff written in Java and then deployment was just embedding a class file (later a jar) in a web page.

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

#75
Nathan Myhrvold's long answer was more interesting. He was talking about the future of the Internet and what would make money.

Now 25 years later, watch what's actually made the most money, and did his reply cover those. I can think of hosted services and search.

Even Microsoft had one of the very first maps online in the 90s [ terraserver ] but they failed to realize how large this business eventually will turn into.

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

#76
post #65

Has anyone ever used the cross platform capability of java? Java is cross platform in the way c is cross platform, you can compile to many target platforms. But aren't pretty much all java applications intended to run on one specific platform only? Developers like the idea of cross platform but they pretty much never use it. I think javascript is the only language that is truly used in a cross platform way.

[flagged]

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

#78
post #51

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

The heuristic for Github though is that the vast majority of people visiting a repository page who aren't logged in to Github on that browser don't have an authorized private key. It makes complete sense to present only options for anonymous checkouts to anonymous users.

Long ago they used to push SSH as the "right" way to pull repositories (I still almost exclusively use SSH), but their change to recommending HTTPS instead by default is by now quite old: it's been the case for many years.

Other related things have changed more recently: Github doesn't allow git:// urls anymore (but HTTPS still allows anonymous checkouts), and when doing authenticated HTTPS, you now need to provide a token instead of your password.

The git:// protocol, to my recollection, doesn't support authentication at all. If you've ever been able to push to git:// URLs on Github, it's news to me.

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

#79
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can recommend the book “Steve Jobs and the NeXT big thing”. The Author compares NeXT a lot with Sun including their business strategies. I have never thought I will learn so much about the early days of Sun by reading this book. https://www.amazon.com/Steve-Jobs-Next-Big-Thing/dp/06891213...

Having listened to "oxide and friends" and "on the metal" podcasts.. next and sun were nothing alike. The above podcasts are hosted by Bryan cantrill and often has guests from that era, though the newer episodes try not to reminisce so much, because it became a bit much at some point

Totally agree, which is the reason why I recommend the book. The author explains the difference in a great detail and by that you learn so much about Sun. …and NeXT or course :).

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

#80
post #65

Has anyone ever used the cross platform capability of java? Java is cross platform in the way c is cross platform, you can compile to many target platforms. But aren't pretty much all java applications intended to run on one specific platform only? Developers like the idea of cross platform but they pretty much never use it. I think javascript is the only language that is truly used in a cross platform way.

Java + Swing was doing cross-platform desktop apps long before Electron was a thing; my editor of choice for years (before moving to Sublime, then Atom and VS Code) was a Swing-based cross-platform editor called JEdit. And the JetBrains IDEs are still Java/Swing applications.

(There were other options out there, too— for example, SWT’s the widget toolkit used by Eclipse which feels a bit more native on some platforms than Swing.)

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