::scr Touchy Feely?

[Simon Kinahan]

> Well, it was never meant to challenge SmallTalk, of course.
                                        ^^^^^^^^^

Don't do that. When Smalltalk was invented, people didn't use InterCaps.

> Project Oak
> (from whence Java) was intended for washing machines and fridges and
> that. Then the web happened, then applets. Then people realised applets
> were cack. Then Sun started with the buzzwords and it took off as a
> server-side development language because middle managers "like that sort
> of thing".

Sun's exact strategy with Java has always been a bit of a mystery to me, but
I think the core of it is that as a vendor of non-standard hardware, they
now believe they have an interest in making software portable. At the time
Java appeared, the Unix vendors and IBM were really getting desperate. They
could see a time coming when it would uneconomic to produce software for
anything but Windows, and they were afraid. Java solved that problem.

Ultimately it took off because *developers* like that sort of thing. The
less clueful saw that Java was easier than C++. The more clueful saw that it
was a proper high-level language in C++'s clothing. People from both sides
pressured their managers into doing new projects in Java, because they saw
it would make their lives easier. Even in the first couple of years, people
started writing apps that needed to be portable in Java.

The mumbo-jumbo about business logic and so on only started once Java was
well and truly established already.

Simon