Re: Netscape Licenses Java

Mark Waks ([email protected])
Wed, 24 May 95 16:18:18 EDT


>I was at Sun World yesterday when they announced this. The Java
>demo was incredibly cool. It looks bound to a browser format right
>now, and it doesn't run on many OS's yet, but they also announced
>support for Win NT and Win 95, with MacOS next week. With Netscape
>licensing it, and committing to port it to other OS's, it seems that
>Java may just "make it."

On the one hand, I'm very enthused by this news -- I think the Java
paradigm is Way Cool, and Netscape support is almost guaranteed to
make Java very, very real. (Assuming they're being as careful about
the security issues as HotJava purports to be -- not all of this is
implicit in the language.) And this will almost certainly lend weight
to the argument that VRML browsers should be Java-aware, which I've
concluded is *probably* the best route for behaviour.

On the other hand, I'm going to reserve judgement until I see the
details. There are some important issues still yet to be announced,
like the availability of good Java compilers (a prerequisite for this
to all work), and whether there is any added price involved. It's
still not too late for someone to screw it all up.

Overall, I'm guardedly optimistic...

-- Justin
Who now wants to see an
Ada 95 --> Java machine compiler...

Random Quote du Jour:

"Better to reign in Assembly Language then serve in Structured Programming?"
-- Tim Of-Angle