question about Java
I am reading that when Java was first introduced, the developers and designers anticipated that Java GUI programming would be the most predominant form of Java programming, even eclipsing other forms of windows programming (such as C++ and toolkits). What are some reasons for why this did not happen?
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html/css/javascript bubble happened.
Nah, Java is older than that. Back then, javascript was extremely limited, css barely existed and webpages could not do much interaction without reloading pages.
Java applets actually was a way to make webpages more powerful, but with the web not so well developed, they were not able to interact with data you're truly interested in, and webpages could simply not replace running programs on your computer. And Java applets were quickly enough replaced with Flash applets.
That most likely has to do with:
- no Java on Macs back then and for very long afterwards
- how mindboggingly slow Java has been for a while, and still was when it would have had that advantage. Slow to startup too.
- how the general concept of "unifying all OSes working the same with the same code" was not translating so well to a windowed application that would be expected to integrate with the desktop.
- how Java's provided look & feel was not looking so good, on Windows at least (and it was all that mattered to anyone back then)
- while I do like how Java's GUI programming model is well defined, it looks atrociously complicated, and objectively is compared to the other models that existed back then (and that weren't well-defined and had tons of theoretical opportunities for crashing bugs, when the reality is that such bugs were few.)
- they eventually accepted defeat and gave up. JavaFX, more recently, could be a new attempt. But nowadays if you want something that looks like JavaFX, you're more likely to want to run it in a browser or as a phone app.
Why is it relevant that there was no Java on Macs?
@Kyo-chan
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