Re: Hot Java is here! And it *rocks*

Steven D. Majewski (sdm7g@virginia.edu)
Tue, 28 Mar 1995 01:04:11 +0500


On Mon, 27 Mar 1995, Simon Spero wrote:

> [Hey - I'm not getting paid by Sun anymore, so I can say this]
>
> Sun's java group has released the first public distribution of hot java,
> and even the alpha release blows away every other browser out there.
> [ ... ] and
> a language that's delivers what we all hoped for from Dylan. It's the
> most exciting thing to happen to the Web since viola.
>

Before you get TOO excited, you should note that, at least for the
moment, Java is somewhat *less* available than Dylan, and for fewer
platforms. However, as it looks like Sun is putting considerable
development effort into it, that will likely change soon.

Is source code going to be freely available for the interpreter ?

How secure is Sun's support considering they are also investing
development resources in Tcl ? ( The argument from some of the
safe-tcl boosters re: agentware has been that we can only have
ONE Universal Network/Distributed-App/Agent Programming Language.
Now, Sun now has two! )

>From what I was able to see before I was unable to connect any
more ( What - is everybody on this list reading the Java Web Docs? )
it looks quite interesting : Better than either C++ or Tcl.
( I wouldn't describe it as "all we hoped for from Dylan" , but
maybe my hopes were higher :-)

Definitely worth watching - I'm just trying to watch critically -
no offense intended Simon - I would not have known you had had
any connection with Sun except for the disclaimer at the top -
but there has been a bit of hype for Java ( nee Oak ) in some
other foruns well before much info was released, so forgive me
if I suspect it of looking a bit "orchestrated" .

[ But, orchestrated or not, it IS worth looking at. I haven't
managed to digest all the documentation yet. I hope the
browser gets ported to a system where I can try it out soon! ]

---| Steven D. Majewski (804-982-0831) <sdm7g@Virginia.EDU> |---
---| Computer Systems Engineer University of Virginia |---
---| Department of Molecular Physiology and Biological Physics |---
---| Box 449 Health Science Center Charlottesville,VA 22908 |---