[6313] in java-interest
Re: Microsoft's Java efforts
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Joe Kinsella)
Thu Mar 28 19:09:55 1996
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 1996 10:49:05 -0500
Reply-To: Java Interest <JAVA-INTEREST@JAVASOFT.COM>
From: Joe Kinsella <jkinsella@PROCD.COM>
To: Multiple recipients of list JAVA-INTEREST
<JAVA-INTEREST@JAVASOFT.COM>
>Microsoft has expanded OCXs into an entire internet-aware framework
>called "ActiveX". Yes, web pages can now have OLE and OCXs, if you
>think that this is a good idea, then you don't know jack about OLE.
>I've written OLE automation servers and clients from scratch (no
>MFC), including my own IAdviseSink interfaces, etc., so I know
>what I'm talking about.
I think writing directly to the OLE API was your first mistake. There are
numerous tools on the market to quickly generate OLE clients and servers
--many that require minimal coding (MFC, VB, Smalltalk products, I believe
even Jacarta already generates OLE objects as well as publishing Java
with OLE interfaces).
>Further, MS is making Java OLE-aware, so that it can i/f to
>ActiveX, but also marrying it to the MS COM model, when ALL
>EDUCATED people agree that the CORBA/SOM model is superior.
>See the comparison at:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And CP/M was better than DOS, and the Mac-OS is
better than Windows, and almost anything is better than C++, and...
>These MS moves are great things for people who run Windows ex-
>clusively, and are willing to let Microsoft manage their lives
>from cratle to grave.
Don't underestimate the power of what MS is doing. The MS strategy is
very attractive to many people. It leverages the enormous investment
in Windows that has been made in the past decade by allowing almost
any Windows app to be "Internet-enabled" with minimal effort. It also tells
the mass of Windows programmers that they don't need siginficant retraining
to write Internet applications. And supporting MS-Windows means
supporting the lions share of Internet users.
>For the remaining 98.6% of us, this represents a fragmentation
>of the internet into incompatible segments (MS and everybody
>else). This is what I predicted to this newsgroup six months
>ago, that MS would fragment Java and the net, for its own
>self-interest.
I think it is naive to NOT believe the Internet would fragment into
incompatible
segments! Technology is driven by market forces not by idealism. Even
Java will cease to be the nice cross-platform product it is today in the
next couple years. I may choose to write extensions to Java to support
technology required by my customers (e.g. OLE, PC serial communications,
DDE, ODBC, DAO)--and am unlikely to write the complementary cross
platform components. Go look at the numerous cross platform development
products that have been on the market for years (e.g. Smalltalk) and you
will
see that idealism does not last long once market forces take over.
Joe
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