Fun_People Archive
28 Nov
Java Predictions

Date: Tue, 28 Nov 95 18:09:36 -0800
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: Java Predictions

Forwarded-by: bostic@bsdi.com (Keith Bostic)
Forwarded-by: glen mccready <glen@liquor.cabi.net>
Forwarded-by: Valtteri Vuorikoski <vuori@sci.fi>
Forwarded-by: cgw <cgw@tristero.io.com>
Forwarded-by: Al Evans <al@powertools.com>
From: Matthias Neeracher <neeri@iis.ee.ethz.ch>

My humble opinion is that it's sort of surprising how many people think
that computer science as we know it has ended after reading about an as
yet unproven, prerelease quality variant of C++ with garbage collection
and a cute alternative to multiple inheritance.

While Java probably could be made to fit into a SOM world (if you abandon
garbage collection and most of the native object oriented features), I
don't see how it could *replace* SOM (It talks Pascal even worse than Mac
SOM currently does, so Peter Lewis will never use it :-). I'm not aware
of any Bentoesque library modules being part of Java, so I don't see how
it could possibly be a replacement for OpenDoc.

My prediction of the Java timeline is approximately as follows:

 Spring 96: Final release of Java appears, along with approximately 30
 published books about it.

 Summer 96: Bored bonehead writes virus in Java, places it on WWW.

 Oct. 31, 1996: All machines with a WWW client melt down.

 Winter 96: Surviving Webmasters open underground WWW, featuring hourly
 changing ports, banning client side scripting forever. Sun Java team
 granted political asylum by Iraq.

Remember, you read it here first.
Matthias

© 1995 Peter Langston