Write once/run anywhere is a myth. A marketing lie. Wait, "marketing
lie" is a redundant phrase.
It's more like write once, run nowhere. Or write once, pray everywhere.
Or to quote Ted Lewis, write once, test everywhere.
Or to paraphrase JoeK, write once, then tear my frigging hair out trying
to run it on Windows NT.
Microsoft's strategy is clear: castrate Java so that it becomes just
another language. That's fine: it is both tactical and strategic, and
we would not expect any less from them.
It's Sun who's really dropping the ball on this one. They're going in a
million different directions (FOUR flavors of Java!? What's up with
that???), and I get the impression that they really have no idea of
where they want to go today. Yes, integrating Beans with CORBA/IIOP
would be nice, but man oh man is it a pipe dream to think that anyone
but maybe the upper half of a percent (what's 3% of 3%?) of developers
would have enough skill to actually use it...
Java's got a long way to go as a component model. To expect that
Microsoft would stand still at the opportunity to crush its opponents,
would be ludicrous.
----
adam@cs.caltech.edu
An amphibian is a land animal who is almost impossible to drown.