this is probably a little touchy to ask...

[Achilleas Mantzios]

Στις Friday 10 September 2010 17:29:19 ο/η Randal L. Schwartz έγραψε:
> >>>>> "Mark" == Mark Sommer <msommer at somware.com> writes:
> 
> Mark> That's a pretty idealistic view of the upcoming release of HTML5.
> Mark> I have yet to see a release of HTML that is compatible across
> Mark> browsers, i.e.  adapted universally by all browsers uniformly.
> Mark> Java is still a very viable platform, even on the browser.
> 
> Whenever I see Java firing up on my browser, I cringe.  (Flash too.)
> 
> There are darn few things either of these do that a good modern
> cross-platform library, like jQueryUI, can't do instead.
> 
> Except for video playback, which HTML5 fixes as well.  And yes, until
> then, we're stuck with Flash.
> 
> We needed Java before we had good JavaScript.  Now we have good
> JavaScript.

With javascript (and to be honest i do use a lot of ajax in my apps), sooner or later
someone will have to fallback to plain javascript debugging, and thats where
he starts to get the feeling that he is moving back to the age, when languages/platforms
were unreliable, loosely defined, buggy, unpredictable,.... which is why java in the browser was introduced
in the first place.
I think the timing with opensourcing java, the oracle acqusition, and the latest hype with terms (like web 2.0)
which sound buzzy but mean nothing, created a rather peculiar environment where many dynamics seem to change
but without a clear technological winner (like SUN was in the 90s) which will show the way.
On the extreme opposite end sits adobe Flash, which does everything it is supposed to do
but it is so closed and "anti-academic" that we shouldn't be even discussing it in here ;)
Therefore, i dont think that we will see anything close to what applets(or even flash) used to be.
We might see products, (like JQuery as you said, or the tools from Google), yes, but not technologies.

> 
> I repeat... Java had its day.  Time to move on.
> 



-- 
Achilleas Mantzios