But lets discuss further, we also should admit the reality, not just reject with satirical statements.
Java didn't dominate the web front-end technologies. It's worth to consider why. The points I see:
- user needs to download and install JRE
- bad integration with HTML document,
applet is just a rectangular self contained box
on the page; and it's very inconvenient to
script DOM nodes, handle events from applets
- browser vendors (especially microsoft)
were against java becoming the dominating platform
- in 2005 java was the only language running on JVM (unlike today).
BTW, I wouldn't say java was very slow to startup.
In the '90s, I despised Java and kept applets turned off because they took forever to download, and once downloaded, would make my machine freeze for a few minutes while the JVM started up.
It's not so much of a problem now that we all have broadband and fast CPUs, but in the '90s it was enough for me to bin Java as "a slow piece of shit" and avoid it like the plague. That probably contributed to it not taking off as a client-side web platform.
My point was that, eventually, it won't even be a web frontend. They'll just get the web browser out of the equation. Of course, a web "widget" is still going to be there, it just won't be a program you open.
I do believe Java failed mostly due to politics -- and more precisely, due to this:
> browser vendors (especially microsoft) were against java becoming the dominating platform
Everyone agreed, in principle, that a portable, high-performance VM was what we needed. The problem was that every vendor insisted it had to be theirs, while ever so slightly sabotaging other vendors.
In the meantime, they all had to provide a working web browser.
Well, probably you are right. In this case it is the main lesson to learn - if we want something to happen, we must think how to "hack" the social system, how to refactor the political/social situation. Technically a common platform for applications is not a difficult problem. BTW, I do not blame Microsoft more than others; as you say, every vendor tried to sabotage others, including Sun who didn't suggest a solution sufficiently beneficial, or unavoidable, for everyone.
But lets discuss further, we also should admit the reality, not just reject with satirical statements. Java didn't dominate the web front-end technologies. It's worth to consider why. The points I see:
BTW, I wouldn't say java was very slow to startup.